Vancouver Entertains: A Menu Cookbook for Entertaining Recipes and Histories of Vancouver's Ethnic Communities

Greg Turko is a policy analyst at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

The University of British Columbia Faculty Women’s Club has produced a ‘menu cookbook,’ which provides a complete selected menu and recipes for 17 ethnic groups in Vancouver. (The count is somewhat arbitrary as only one section is given to the Spanish and Portuguese. Canadians are also given a section.)

The editors have taken care to balance the challenge of trying a new cooking style with the realities of the availability of ingredients. This means that a dish is not made Italian simply by adding tomatoes or Hawaiian by virtue of adding pineapple slices. However, neither is it necessary to attend the Madrid farmer’s market (if, indeed, there is one) to obtain the required items for a successful dish. In short, this is a book of interest to those who must depend on regular grocery stores.

In keeping with the current trend of making cookbooks more than just recipe books, each section also contains a short social history on each ethnic group in Vancouver along with notes on the cuisine of that group.

This is an interesting and well-arranged cookbook of particular usefulness to those seeking a relatively safe, but reasonably authentic, ethnic cooking adventure.