Unplugged kitchen

the long version

This is no ordinary cookbook. Not only do the recipes have the power to change our perceptions about food, but she offers us a map through the landscape of food, with its rituals and its particular pleasures. In this sensory world, your nose pressed to a tomato tells you how freshness smells and your eyes measure olive oil in puddles. You crush walnuts in a mortar and press soup through a food mill to create more interesting textures. Viana goes wherever food delights and brings us along to taste asparagus in Rome and green almonds under a tree in a Sicilian garden. Along the way she reacquaints us with core ingredients. Also, Viana's "don't throw it away" tips show you how to make use of such things as recycled pasta water. Her over 200 seasonally and sensually inspired recipes engage all the senses.--From publisher description.