Average customer rating:
- Schank meets Dickens
- Mr. President, Please read this book!
- The Emperor Has No Clothes
- Stop Test madness!
- Big problems, smart solutions
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Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane
Roger C. Schank
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 United States
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ASIN: 0805838775 |
Book Description
To hear politicians talk, one would think the entire purpose of school is to assess children rather than educate them. Excitement about learning doesn't seem to be on anyone's agenda. The villains are those who profit from testing mania, make the tests, coach for testing, publish the books on which the tests are based, and believe that the results matter. Children are being taught things they don't need to know and nobody seems to care.
Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane is a cautionary tale of the dangers of educational testing and outmoded curriculum design. Bringing a new twist to Charles Dickens' classic story, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is recast as the head of an educational testing service. He is faced with the ghosts of Education Past, Present, and Future as well as his former mentor, John Dewey. As he observes a horrible future, he comes to understand the harm he has done and its repercussions on the school system. His time with the ghosts and John Dewey leads him to a dramatic turnaround regarding schools and scholastic teaching. It haunts him until he decides to undo the damage he has done to children all over the world.
Customer Reviews:
Schank meets Dickens.......2001-08-05
This is a wonderful failure of a book. It is a heroic and searing assault on our decrepit educational system that we should all heed. However, the Dickensonian language and plot don't quite work. Schank is a fine writer (see his "Coloring Outside the Lines") but he is no novelist. The book is crammed with interesting stories and facts about the evolution of the modern curriculum which alone is worth the read. Schank's vision of education without standardized tests is a welcomed alternative to today's depraved political debate on educational standards. Recommend for educators and parents.
Mr. President, Please read this book!.......2001-05-24
With wit and wisdom, Schank hits the nail on the head. Our schools are teaching nothing but test taking, a skill no one needs, wants, or will ever use in real life. If only President Shrub would read, and understand, this book! How much time, money and worry would be saved!
The Emperor Has No Clothes.......2001-04-11
Instead of a frontal assault on the misguided notion that testing is needed in K-12 -- a strategy that clearly has failed since for the next 4 years, at least, we will have more testing and thus much less learning -- Schank tells us a story. A story that portrays the evil of testing at a personal level; a wonderful family is destroyed by the pressures brought about by trying to "do good on those tests." Literally, there were tears in my eyes. This little book makes a MOST compelling, Dickensonian, case for why our craze for testing in K-12 is horrific, wicked, and downright evil.
Stop Test madness!.......2001-04-03
This is an extraordinary book, at once very sad, and very funny. Schank draws on Dickens' A Christmas Carol to tell a tale where the head of the Educational Testing Service is visited by the ghost of John Dewey (the famous American educator and advocate of learning by doing.) Dewey sends the ghosts of education past, present, and future to haunt Scrooge. They show how education started in this country as political indoctrination and gradually became about preparation for college. Today's schools have lost both purposes and are now about test preparation. Schank shows how this test madness will likely end, but, he says, there is hope for us all, and he explains how we need to understand why we have built what we have built so we can build something new its in place.
Big problems, smart solutions.......2001-04-02
If you want to know what's most threatening about today's educational trends and, more important, what to do about it, rush to get this book. The author, one of the foremost thinkers about cutting edge edcuational issues in the world today, sounds an alarm that must be heard before our policy-makers lead a generation of children and their teachers down a path that ends in a black hole of unpreparedness for the challenges of work and life in the 21st century. All done in an engaging style, too. Don't miss it!
Book Description
Killdozer! is the third volume of a series of the complete short stories from Theodore Sturgeon's career. It contains a few of his best and most famous short stories: "Medusa", "Killdozer!" and "Mewhu's Jet." The series editor Paul Williams has dug into the background of each story, and come up with a lot of interesting lore about Sturgeon. Especially of interest in this volume is the alternative original ending to "Mewhu's Jet."
Customer Reviews:
Ted Sturgeon was one of SF's best writers.......2004-03-20
Theodore Sturgeon is the best writer of short story science fiction. In a field such as science fiction, one of the few places where short stories continue to be regular features of the literary landscape, this is a high honor. This is a simple statement of fact. Ask any of the Giants, the other great short story writers of the field: Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, etc. They would each be more than willing to acknowledge Sturgeon as the best. Isaac Asimov wrote of his high opinions of Ted Sturgeon's body of work in his own autobiography.
I have always recommended the works of Sturgeon to people who want to get a feel for a more literary style of SF. Some people don't get Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke because they aren't normal "literary faire" to them. This is, at times, due to these people being educated beyond their own intelligence, but well... it is something that SF has had to deal with from the uninitiated. But Sturgeon is some one, along with some other SF luminaries like Ursula Le Guin and Harlan Ellison, even these so-called literary snobs have to recognize as a great writer. As a general rule, any English teachers who don't see SF as real writing will acknowledge Sturgeon as a great writer.
This book is part of a series of the complete short stories from Theodore Sturgeons career. It contains a few of his best and most famous short stories: "Medusa", "Killdozer!" and "Mewhu's Jet". It also contains a few of my own personal favorites with "The Bones", "Blabbermouth" and "Memorial".
Most of all, what we have with this book is a collection of where Sturgeon was at as a writer right before and during World War Two. WW2 was, naturally enough - as with all the other writers of his generation, the major factor on Sturgeon's later work... especially the effects of the atomic bomb and how it might affect later society - only at a more personal level than people normally think about. SF writers are rarely all about technical things... the technical and scientific aspects of issues are important to SF people because they are important to society. But Sturgeon was always affected at the level where science and technology interact with how we are friends and lovers with each other. You start to see that streak, which later cumulates with critical mass in his novel "More than Human", early on here with the story "Memorial".
Even those stories contained here, that would be by others considers to be not of the first rank, such as "Ghost of a Chance", "The Hag Seleen", "Abreaction", "Poor Yorick", "Crossfire", "Noon Gun", "Bulldozer Is a Noun", "August Sixth, 1945", and "The Chromium Helmet"... they are all, at the very least, very good stories. They're all still worthwhile reads today.
What is truly nice about this collection of his short stories, which North Atlantic Books has so kindly been putting out with the fine editorial over site of Paul Williams, is the story notes at the end of the book. Williams has dug into the background of each story, and come up with a lot of interesting lore about the fine author. Especially of interest in this volume is the alternative original ending to "Mewhu's Jet".
The book also has quips and quotes in the notes from Sturgeon on his own stories and his writing and how and why he wrote some of them, as well related notes from folks who Sturgeon talked to about writing and the specific stories over the years. Most important are some comments from John W. Campbell, Jr., the editor of Astounding Science Fiction back in the 1940's (up until 1971, as a matter of fact).
Campbell is probably the single most important influence on all Science Fiction, and Sturgeons interactions with him were very important to his development as a writer. Sturgeon later passed Campbell by, like many other writers, but he always remembered where he had come from. Science fiction, unlike a lot of other fields in English literature, has always remembered it's past, and Sturgeon was no exception.
Unfortunately, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) does not make people Grand Masters of the field posthumously. This has lead to Sturgeon never being inducted and hailed as a Grand Master because he had the misfortune to die before they got around to honoring him. This over site, along with those of Philip K. Dick, E. E. "Doc" Smith and John W. Campbell, Jr. and a few others should be a major issue to those who remember and revere the memory of Ted Sturgeon. This is something that the SFWA should correct at some point. Sooner is always better than later.
If you are into good shorts, then this is a very worthwhile collection to own and read.
The streak continues.......1999-06-11
This is the third volume of the serieis and I'm reading the fourth now and I have to say that if you have ANY passing interest in science-fiction, literature, basically anything related to writing and the art of the short story, you owe it to yourself to hunt down these volumes, they're about the best service the publishing industry has done for one of its writers in years. You won't get genius each time but each volume has its own gems to treasure. This one has of course the masterful Killdozer among other things, the stories are branching out more here, most are touching in some way but all are at the very least entertaining, my favorite might just be the unpublished "August Sixth, 1945" which distills brilliantly the thoughts of a generation realizing the power they had with atomic energy and coming to grips with just what it meant. You can see a shift in his stories at that point and especially with the later "Thunder and Roses", as with most science fiction writers, the future was now and it wasn't all rosy and they felt they had a duty to show that it could be good that the shining stuff they showed in their stories could come true. Sturgeon believed that because he believed in people and he loved everyone and nothing shows that better than his stories. Read them and you come to know the man. And he's worth knowing.
A once famous author slowly vanishing........1998-08-25
Stories by Sturgeon inspired movies, episodes of Star Trek, & even the New Twilight Zone. I'm not a Sturgeon fan, but I'm baffled by how an award winning author (indeed an author with an award named for him) who had links to the media is disappearing. Talking about the author is Very relevant since this & other such collections are about keeping his work in print. Anyway this a mixture of fantasy, SF, horror & Mainstream. The standouts are said to be the title peace (Killdozer! is mentioned a lot in MST 3K's early seasons) "Abreaction", "The Chromium Helmet", & "Mewhu's Jet". This collection gives you a good feel of this stage of Sturgeon's career. If you like Sturgeon or just have an interest in older science fiction & fantasy this is worth trying out
Book Description
Three novels complete in one volume.
Stardance: Shara Drummond was a gifted dancer and a brilliant choreographer, but could not pursue her dream of dancing on Earth, so she went to space, creating a new art form in three dimensions. And when the aliens arrived, there was only one way to prove that the human race deserved not just to survive, but to reach the stars. The only hope was Shara, with her stardance.
Starseed: Years later, another dancer of genius faced the end of her career when her body failed her, and Rain McLeod followed Shara into space. If she joined with a symbiotic lifeform that would let her live without artificial protection in the vacuum of space, she would take a quantum leap in human evolution.
Starmind: Rand Porter has been offered the job of a lifetime, as a shaper of visual effects and music for the world's most famous zero-gravity dance company in High Orbit. But his beloved novelist wife Rhea Paixao has her roots sunk deep in the Earth, in her beloved Cape Cod. And as they wrestle with their private dilemma, bizarre things-small miracles-are beginning to occur everywhere on Earth and throughout the entire Solar System. The human race-and its evolutionary successors, the space-dwelling Stardancers-find themselves approaching the terrifying cusp of their shared destiny, an appointment made for them a million years ago, a make-or-break point beyond which nothing, anywhere, can ever be the same again.
Customer Reviews:
"This is what it is to be human...........2007-01-08
This a master story teller plying his trade. First we have the story of a marvelous dancer and choreographer, Sharra Drummond. Trouble is, how many six foot tall stacked ballerinas do you know? So she ends up dancing in free space, where she can only stay for a short time before the calcium starts leaching from her bones. She is about to return to Earth when aliens show up. She dances for them a dance to tell them what it is to be hum that ends "this is what it is to be human - to PERSIST." And having overstayed her time in space she reenters the atmosphere and burns up. This is the way the original novella from Analog ends. Robinson extended it, and the ending is very different. It is a sustaining story, one that I have depended on again and again (I have multiple sclerosis.)
The heroine of the second novel of the trilogy, Rain Mcleod, is a very different sort of persistent. The third novel, Starmind, is an attempt to tell the ultimate fate of humanity and the universe. The trilogy is not hard science fiction, but it is literature, and mayhap great literature. It is a largely successful attempt to define what it is to be human.
Average customer rating:
- Star Mind - Star Bright
- One of my all-time favorites
- Essential Reading for Robinson Fans
- Interesting Story; Unfortunate Conclusion
- A worthy conclusion to an epic and insightful series.
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Starmind
Spider , and
Jeanne Robinson
Manufacturer: Baen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Similar Items:
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The Star Dancers
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Lifehouse
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Telempath
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Starseed
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Callahan's Lady
ASIN: 0671319892
Release Date: 2001-05-01 |
Customer Reviews:
Star Mind - Star Bright.......2006-01-25
Thanks Spider for taking the time to tell us you liked your book. LOL. I loved it. I got hooked on the "Star" trilogy while in the service. It took me away fromwhere I was - to a better place. I found each book more enjoyable than the last. I only wish that room could be found for a fourth or fifth book inbetween the other three (since star mind finishes the trilogy with out protest). "please sir I want some more". Read them ALL. and then go out and buy more Spider Robinson books cause someone who writes this good can only have others outthere worth reading. 'nuff said
One of my all-time favorites.......2005-08-02
I would not have reviewed this book if amazon's robot had not asked me to...but having been asked, I would have to say this is one of the best books I've ever had a hand in writing. Like THE STARDANCERS, its prequel (also co-written with my wife of 30 years, Jeanne), this book qualifies for my highest praise: better than I could have done myself.
Essential Reading for Robinson Fans.......2001-09-21
First things first: If you're just discovering Spider Robinson, or this particular trio of books... this ain't the place to start. BUY it now (lest it go out of print, as Spider's books have an inexplicable and depressing tendancy to do), but put it away until you've read _Stardance_ and _Starseed_.
There, now that's out of the way. On with the review.
This book, especially in the context of the series, is a consistently entertaining, rewarding exploration of the themes that dominate the Robinsons' best work. Little stuff, like (in no particular order): love, sex, creativity, art, transcendence, home, commitment, and so forth. It says something about their abilities as a writing team that all this is unfolded through living, breathing characters that you quickly come to care deeply about . . . and want to find happiness (even if it's not at all clear that they will). Likable, intelligent characters have always been Spider's greatest strength, and this story is no exception. Whether or not the plot "works" for you is almost beside the point. Even if it doesn't, the characters and the ways in which they grow and change make the book worth reading.
This is *not* a trilogy in the conventional SF sense. The three books form distinct segments of a long arc, but they have independent casts (for the most part) with their own strengths and weaknesses. It's one of the delights of _Starmind_ that Rhea is clearly *not* a (literary) clone of Rain M'Cloud or Sharra Drummond, and that Rand is *not* just another Charlie Armstead.
One final note: The Robinsons may live in British Columbia, but in the scenes set in Provincetown, MA this Bay State expatriate could hear the surf, smell the salt, and taste the Portuguese sweet bread again. Craftsmanship even in places where most people won't notice it is a glorious thing.
Interesting Story; Unfortunate Conclusion.......2000-11-22
This was not a bad book. Well-written, with intriguing new characters and a return to the ever-fascinating Stardancers, it made for pleasant reading and gave me a few new things to think about.
Unfortunately, I'm still almost sorry that I read it.
I have to admit that I think the Robinsons would have been better off ending the Stardancer saga with _Starseed_, a story that has all of the virtues of this one with few of the vices. What are those vices, you may wonder? It's difficult to clarify them without spoiling the book, since many are tied into the ending, but I'll do my best.
Very little time is spent on familiar characters. What time is spent is regrettable, given the ultimate fate of those we see again. Certain elements of the plot did not seem resolved by the ending. (Why did all the miracles of nanotechnology happen? I for one was left wondering.) That ending seemed rushed, almost unbelievable, anticlimactic--I have faith enough in the authors to believe that it wasn't really a 'rabbit out of the hat' resolution (the sort in which something is pulled out of thin air to solve the characters' problems almost by magic, and just in time for the last page too), but it seemed very similar to one. And one of the themes I found most fascinating about the prior two Stardancer novels, the theme of choice and the willful surrender of humanity, was abolished here by the forcing of the issue.
In short, _Starmind_ would have made a far, far better book in my opinion if the ending had been different--or at least handled differently. I would still recommend that fans of the prior two books read it if they are curious about the ultimate destiny of their favorite characters; I would not, however, suggest that anyone begin the trilogy with this one.
A worthy conclusion to an epic and insightful series........1997-04-18
The conclusion of the Stardance tril-- uh, series of three self-contained stories. The Zen material Spider and Jeanne explored in the first novel is so rich and mesmerizing that they can be forgiven for returning to it again and again. Starmind offers new insights about many different kinds of freedom -- intellectual, spiritual, physical and artistic. Spider and Jeanne also make a very good case against the world-is-going-to-hell pessimism of our ficton, arguing that real enlightenment, or at least a lightening-up, may be just around the corner. Still, as in Starseed, I was disappointed at how many of the previous plotlines seemed recycled from the original story without further exploration. Go buy it anyway -- reading anything Spider produces is like a NordicTrak for the imagination
Average customer rating:
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Starmind
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000AUKZ28 |
Product Description
What ships can be launched on the far seas of the mind? Benjy Tyler: idiot mind in a beautiful body. Jailyn Rost: very much female, very rich, and very clever. Joe Winslow: multi-wave expert - caretaker and attendant on Asteroid 770. Whether they knew it on not, these three were linked - and in a way no humans had ever been before them. Only time would tell whether the link destroyed them...
Average customer rating:
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Starmind
Dave Van Arnam
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000S9IFC8 |
Average customer rating:
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Starmind
Dave Van Arnam
Manufacturer: Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000AV2R0K |
Book Description
From the best-selling author of Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain and The Foods and Wines of Spain.Unless they have traveled to spain, most Americans have never tasted a really good paella. What passes for paella at restaurants and even in cookbooks here is a pale imitation of the real thing, the vibrant Spanish rice dish that marries the robust flavors of olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, and pepper with short-grain rice, broth, and meat, fish, or vegetables. Penelope Casas is here to restore the glorious paella to its rightful place as a grain-based meal that will gratify the senses as well as be the centerpiece for easy, elegant entertaining.Casas presents sixty different fascinating paellas, some traditional, some her own creation, showing how easily some of the preparation can be done ahead of time with supermarket ingredients. She includes a superior collection of tapas, the Spanish meal starters, two dozen simple desserts, and a handful of broths and sauces. Her passion for paella, her clear directions, and her creative pairings of fresh ingredients make this unusual cookbook a winner.
Customer Reviews:
Authentic Spanish Recipes!!!.......2006-04-17
I am originally from Spain, and when I came to the US with my family and mom's recipes, it was really hard to convert all the measurements from the metric to the american system. So, when I found this book, I bought it....it is GREAT!! All the paella recipes that I have tried make me feel at home again. The recipes are easy to follow and really clear. My next buy will be her book about tapas. Since I am from the north of Spain, I will let you know what I thin about those recipes, but I am expecting a great book as well.
Broad, Informative Survey of Paella. Buy it if you like Rice.......2005-04-29
`Delicioso!' and `Paella!' are leading Spanish cuisine writer Penelope Casas' latest books, following her similar pair, `Tapas' and `The Food and Wine of Spain'. In many ways, the later books are more similar to one another than they are to the earlier books. Both concentrate on regional cuisines. While the paella is certainly made throughout Spain, the dish originated in Valencia with many other rice dishes, described in `Delicioso!' as the `Region of the Rices'.
The first thing which strikes me about the dish, paella, is that unlike its close Mediterranean neighbor, bouillabaisse, and in spite of some Valencian purists orthodoxy, paella can be just about anything under the sun which will fit into a paella pan and contain rice, olive oil, and garlic. In fact, even the requirement that the dish contain rice is stretched to the braking point when some recipes even replace rice with pasta. Thus, paella has much more in common with pizza than it does with bouillabaisse.
As Ms. Casas writes recipes as a culinary archeologist by visiting lots of Spanish restaurants and homes to sample their dishes, I am not surprised at her claim that even after finishing this 220 page book on a single dish, she feels she has just touched the surface of the paella varieties. Well, not exactly, as I find enough similarity between recipes to sense that there is really not a lot of variation in the basic technique, just in the additions to the rice, oil, saffron, and garlic.
The book divides paellas into four great families. The first and best known are the seafood paellas which join the rice of Valencia with the seafood of the Mediterranean. These dishes are just about every combination you can imagine of scallops, shrimp, clams, mussels, lobster, crab, squid, monkfish, salmon, and cod with mushrooms, pepper, egg, peas, and other vegetables. I suspect that the most important ingredient in all these dishes is the fish stock. Ms. Casas includes a chapter on stocks and other pantry recipes. Like most other journalistic culinary writers, and unlike most writers who are professional chefs such as Jasper White and James Peterson, her stock recipes are pretty simple. This is probably a good thing unless you are cooking for a serious gourmet. For restaurant cooking, her stock recipes are much too extravagant, as they make no use of material that has no value for any other purpose such as fish heads and bones. The other side of the coin is that for the amateur, their only weakness is cost, which means that someone is much more likely to try their hand at making them, since they are really very easy. And, they will almost certainly be an improvement over supermarket stocks, especially for fish stocks. I happily use newer chicken stocks from the supermarket, but avoid fish stocks and clam juice. The trick is to find a fishmonger who will save fish heads for you. See Jasper White's '50 Chowders' for a super fish stock.
The second great paella family replaces fish with meat, poultry, and game. The most common ingredients are chicken, pork, sausage, rabbit, duck, quail, and lamb. A remarkably large number of these recipes call for marinated meats, which, according to `Delicioso!' seems to be a common technique throughout Spain. The book brings up an odd fact about Spanish history and it's love of pork. When the Moors were expelled from Spain, the Jews where shown the door at the same time as the Jews and the Moors shared a prohibition against eating pork. A result of this passion for pork is the great Spanish hams, Serrano and jamon. Unfortunately, the more flavorful of the two, the jamon, is not available in the United States. Fortunately, it is very similar to procuitto de Parma, so there is a very acceptable substitute for these Spanish recipes. One surprise in this chapter is that the classic Valencia Paella recipe is made from chicken and rabbit rather than from seafood.
The third great paella family is those dishes that combine protein from land and sea and air. While there are dozens of recipes in the first two chapters, this chapter has but three.
The fourth land of paella is for the vegetarians, where flesh protein is replaced primarily by cheese, nuts, and beans, with anchovies thrown in for some fishy flavor. What surprises me is that there are no seaweed paellas in this chapter, as seaweed does appear as an ingredient in seafood paellas.
It is no surprise whatsoever that Casas makes a strong case for using a short grained Spanish rice for paellas. It is easy to understand this, as one step in paella making is very similar to the Italian risotto technique, and, fortunately, risotto rice such as arborio or carnaroli will stand in very nicely for Spanish rice.
One puzzling statement Casas repeats in virtually every recipe is the claim that paellas cook a lot differently in gas and electric ovens. The difference is so great that for the latter heating source, she adds five to ten degrees to oven temperature and five to ten minutes to cooking times. While I am certain Ms. Casas knows what she is talking about, I have to suspect she may be speaking of experiences with Spanish ovens and not the modern American Maytag. But, I will consider us warned and suggest you develop a good sense of doneness and use your eyes and nose rather than your timer to evaluate your paellas.
While the book ends with a very nice chapter on Spanish desserts, I would not make that a consideration in whether or not one should buy this book. If you are a vegetarian, serious rice head, or in love with Spanish cuisine, get this book. Also, I would strongly recommend this to any general foodie / cookbook collector over any works by any other writer on Spanish cooking.
Ms. Casas' oven technique yields poor paella!.......2005-02-17
Although there are many varieties of paella with regional ingredients there is one indispensable ingredient; short grain Spanish rice. The best part of paella is without any question the "socarrat" which is the toasty caramelized layer of rice which sticks to the bottom of the paella pan when the dish is properly prepared on top of the stove or better yet, the grill. One can not make proper paella in an oven, convection or otherwise. The rice will be a soupy mess or dried out but never yield the desireable crunchy "socarrat".
"Paella Paella" is a far superior book although a great recipe for learning the technique of paella preparation can be found at the Fine Cooking magazine website. After you make that once then you may use whatever ingredients you wish to combine to make fantastic paella. Be creative.
Is it worth the trouble to find the proper pan, Spanish rice, saffron and olive oil? Absolutely! "Socarrat" Rules!
This is not an authentic colection of recipes.......2004-08-24
As a professional my self I do not advice to buy this book, the reason is simple: People who are involved in mixed paellas (meats & seafood) do not understand the true soul of this dish. Ask anyone in Valencia what he thinks about mixing shrimp with meats, Its a herecy! I recomend you buy the book "100 Paellas & 1 Fidehuá, this is the closest you will be to the real thing but is in Spanish only. THE MIXED PAELLA WAS CREATED DURING THE TURIST BOOM OF THE MID XX CENTURY IN SPAIN AND IS A PRODUCT FOR IGNORANT TURISTS, no Paella made by a Valencian or any old school coock will have both seafood and meats. GUILLERMO OLAIZ III
Ole`.......2003-08-20
What a sumptous, mouth-watering book!! I have been on an endless search for the perfect Paella for years. Several places have come close but none were as good as some made from the recipes in this book. Half the fun of eating Paella is in the making of it....what ingredients to use, how to cook them, mixing all the various components, selecting the proper wine (a white sangria is perfection itself).
The accompanying information is almost as good as the recipes themselves. And the best feature of these recipes is that none is out of the range of the better-than-average cook. No tedious or long steps, no stuffing of chicken legs or boning of tiny quail - just grilling, cutting, and cooking. I prefer a Grilled Paella - or at least grilling the individual components. One must remember at all times though - Paella is, above all else, a RICE dish. That is the essence of a good Paella, the semi-crunchy red, saffron enfused grain.
To those who had trouble with the temperature or cooking time I would suggest adjusting their time/temp for their own applicances. I have both a convection oven and microwave and know that most times are reduced by a third.
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- Sun Inventions and Perfumes of Carthage: Two Novellas (Jewish Latin America)
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