References
A reference to pairing with contrasting tastes is the James Beard Award winning book Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat.
The first part offers a chapter on each of the four pillars of taste.
It shows how to balance each when incorporating it into a dish.
The second part show specific recipes using the recommended techniques to make each of the elements work to best advantage.
A richly illustrated book on Sicilian cooking is The Cooking of Casa Planta by Elisia Menduni. contains photographs of dishes from the 5 regions of Sicily. The 90 recipes in the book have come down to us from the memory and manuscript notebooks kept by the Planeta family’s aunts who opened their ancient collection of culinary traditions. The family has has played a key role in Sicily’s agriculture for eighteen generations. The Planeta winery was the source of Cerasuolo in NTP 2022
Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them.
Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Jule & Julia; falling in love over dinner; and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
Written with Stanley’s signature wry humor, Taste is for fans of Bill Buford, Gabrielle Hamilton, and Ruth Reichl—and anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.
Stanley Tucci “Searching for Italy “ series on CNN. Episode #6 is a 43 minute video on Sicily, its wine food, history and sights. It explains how simple ingredients are used to create remarkable dishes. He views the preparation of dish by native chefs and then had the meal with the owners of the restaurants. The link requires sign-in to your internet service provider. Click on the Tucci icon at the bottom center, then click on the arrow for Sicily.
Finally, a book that gives you pairing ideas and the rational for them:
What to Drink with What You Eat by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page.
It has two key sections:
1) “What to Drink with what You Eat”. In this section you select a food and it offers a list of beverages that pair well with it.
2) “What to Eat with what You Drink” In this section you select a beverage and it offers a list of foods that pair well with it.
A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavors is a reference book about varieties of wine grapes. The book covers all grape varieties that were known to produce commercial quantities of wine at the time of writing, which meant 1,368 of the known 10,000 varieties
Spices can be used either on a food or in sauces. Food elements can be tied together with sauces. An outstanding book on Spices is the book Spice by Dr. Stuart Farrimond. The author is a M.D. who specializes in food science. His book contains two pages on each spice, identifying the four major aroma compounds and suggesting what foods contain the same compound.
A page for fennel is pictured below. It shows that the dominant aroma is anisole, which is also present in anise and licorice. He selects food partners for each spice.
