Review & Giveaway: Gourmet on a Hot Plate by Judy Alter

GOURMET ON A HOT PLATE

by

Judy Alter

Genre: Cookbook / Cooking Tips / Tiny Kitchen
Publisher: Alter Ego Press
Date of Publication: November 6, 2018

Number of Pages: 132

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Gourmet on a Hot Plate is a collection of recipes and kitchen tips compiled after living for some time in a 600-square-foot cottage, with a tiny kitchen, no stove, no dishwasher, and barely any counter space. Given these limitations, Judy Alter developed a new approach to food, one that let her get in touch with the food itself. She does not have an Insta-Pot, an air-fryer, or a microwave. Her recipes call for using either a magnetic induction hot plate or a toaster oven. In the introduction, she explains her choices for making the best use of her tiny space. 

The collection begins with appetizers because that’s where Alter began her new cooking adventure. Gradually she branched out to main dishes, light suppers, soups and salads, and vegetable side dishes. Most recipes serve two or three. There’s a suggested list of cooking tools along with lists of what to keep on hand in your tiny pantry, your refrigerator, and your freezer, and a small section on condiments and cooking hints.

These pages will guide you to making your own spaghetti sauce—or brightening up a jar of prepared sauce—to making last-minute casseroles and simmer-all-day soups. Want Stroganoff but can’t afford the expensive beef? Alter shows you how to make it with hamburger. Love tuna? She’s got recipes for you. Sections on pasta, eggs, and appetizer trays offer practical and helpful choices for casual entertaining.

Above all, this is a practical guide for cooking with joy when you find yourself in a tiny space.

PRAISE FOR GOURMET ON A HOT PLATE:

Love cooking? Love the minimalist lifestyle? Your tiny kitchen doesn’t need to limit your gourmet dreams. Judy Alter’s Gourmet On a Hot Plate will inspire you with big ideas to satisfy everyone around the table. — Susan Wittig Albert, author of Queen Anne’s Lace

Whether you cook on a hot plate or have access to a full kitchen, this gem of a cookbook contains great recipes for those of us who cook for one. – T.R. Thompson

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I’m the type of person who watches pretty much every cooking video that shows up on my Facebook feed. Have you noticed that most of those meals are cooked on hotplates instead of a traditional cooking range? I have a feeling that Alter has been working on this cookbook long before hotplate cooking became all the rage. Why? Because her recipes are down-home cooking dishes, not the latest street food infused with some random essence you’ve never eaten before prepared with a gastronomical twist. And if you know that going in, you won’t be disappointed with this recipe book. I don’t know if the author used the word “gourmet” in the title with tongue in cheek, but I can say that you can bring any of these dishes to a potluck and not be ashamed.

As someone who learned to cook by my mother’s side, I appreciate cookbooks that give exact measurements and exact cooking times. Sure, I know how to use my senses when cooking, but I like my first experience with a new recipe to be scientific. If you’re a cooking noob, I definitely recommend familiarizing yourself with basic kitchen skills before cracking this book open. Heck, watch a YouTube video or two on how to pre-heat cooking surfaces, how to sear properly, etc. Trust me. Alter talks to you as someone who is already familiar with the kitchen.

My favorite parts in this cookbook are where she writes a few paragraphs about a particular dish she likes to prepare and all the different variations that are possible. I like hearing the backstory of where that recipe came from and her little tidbits of advice that stem from hits or misses that occurred when cooking that dish for her friends or family. To be honest, I wish she wrote the whole cookbook in this manner. I have read several cookbooks in that format and they are among my favorite. But having read the introduction and note to reader in the beginning, I understand her decision. Gorgeous pictures of food in a book means the readers pay more at the cash register.

If you think the appetizer section is just a bunch of cheese dishes, I wouldn’t argue with you, but I urge you to press on. Alter’s main dishes start cozy and familiar, and later transition gently to more exotic fare. I like the confident and easy way she instructs the reader on how to prepare pasta dishes, because that’s how they should be approached. That’s how cooking should be approached. As someone who doesn’t eat salad often, that section was an interesting read and I look forward to trying out some recipes.

My other favorite section in the book is her “Staples – Stocking the Tiny Kitchen” page. Alter has a short list of what you should keep in the fridge, in the cupboard, and in the freezer. I think that for the beginner cook or the cook who has found themselves in a smaller than usual kitchen, her suggestions are fantastic. This little book will have a place among my glossy cookbooks, but I think I will spend more time online: http://www.gourmetonahotplate.blogspot.com.

Without formal culinary training, Judy Alter has cooked her way through life, feeding family and friends at everything from casual dinners al fresco to elaborate meals for twenty. An award-winning author and publisher, she jokes she’ll come back in another life as a chef.

 

Today Alter finds herself cooking in a four-by-six kitchen where zoning laws forbid built-ins but allow anything that plugs in. So she cooks with a hot plate, toaster oven, and a large refrigerator/freezer. Given these limitations, she has developed a new approach to food, one that she says lets her get in touch with the food itself. By choice, she does not have an Insta-Pot, an air-fryer, a microwave. Her menu choices are dictated by her cooking facilities—and she loves it.

 

She shares her tiny kitchen tips and recipes, developed over the past couple of years, in Gourmet on a Hot Plate. Alter is the author of three previous cookbooks: Cooking My Way through Life with Kids and Books, Texas is Chili Country, and Extraordinary Texas Chefs,and a contributor to Bake, Love, Write and We’d Rather Be Writing. Her recipe for Doris’ Casserole has been included in so many books it’s almost an American classic by now.

 

Be part of her ongoing cooking adventure at the Gourmet on a Hot Plate blog, where she encourages discussion and welcomes recipes, comments, and questions.

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Review & Giveaway: The Rainwater Secret by Monica Shaw

THE RAINWATER SECRET

by

Monica Shaw

Genre: Historical Fiction / Medical Missionaries
Publisher: Self-Published
Date of Publication: March 31, 2017

Number of Pages: 354

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The Rainwater Secret is a deeply moving, historical fiction novel about a woman who travels

to Africa to teach the leper children who were banished from their villages. Single and feeling there is nothing left for her in small-town England, Anna embarks on an adventure as a volunteer teacher with the Medical Missionaries of Mary. Life as Anna has known it is forever changed as she learns the culture that would banish its sick, disfigured, and crippled to the bush. Babies are left to die on roadsides, children are chased away to live by whatever means they can find. The aged are abandoned.

Anna’s daily life is an adventure as she travels from one village to another across a hostile land with few passable roads, rickety bridges threatening to fall apart and casting occupants on the jagged rocks far below, and weather that turns a calm river into a roiling death trap. In spite of the trials, Anna also manages to find love and family in this godforsaken land.

Follow this adventure through disease, weather, strife, death, and determination to turn a few acres of land into a loving home for the outcast lepers of Nigeria.

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While I can see this book appealing to the Eat, Pray, Love set, The Rainwater Secret spoke to me on a deeper, maybe even primal level. That might seem strange since the main character, Anna, journeys to the wilds of Africa with Catholic missionaries, and I should probably be affected on some spiritual level. But to be honest, the theme of survival that runs throughout the novel didn’t bring up many Biblical allusions to me. Although now that I write that broad statement, I can think of some stories in the Bible that could parallel with the trials faced by the Medical Missionaries of Mary and the people in the leprosy settlement in general.

 

But as I was immersed in the story, those connections were not established. That could actually be good news for readers who avoid Christian books. This book does not force religion or the author’s beliefs on you. It actually shows that even the most pious person can be flawed and that humanity stems from being human, not necessarily one’s faith.

 

I felt a fierce protectiveness over Anna, a woman of almost thirty who seemed to do everything right but received the short end of the stick. I loved that she never pitied herself or her situation – although I wonder if that could partially be due to her best friend’s disability as a byproduct of warfare. And as war had ruined much of her future prospects, I couldn’t help but admire her drive to run to a place on the verge of its own civil war.

 

Some might look at Anna’s actions and think she was just outrunning heartbreak or perhaps that she was just some privileged white woman who wanted to help the poor in order to feel better about herself, but really think about the time period and where she is going. No one with an ounce of selfishness would volunteer to work among lepers in Africa. These people are the untouchables, literally. The disease is so feared that villages cast out even infants in an attempt to stop the spread. But even before she sets her eyes on the horrific living conditions of the outcasts, Anna could have gone back home when she realized just halfway to her destination how harsh the environment was and how dangerous it was to be a white woman in the bush.

 

Shaw writes in such a way that I forgot this was fiction. I could feel the grit in my mouth as the characters ate food during dry, windy days and grimaced as the nurses injected the patches of leprosy patients with dull needles. When I found out that Shaw based this novel on the life of her aunt and her own personal research, I was not surprised. She writes with an intimacy that goes beyond dreaming up a character and a story, and makes the reader emotionally invested. When I reached the end, I was satisfied but I would have loved to live those 20 years in Africa with Anna. Without the usual gloss of romanticizing the great unknown or softening the blow of loss and destruction, Shaw gives us an honest portrayal of missionary work in the 1940s.

 

 

Monica Shaw is a native of Dallas, Texas where she has been a successful entrepreneur. She attended St. Thomas Aquinas, graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, and earned her Geology / Petroleum Engineering degree from UT Austin. Her debut novel, The Rainwater Secret, started off as a personal research project looking into the life of her great aunt who became a missionary teacher. Monica is married with 3 children.

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