Cat Cora's Kitchen: Favorite Meals for Family and Friends

Cat Cora's Kitchen: Favorite Meals for Family and Friends Unlike Cora' more recent book "Cooking from the Hip" which emphasizes quick and easy recipes this is a more classic cook book with an emphasis on some known and not so well-known Greek as well as other recipes that integrate fresh (California) ingredients. The book is divided into sections according to menus. I prefer to have recipes divided by type but that is a matter of personal preference. This is a well-put-together book and the recipes are fully tested. Each one I have tried has been a winner. A few of the recipes are complicated and require time and effort, while others are simple. There are some great classics that are delicious such as the Greek style stuffed peppers and Moussaka.

The Cat Cora cook book was nice I have another which I love also. Books were in good shape.

Cat Cora and her very southern American accent always presented something of an anomaly when she appeared on the Food Network with Rocco DiSpirito doing the Greek half of the Mediterranean food segments paired with Rocco's Italian dishes. This book fills out the explanation given on TV that Cat (Catherine) was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi to Greek parents embedded in a strongly Greek neighborhood with all that entails, as seen in detail in the movie `My Big Fat Greek Wedding'. Cat has been working several different Food Network shows as well as several of her own California culinary shows and appearances on network talk shows for the last few years, establishing herself as a culinary celebrity staple equal to Tyler Florence and Sara Moulton, and just a notch below fast cooking diva Rachael Ray and super food nerd Alton Brown. This is her first book of recipes / memoirs and she has matched the quality of her equals, Tyler and Sara, and has made a very worthy contribution to the literature on Greek cooking. This is not a reference book on Greek food like Diane Kochilas' `The Glorious Foods of Greece' nor is it a popular survey of Greek cooking such as the recent `The Olive and the Caper' by Susanna Hoffman. It is a personal history of Cat's food experiences in her childhood Jackson home, in the ancestral home of her family on the Aegean island of Skopelos, Greece, in her California restaurant kitchens in northern California, and in her modern home kitchen. This orientation with the liberal notes on the niceties of Greek ingredients, her experiences with famous influences such as Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Thomas Keller, and Alice Waters, and stories of her US and Greek family members make this a more than usually entertaining personal cookbook. Although the recipes are divided between four different venues, there is not a lot of differences between, for example, the dishes prepared in Jackson and the dishes prepared on Skopelos. They are all Greek recipes, methods, and ingredients. The Jackson recipes are the least Greek, as there is some Johnny Reb influence in some barbecue recipes, but every single recipe has both an English main name and an Greek name. Extra points to Cat for consistency in uniformly providing both names. Makes things much easier when comparing her recipes to standard works such as Kochilas' book. The first overall impression is the omnipresence of lemon as an ingredient. It is so pervasive that I wonder why Nancy Harmon Jenkins did not feature lemons in a chapter of her excellent `The Essential Mediterranean'. Another oddity is that the recipes from the island of Skopelos contain no fish. While Cat makes no note of this fact, it confirms an observation I saw in a book on Greek island cuisine that all the good Aegean fish is carted off to Athens to be sold. Little of it is eaten at home. Menus of dishes that typically go together organize all the recipes in the four sections. This enhances the use to which book

I have followed Cats career from the time she was at Don Giovanni to her Postino days. This book is fabulous! The recipes are wonderful and I love the way she takes you on her journey throughout life and how it all revolves around the food she ate growing up. What a great book. I hope more follow!

Cathy was in the kitchen - a lot! "I'm cook'en, Mommy!" she'd exclaim as she banged spoons on the bottoms of empty pots. As a young girl, we always knew when Cathy was having breakfast - by the aroma of burning toast wafting through our house. But that was before CIA and France and California. Now Cat really does catch the flavor of our Southern Greek family and our simple, flavorful meals. Greek-American food is good and good for you. The ingredients are fresh, inexpensive, and nourishing - especially for a growing family. Gather your family and friends and make some memories with Cathy's recipes in your kitchen; that's what life is all about, and you'll "Be cook'en" too.