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Cruising Cuisine: For Home Entertaining is an excellent source for dinner parties and get togethers!!
Cruising Cuisine For Home Entertaining
By Elena Vakhrenova
Publisher: Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining, Inc.
Published: May 2003
Pages: 140
ISBN: 0972242201
Elena Vakhrenova is living out her dream. She is now published with an up and coming best seller under her wings. Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining is not just another recipe book, it is a book for entertaining your guests and providing them with wonderful dishes. All of the dishes contain short little introductions so you can imagine where in the world you might be sailing to encounter such a delicious dish.
The book is divided into three sections: Contemporary, Premium and Luxury. Each recipe features full color photos of the completed dish and some of the ingredients. The recipes contain step by step instructions that anyone can follow, along with tips to make the dish more exciting.
The Contemporary section contains dishes and recipes that you might taste while on Carnival Cruise Line or Norwegian Cruise Line. As Elena describes in this section, "the style is more casual, the mood is more fun." Some of the excellent dishes in this section include: Garlic & Shrimp Appetizer, Stuffed Champignon Caps, Creamy Guacamole (one of my favorites, this dish is superb), Zucchini, Tomato & Basil Canapés, along with many other recipes.
The Premium section contains dishes and recipes that you might find on Holland America and Princess Cruises. In this category of ships / dishes the features are "elegant ships, wonderful entertainment, world-wide itineraries and, of course, some of the best food at sea" as Elena has written. These dishes require a little more time in preparation but will be well worth it in the presentation of the dish. Some of the dishes in the Premium category include: Fillo Shells with Smoked Salmon & Lemon Dill Cream, Shrimp Stuffed Tomatoes, Salmon Wellington, Mediterranean Shrimp Cocktail (another wonderful dish I have prepared myself), Tomato, Mozzarella & Basil Skewers, and many other premium classed recipes.
The luxury Yachts of Seabourn or the Italian-built ships of Silversea are the settings for the Luxury dishes in this wonderful book. As Elena tells in this category, "You'll find your traveling companions worldly and sophisticated. They are accustomed to the best." The dishes listed in this section are definitely some of the best. These include: Avocado, Shrimp & Arugula Appetizer, French Crepes, Butterfly Shrimp in Herb Pesto, Seafood Martini, Smoked Salmon with Caper Cream and Caviar, and other top of the line dishes.
Elena's book, "Cruising Cuisine" also offers cooking tips, a glossary, recommended travel agencies, mail order sources and discount coupons on future cruises with Carnival, Star Clippers and Cunard. She has left nothing out in this tastefully created book. Whether you are hosting a small sit down dinner or a wedding ceremony, the dishes found in this creation will surprise your guests and leave them wondering what culinary school you attended.
About the Author
Prior to writing her first book, Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining in 2003, chef and freelance food writer Elena Vakhrenova traveled the oceans and rivers of the world aboard passenger ships serving some of the most demanding clientele on land or sea. Based on her shipboard experiences over an eight-year period, she came to believe that the more people travel, the more they enjoy entertaining at home. According to the author, "They try to recreate what they have tasted abroad when they get home."
Elena's father, a cruise ship chef, used to take his young family on several "working" trips each year. Hardly tall enough to see the ovens, Elena learned how to cook Russian blini at her father's side at an age when most young girls learn how to dress their dolls. As she grew, she collected numerous experiences aboard her father's ships, several hotels and, eventually, as a chef at his five-star restaurant in her native Odessa, Ukraine.
At age 22, and speaking only Russian, she boarded her first ship as a captain's stewardess aboard a 600-passenger vessel that carried American guests to Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East. Later, after developing language abilities in English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch, she accepted the opportunity to cruise European rivers as assistant hotel manager and cruise director aboard upscale river ships that emulated the high food-service standards she learned to admire on cruise liners. She came ashore to immigrate to the United States in 2001.
Having hosted several dinner parties in her new homeland, Elena found admiring neighbors and friends commenting on her imaginative recipes and dramatic presentations and asking if she would consider the idea of offering cooking classes in her home. After several sold-out classes, foot surgery was the unlikely catalyst that inspired the creation of Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining. Nurtured by the time required to recover from the surgery, Elena began work on her first cookbook.
In addition to writing the recipes and creating the stories that add meaning to each recipe, Elena also photographed the completed dishes and their ingredients in a style that noted international photographer Larry Fink describes as a "wonderfully playful sense of composition . . .[with] . . . a certain sensual immediacy which I suggest is radical in food photography. She is unbelievably ambitious and gifted."
Elena is already at work researching two new cookbooks and giving cooking classes in South Florida. She and her husband, David Gevanthor, reside in Plantation, Florida.
Staff
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