At the age of eleven, the daughter of a Sicilian sharecropper, Maria Grammatico, entered the San Carlo Institute in the mountaintop town of Erice, an orphanage run by nuns who were famous throughout Sicily for their almond pastries, but who were less adept at dealing with young girls. After ten years of hard work and harsh discipline, Maria emerged with the secrets of the nuns’ pastries hidden inside her head. This is the story of her carefree country childhood—her Dickensian life in the orphanage with no heat, no running water, and only wood-burning ovens—and her triumphs as an entrepreneur and a world-famous pastry chef. Bitter Almonds includes 46 of the recipes that she ‘stole’ from the nuns, committed to writing for the first time in these pages.

The Landlady is a brilliant gem of a short story from Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail. In The Landlady, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a sinister story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a young man in need of room meets a most accommodating landlady . . . The Landlady is taken from the short story collection Kiss Kiss, which includes ten other devious and shocking stories, featuring the wife who pawns the mink coat from her lover with unexpected results; the priceless piece of furniture that is the subject of a deceitful bargain; a wronged woman taking revenge on her dead husband, and others. 'Unnerving bedtime stories, subtle, proficient, hair-raising and done to a turn.' (San Francisco Chronicle ) This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Tamsin Greig. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

Health Benefits of Almonds Table of Contents Getting Started Chapter # 1: Intro Chapter # 2: Nutritional Worth Chapter # 3: Selection & Storage Health Benefits Chapter # 1: Lowering Cholesterol Chapter # 2: Defense against Diabetes & Cardiovascular disease Chapter # 3: Improves Blood Fats Levels Chapter # 4: Weight Loss Chapter # 5: Normalizes Eating Habits Chapter # 6: Live Longer Recipes Chapter # 1: Candied Almonds Chapter # 2: Sugar Spiced Almonds Chapter # 3: Garlic & Rosemary Roasted Almonds Conclusion References Getting Started Chapter # 1: Intro Uniquely delicious, almonds have been known to man as the epitome of health & well being for centuries. Their health benefits have been documented with the passage of time and are now being tested in the light of modern scientific researches; looking at the results of these researches, there is a good reason why you should consider reading the rest of the book! A stalwart nut in cakes, puddings and other sweat dishes, almonds have been on almost every household’s shopping list. With respect to freshness, they are always preferred to hazelnuts & walnuts and their slow rate of rancidity makes them a food item that can easily tolerate the back of a storage cupboard. Their neutral, nutty and crunchy taste upon baking makes them irresistibly delicious and in no time can you nibble your way through every almond in front of you. But what are the origins of this super-delicious and nutritious food? Almond is actually a species of trees, belonging to the genus Prunus, which are indigenous to the South & Middle East region of Asia. The almond plant is widely cultivated for its edible seed, also known as almond. The almond tree is a deciduous one and grows 4-10 m in height; it has a trunk of diameter 30 cm. The twigs when young are of green color but become purplish as soon as they are exposed to sunlight. In the second year the twigs become grey and the leaves grow 3-5 inches long. The flowers are characterized by white to pinkish color, 3-5 cm diameter and usually consist of 5 petals. The fruit matures in the autumn, about 8 months after flowering but still for an economic bearing, one more year is required. The fruit is about 4-6 cm long and in specific terms is not exactly a nut, but rather a drupe. A drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell containing a seed but instead of being fleshy the outer part of the fruit is thick and leathery in texture. Inside this hull is a hard, woody shell which packs the edible seed known to many as almond. The seed acquired from the woody shell is covered by a thin brownish skin, which when pealed reveals the inner color of almond; i.e. off white. Almonds can further be categorized into two types: i. Sweet Almonds ii. Bitter Almonds

Local Invariant Features Detectors is an overview of invariant interest point detectors, how they evolved over time, how they work, and what their respective strengths and weaknesses are.

Widely hailed as one of the most influential cookbooks of all time, this is the timeless classic guide to culinary creativity and flavor exploration, based on the wisdom of the world's most innovative chefs Eight years in the making, The Flavor Bible is a landmark book that has inspired the greatest creations of innovative cooks and chefs by serving as an indispensable guide to creativity and flavor affinities in today's kitchen. Cuisine is undergoing a startling historic transformation: With the advent of the global availability of ingredients, dishes are no longer based on geography but on flavor. This radical shift calls for a new approach to cooking -- as well as a new genre of "cookbook" that serves not to document classic dishes via recipes, but to inspire the creation of new ones based on imaginative and harmonious flavor combinations. The Flavor Bible is your guide to hundreds of ingredients along with the herbs, spices, and other seasonings that will allow you to coax the greatest possible flavor and pleasure from them. This astonishing reference distills the combined experience of dozens of America's most innovative culinarians, representing such celebrated and transformative restaurants as A Voce, Blue Hill, Café Atlántico, Chanterelle, Citronelle, Gramercy Tavern, the Herbfarm, Jardinière, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin, the Modern, and the Trellis. You'll learn to: explore the roles played by the four basic tastes -- salty, sour, bitter, and sweet -- and how to bring them into harmony; work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients by discovering which flavors have the strongest affinities for one another; brighten flavors through the use of acids -- from vinegars to citrus juices to herbs and spices such as Makrut lime and sumac; deepen or intensify flavors through layering specific ingredients and techniques; and balance the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of cooking and serving an extraordinary meal. Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from the country's most respected chefs and pastry chefs, The Flavor Bible is an essential book for every kitchen library. For more inspiration in the kitchen, look for The Vegetarian Flavor Bible andKitchen Creativity.

Since publication of the first edition in 1971, Fenaroli's Handbook of Flavor Ingredients has remained the standard reference for flavor ingredients throughout the world. Each subsequent edition has listed more flavor ingredients and allied substances, including those conferred food additive status, substances generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by

What happened when one of today's best-loved food writers had a change of appetite? Here are the dishes that Diana Henry created when she started to crave a different kind of diet - less meat and heavy food, more vegetable-, fish-, and grain-based dishes - often inspired by the food of the Middle East and Far East, but also drawing on cuisines from Georgia to Scandinavia. In her year of good eating, Diana lost weight, but this was about much more than weight loss - lead by taste, it was about discovering a healthier, fresher way of eating. From a Cambodian salad of shrimps, grapefruit, toasted coconut, and mint or North African mackerel with cumin to blood orange and cardamom sorbet, the magical dishes in this book are bursting with flavor, with goodness and with color. Peppering the recipes is Diana's inimitable writing on everything from the miracle of broth to the great carbohydrate debate. Above all, this is about opening up our palates to new possibilities. There is no austerity here, simply fabulous food that nourishes body and soul.