Bakeable Star Pans are made of sturdy, food-safe coated paper that is oven-safe: Each is a ready-made "gift box" for your baked masterpiece. A pan holds the equivalent amount of an 8-inch round pan. A set of six is $6 by mail-order from King Arthur Flour: kingarthurflour.com or (800) 827-6836.
'Food Lover's Companion'It's the bible of food writers, and it belongs in the home kitchen, too.
Sharon Tyler Herbst and Rob Herbst's "Food Lover's Companion" (Barron's, 2007, $16.99) has served as an indispensable reference to the food world since the first edition was published more than a decade ago.
This year, an updated fourth edition with more than 6,700 entries was released, continuing this tome's tradition of helping home and professional cooks make sense of myriad techniques and ingredients.
As valuable as the dictionary-style entries that form the core of the book are the appendices, which include a pasta glossary, a guide for reading food labels, illustrated charts depicting cuts of meat and substitution and measurement charts.
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Behind the scenesJudith Jones' name may not be familiar to many American cooks, but her work as an editor at Knopf certainly is. She introduced Julia Child to American cooks by convincing Knopf to publish "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and went on to collaborate on works from Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, Madhur Jaffrey, Scott Peacock and many others.
Her memoir, "The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food" (Knopf, $24.95), charts Jones' journey from a childhood of eating underseasoned British-style cuisine to a career spent helping American cooks rediscover the pleasures of the kitchen. There's inside dish on what it's like to work with Marcella Hazan, how Jones helped Lewis discover her voice in writing "The Taste of Country Cooking" and what she learned from Peacock about seeking out fresh ingredients. Some favorite recipes round out the work.
New-look PBPB2, the new powdered peanut butter product from Tifton, Ga.-based Bell Plantation, isn't aimed just at the hiking set. It has real potential to win over the rest of us.
PB2 is an ultrafine powder made by roasting and pressing peanuts, a process that removes much of the fat found in traditional peanut butter. While you simply can reconstitute PB2 with water, it shines elsewhere.
PB2 is perfect for tossing with warm oil or broth and hot noodles for a near-instant peanut sauce. It also can be used in baking, giving the luscious flavor of peanuts to recipes such as banana bread and sugar cookies.
If you do want to use it on a sandwich, you just reconstitute it directly with the jam.
PB2 is available at www.bellplantation.com for $11.96 for four 6-ounce jars
Herald wire reports
