I adored Shauna James Ahern’s first book, The Gluten-Free Girl. Before I read that book, I’d been hearing about celiac disease, which renders the body intolerant to gluten, but knew little about it, or certainly about how the disease could be controlled with a change in eating habits.  It was a great read, chronicling Shauna’s lifelong battle with “never feeling good”, her eventual diagnosis, and the changes which she made in the way cooks and eats, and I quickly read it from cover to cover.  The book culminated with a tender love story, a perfect ending. 

Paula Wolfert is the undisputed “queen of Mediterranean cooking”.  She is one of America’s premier food writers, and has been a role model of mine since I cooked from her first book, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, originally published in 1973, and inducted into the Cookbook Hall of Fame by the James Beard Association in 2008. Over the ensuing years Paula has written for some of America’s most prestigious publications, and has published other cookbooks, including the critically acclaimed The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen and The Cooking of Southwest France.  Paula has won just about every award that could be bestowed on a food writer in this country. 

If you’re as much of an oyster lover as I am, then this book will make you tremble all over.  When I began to thumb through the pages, of P&J Oyster Cookbook, The,  savoring the stunning, full-page photos of many classic oyster dishes and even more enticing new ones, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some oysters and start cooking!