The World on a Plate: 40 Cuisines, 100 Recipes, and the Stories Behind Them

Holland, the British editor of Guardian Cook, draws from a dizzyingly broad sweep of world cooking for this discussion of terroir, ingredients, methods, and spices. The idea of her book, she says earnestly, is for readers to be able to sample global cuisines in their homes. Each section includes history and geography lessons as well as culinary information; the section on South Korea, for example, offers a small sample map, an introduction to Korean cooking in four pages (“Korean food makes you work hard”), a pantry list including daikon and jeotgal (a fermented condiment), and recipes for beef bulgogi and the national pickled dish of kimchi. Such European countries as France, Spain, and Italy earn breakdowns by region (e.g., Loire Valley, Andalucia), while Scandinavia gets a general grouping (praised for “Viking pragmatism”), and the Middle East is summarized by some shared ingredients among Turkey, Israel, and Iran (Holland emphasizes the extent and influence of Persian cooking). The author traces the South American chili pepper across the cuisines of Africa and India for a sampling of transformative recipes—Kashmiri rogan josh, Ethiopian chickpea stew—as well as a spice route. She admits she has never visited West Africa and has gleaned those recipes from notable experts, authors, and chefs. This is a tightly scripted encyclopedic experience, not an original or hands-on cookbook. (May)