Product Description

A lively and delectable tribute to the sensuous arts of cooking, loving, and living, Romancing the Stove is sure to stir the senses, and tickle the taste buds! Combining crowd-pleasing original recipes, mythology, and fail-safe trade secrets, chef and culinary courtesan Margie Lapanja (famous for her Cowboy Cookie recipe--revealed for the first time in this book) has concocted the most unique, engaging collection of mouth-watering menus and fun stories.

Romancing the Stove is a delicious read, filled with goddess tales, practical tips, fascinating food facts, divine dishes, and a fine seasoning of quotes. Lapanja reveals the pleasure of the table for everyone from skilled gourmets to the ultimate kitchen klutz. Recipes include dishes as diverse as classic Pain Perdu (known to the French as "Lost Bread")--a resourceful resolution for those unloved loaves that were destined to go stale--to Love Apple Linguine and Deepest, Darkest Devil's Food Cake.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #932312 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Released on: 2011-11-04
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .84" h x 7.52" w x 6.56" l, .76 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 270 pages

From Amazon.com
Margie Lapanja made a fortune baking and selling her Cowboy Cookies. She shares the chocolate, nut, oat, and coconut-studded recipe in Goddess in the Kitchen while urging you to bring more play and passion into your cooking. As one of many inspirational quotes in this book suggests, "Communion, union with divinity, is accomplished by means of food" (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul). If Chicken Soup for the Soul is your cup of tea, then Goddess in the Kitchen is likely a cookbook for you.

Lapanja, a card-carrying member of the Wild Woman Association, is passionately dedicated to encouraging uninhibited behavior. Her indulgences--mostly benign--lean toward daydreaming about eating virtuously lean Mango Tapioca Pudding on a desert island, sipping champagne with buttery shortbread (a sweet once associated with the Celtic spring celebration Beltane), and the like. Before each recipe, she provides historical and mythological information, particularly about the earth-mother Demeter and other goddesses, or some New Age inspirational advice, often combined with provocative personal ramblings. Since Lapanja's motto is "Eat dessert first," many of her recipes focus on sweets.

Written in an all-out style, this is a book you will love or hate. It's for you if advice like "We need to fall back in love with our food, the cooking process, and ourselves" speaks to you, or if your heart melts at the true story of the passionate romance between a priest and an ex-nun who ultimately wed, had six children, and still love to linger over a bowl of Pasta with Ginger Shrimp Soul Sauce. --Dana Jacobi

From Booklist
New Age philosophy illumines every page of this unique cookbook. At the book's outset, Lapanja lays down her guidelines for cooking, and she follows these precepts religiously. Her rules call for food that is wholly a pleasure, both for the cook and for diners. Her guiding-star recipe appears to be a kids' favorite, cookie-dough pancakes, a novel breakfast treat calling for cookie-dough bits--any dough will do--dropped onto pancakes as they sizzle. Lapanja wants cooks to follow wherever their imaginations lead. Her own inspirations run to sweet treats above all. Even her main-course dishes combine sweet and savory components for no-holds-barred cooking. Lapanja's island casserole mixes fresh fish and rice with garlic, canned crushed pineapple, cheese, and canned artichoke hearts in curry sauce. Other dishes, such as her profiteroles, adhere to more disciplined tradition. Mark Knoblauch

Ingram
A companion to "Wild Women in the Kitchen", this playful potluck of spellbinding stories and 201 ravishing recipes makes a most unique cookbook. 30 illustrations.