Cookbook Review - Cooking With Asterix

I grew up liking the cartoons of Goscinny and Uderzo about the adventures of a tiny band of Gauls, the heroes are called Asterix and Obelix, who successfully defended themselves against the advances of Julius Caesar of Rome, with the help of a magic potion that gave them unusual strength; if you haven't heard of them, and want a great laugh, check them out.

One of the many tie-in products for the 33 cartoon books, and several movies, is the 1991 cookbook Cooking With Asterix. There are four main sections, Snacks and Starters, Main Courses, Sweets and Beverages, each of them contain recipes that feature a character or characters from the series, like Unhygeniex' Crispy Sardine Sandwiches (the Village fishmonger); Impedimenta's Chicken Drumsticks (the wife of the Chief of the Village); Dogmatix Hot Dogs (Asterix and Obelix' pet guard dog); Pirate's Dark Chocolate Mousse (who recurringly lost ships to the pair); Cleopatra's Exotic Gateau (Asterix and Obelix went on many adventures around the world, one of them they visited Cleopatra). All of the recipes are easy to make with easy to find ingredients, though they use the European measurement of a 'glass' (which equals 200 mL).

A plethora of Cookbooks

One of the weekends I didn't go and visit my family, I stayed in order to go to Word on the Street in downtown Toronto, at Queen's Park. This yearly event in September, hosted in several cities across Canada, brings together Publishers, both small and large of books and magazines, authors, potential authors, readers and just plain fans of the written word. One of the things that goes on at that time, is the publishers and bookstores usually bring down a lot of books, on sale for low prices, sometimes ridiculously low prices. That's what I like to check out mostly, and this year, indulging the foodie in me, I picked up several interesting cookbooks. The Cordon Bleu one was four dollars, the Nigella Lawson one was half-price, even at hard-cover, the others looked intriguing. I never realized that these books were heavy though, I did manage to lug them home without too much strain on my muscles.