Editorial Review

Purée in a food processor or with an immersion blender:
2 cups (660g) butternut squash, peeled, cubed, and roasted (about 1 mediumsquash)
2 cups (470g) chicken, turkey, or vegetable stock
1 small (130g) yellow onion, diced and sautéed
1/2 teaspoon (1g) salt (adjust to taste)

Notes

• The weights are for the prepared ingredients and only rough suggestions. So, prepare each item individually. For example, for the squash, peel it, then coat it with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt, and roast it in the oven at a temperature around 400–425 F / 200–220 C until it begins to brown. When you go to purée the ingredients, hold back some of the squash and some of the stock, taste the purée, and see which you think it needs. Want it thicker? Add more squash.Thinner? Add more stock.
• This soup by itself is very basic. Garnish with whatever else you have on hand that you think might go well, such as garlic croutons and bacon. Or top with a small dab of cream, some toasted walnuts, and dried cranberries to give it a feeling of Thanksgiving. How about a teaspoon of maple syrup, a few thin slices of beef, and some fresh oregano? Chives, sour cream, and cheddar cheese? Why not! Instead of purchasing items to follow a recipe exactly, try using leftover ingredients from other meals to complement the squash soup.
• If you’re in a rush, you can “jump-start” the squash by microwaving it first. Peel and quarter the squash, using a spoon to scoop out the seeds. Then, cube it into 1–2” / 3–5 cm pieces, drop it into a glass baking pan that’s both oven and microwave safe, and nuke it for four to five minutes to partially heat the mass. Remove from microwave, coat the squash with olive oil and a light sprinkling of salt, and roast it in a preheated oven until done, about 20 to 30 minutes. If you’re not in a rush, you can skip the peeling step entirely: cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, add oil and salt, roast it for about an hour (until the flesh is soft), and use a spoon to scoop it out.

There are two broad types of cake batters: high- ratio cakes--those that have more sugar and water than flour (or by some definitions, just a lot of sugar)--and low-ratio cakes—which tend to have coarser crumbs. For high-ratio cakes, there should be more sugar than flour (by weight) and more eggs than fats (again, by weight), and the liquid mass (eggs, milk, water) should be heavier than the sugar.

Consider this pumpkin cake, which is a high-ratio cake (245g of pumpkin contains 220g of water--you can look these sorts of things up in the USDA National Nutrient Database, available online at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/).

In a mixing bowl, measure out and then mix with an electric mixer to thoroughly combine:
1 cup (245g) pumpkin (canned, or roast and puree your own)
1 cup (200g) sugar
3/4 cup (160g) canola oil
2 large (120g) eggs
1 1/2 cups (180g) flour
1/4 cup (40g) raisins
2 teaspoons (5g) cinnamon
1 teaspoon (5g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (5g) baking soda
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt
1/2 teaspoon (2g) vanilla extract

Transfer to a greased cake pan or spring form and bake in an oven preheated to 350 F / 175 C until a toothpick comes out dry, about 20 minutes.

Notes

• Try adding dried pears soaked in brandy. You can also hold back some of the raisins and sprinkle them on top.
• One nice thing about high-ratio cakes is that they don’t have much gluten, so they won’t turn out like bread, even with excessive beating. With a total weight of 920 grams, of which only roughly 20 grams is gluten, there just isn’t enough gluten present in this cake to give it a bread-like texture. There’s also a fair amount of both sugar and fats to interfere with gluten development.
... Read more

Reviews

Explains the scientific how and why of cooking, September 9, 2010


You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though "Cooking for Geeks" contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others.

The author is a geek himself and brings "geek-like" approaches to the subject matter - deep intellectual curiosity, affinity for details, appreciation of problem solving and hacking, scientific method, and a love of technology. What is even better is his filtering of cooking concepts by a computer coder's framework, analogizing recipes to executable code, viewing of ingredients as inputs and as variables, running processes over and over in a logical manner to test and improve outcomes. This is not a mere literary shoe-horning of cooking concepts into a coder's framework but an ingenuous approach to the topics that should loudly resonate with geeks.

The subject matter includes selecting and using kitchen and cooking hardware; prepping inventory; calibrating equipment (especially your oven, using sugar); understanding tastes and smells; the fundamental difference between cooking and baking (and the personality types which gravitate to one form or the other); the importance of gluten and the three major types of leavening (biological, chemical, and mechanical); the types of cooking; using time and temperatures; how to use air as a tool; the chemistry of food combinations; and very thorough and detailed discussions of food handling and safety. The book is organized into seven chapters and includes an appendix dealing with cooking for people with allergies. The recipes are indexed in the front of the book.

The major conventional flavor types of salt, sugar, acids, and alcohol have been supplemented by modern industrial elements - E- Numbered (a Dewey decimal system-like index) additives, colloids, gels, foams, and other yummy things! All are itemized, charted, and explained in the chapter entitled "Playing with Chemistry." A whole chapter (and an interview with mathematician, Douglas Baldwin) is devoted to the latest and greatest food preparation technique -sous vide- cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath.

Threaded through the sections are short sidebar interviews of mostly computer and techie types who are serious cooks or involved in the food industry. Some of these contributors are Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) on scientific technique, Tim O'Reilly (CEO of the book's publisher) on scones and jam, Nathan Myhrvold, on Moderist cuisine, and others. Other interviews deal with taste sensitivities, food mysteries, industrial hardware, pastry chef insights, and many more. There is an insightful section just on knives and how to use and care for them.

Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book. I now pay attention to things I've never heard of before: browning methods like caramelization and the Maillard processes, savory as a major taste, transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue), for example. There is stuff I didn't really want to know - "if you've eaten fish you've eaten worms."

Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution; storing vegetables correctly requires knowing whether they admit ethylene gas or not (a chart is included); you can test your smell sensitivity profile by using a professional scratch and sniff test kit obtainable from the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever specialized information not contained in the book is referenced to external sources, especially on the Internet.

If all of this is not stimulus enough for the geek crowd, how about learning how you can spectacularly kill yourself cooking with dry ice, liquid nitrogen, blowtorches, and especially an electrocuted hotdog. Cool! This is mad scientist stuff. Engineering-minded types can learn how to make their own ice cream machine from Legos. You'll also learn how NOT to kill your guests with bacteria and other toxins.

The production is nicely done with easily readable text, plentiful drawings and charts, color captions, and many other quality production features. Weights are based in both grams and US volume-based measurements.

(FTC disclosure (16 CFR Part 255): The reviewer has accepted a reviewer's copy of this book which is his to keep. He intends to provide an honest, independent, and fair evaluation of the book in all circumstances.)



Alton Brown Fans Take Note--You Need This!, August 6, 2010
Alton Brown fans take note! You need a copy of Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks and Good Food. Seriously, this book takes everything I enjoy about Alton's shows and combines them into a book for the beginner, novice and pro alike.

Sure some recipes may seem basic. Extremely basic actually. It may seem weird to some that there are people who cannot even scramble an egg, but I've learned from experience that these people do exist. When my neighbor came flying out her house with a smoking pan, it had simply contained olive oil and water for boiling pasta but she'd turned on her stove and forgotten all about it. It became apparent that people can even burn water if given the opportunity.

Everything you need to know about cooking is in this book. From kitchen set-up and equipment to simple tips like reading a recipe completely before getting started, Cooking for Geeks has everything you need to start preparing home-cooked meals.

The book offers more than 400 pages of tips, recipes and even interviews with geeks of today. I loved reading Mythbuster's Adam Savage share his love of science and cooking. Learn easy recipes like a 30-Second Chocolate Cake or ones that may seem a little tougher like Butterflied Chicken. By the time you're done, you'll understand that kitchen and be able to whip together nutritious meals for yourself and others.

It's a very rare event that I come across a review book that I feel I must rush out and purchase a copy as soon as it is released. This is one of those situations. I can't imagine NOT owning this cookbook and I love to cook and know more than the basics already. With outstanding recipes, entertaining interviews and witty writing, this is definitely a book you should hand your friends, family and especially neighbors who do come running out of their home with flaming pans.

Goes Ways Beyond a Collection of Recipes, August 5, 2010
This isn't your ordinary cookbook. Sure, there are recipes--good ones, too--but the author presents a wealth of information about the science of cooking, cooking techniques, and even the psychology of cooking. It's not so technical that you need a degree in chemistry to understand it. Instead, the author explains things like how human taste senses work in plain terms. There's also a bit on nutrition towards the beginning, and there are charts and tables now and then to illustrate the mechanics of food and cooking throughout.

If you're an "innovative cook" (see the interview with Brian Wansink, p. 7), this is right up your alley. Potter gives lots of hacks. Usually, cookbooks are very prescriptive and give exact measurements and ways of doing things. Here, the author encourages us to improvise, and he even gives great tips how to do so. For example, did you know you can roast peppers in a toaster?

I have dozens of cookbooks and love to cook. Cooking For Geeks has surpassed them all and is now my favorite one. Check it out yourself. Well worth the money.

Takes you beyond the "what" into the "how" and "why"... great stuff!, August 14, 2010
The typical geek doesn't just want something to work. They want to know *why* and *how* it works. If your geekness extends to the kitchen, this book is perfect... Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food by Jeff Potter. It's a wonderful mix of science and hands-on activities, and definitely opened my eyes as to why things work as they do in the kitchen.

Contents:
Hello, Kitchen!: Think Like a Hacker; Cooking for One; Cooking for Others
Initializing the Kitchen: Approaching the Kitchen; Kitchen Equipment; Kitchen Organization
Choosing Your Inputs - Flavors and Ingredients: Smell + Taste = Flavor; Tastes - Bitter, Salty, Sweet, Umami, Others; Adapt and Experiment Method; Regional/Traditional Method; Seasonal Method; Analytical Method
Time and Temperature - Cooking's Primary Variables: Cooked = Time * Temperature; Foodborne Illness and Staying Safe; Key Temperatures in Cooking
Air - Baking's Key Variable: Gluten; Biological Leaveners; Chemical Leaveners; Mechanical Leaveners
Playing with Chemicals: Traditional Cooking Chemicals; Modern Industrial Chemicals
Fun with Hardware: Sous Vide Cooking; Commercial Hardware and Techniques
Appendix; Afterword; Index

There's just so fun stuff here, it's hard to know where to start. Potter does an excellent job in explaining the science behind what happens when you mix the eggs, flour, and milk together and apply heat. While most books on cooking tell you *what* to do, this one goes into the *why* and *how*. For instance, why does heat change food, and how does that happen? What is involved in protein denaturation, the maillard reaction, and caramelization? And why does knowing all this make a difference to you when it comes to knowing when a particular item is "done cooking"? It's this type of information that takes you beyond saying "but I left it in for the 10 minutes they said... why wasn't it cooked?" After reading Cooking for Geeks, you can start to understand what's going on within the food, and make educated decisions about what happened, what is happening, and what will happen next.

Fortunately, Cooking for Geeks isn't just a chemistry manual though. It's full of actual recipes that look delicious, as well as interviews with other cooks who reveal some of their secrets and mindsets behind what they do in the kitchen. Again, it all serves to take you beyond the "follow steps 1, 2, and 3" method of cooking, into something that is creative and fun.

This is like reading a season's worth of Alton Brown's Good Eats shows. Plenty of fun and very informational... and you can eat or toss your mistakes. :)

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Publisher
Payment: Free

A new way to look at cooking and science!, September 6, 2010
Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter, published by O'Reilly Media

Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter is the cookbook for people who pestered their parents with "why" questions and were never content with the universal answer of the exasperated, "because I said so."

Cooking for Geeks offers an in-depth look at the science of food, and provides detailed and well researched answers to many questions: Why is it better to weigh, rather than measure, your ingredients? (Weighing is more accurate.) Why is commercial baking powder better than the common tightwad substitute of 2 parts cream of tartar to 1 part baking soda? (Because the commercial kind typically uses multiple types of acid, allowing the CO 2 to release over time, rather than all at once.) How do you create a super hot pizza oven in your own home? (According to Jeff Varasano, C++ programmer turned Atlanta pizzeria owner, clip the lock and bake pizza during the oven's cleaning cycle.)

Cooking for Geeks also include interesting interviews with well-known geeks who answer even more questions--Adam Savage, of Mythbusters, discusses how they test myths on TV, and how the same principle (change one variable at a time!) can be applied to cooking, while Adam Ried, of America's Test Kitchen and The Boston Globe, talks about developing new recipes by making charts comparing the ingredients and methods in 40 or more existing recipes for the dish he wants to cook.

Offering 30 pages on kitchen equipment and organization, Cooking for Geeks seems to assume that geeks are novice cooks. The recipes, however, are often lacking in sufficient detail to be successfully prepared, even by an experienced cook. For example, the "Rosemary Mashed Potatoes" recipe on page 201 offers a novel method of preparing potatoes for mash: by microwaving them. Potter explains why this works, but neglects a couple of key points: what are the properties of a microwaved potato when it is ready to mash? And, is it necessary to pierce or cut the potato before cooking? (We ordinarily would poke a potato before cooking it, but since it wasn't mentioned in a book that seems geared to unexperienced cooks, we didn't want to assume. We thought perhaps piercing the potato allow too much moisture to escape, leaving the potato starch unable to expand. But also wondered if the unpierced potato would explode.) In keeping with the theme of the book, and, honestly, hoping to witness an explosion, we designed our own experiment: three batches of potatoes, one pierced; one un-pierced, and a control batch boiled the old fashioned way. We found that the un-pierced potatoes didn't explode. We hypothesized that this was because the recipe called for red potatoes with thin skins, not russets with heavier skin. Further, the unpierced potatoes didn't cook as thoroughly as the pierced potatoes. After 6 minutes, both were soft enough that we could poke them with a fork (the common test for doneness of a potato) but the unpierced ones had hard spots throughout. They were difficult to mash and left crunchy bits throughout. The pierced potatoes cooked through, resulting in coarse and chunky mashed potatoes. The boiled potatoes control group lost less than one-half the water of the pierced group and one-fourth the water of the non-pierced group. We should have adjusted the amount of sour cream and milk, for they had an almost oatmeal-like consistency.

Cooking for Geeks made acids and bases far more entertaining than our Chemistry textbook ever did, helped us understand what people mean when they say they "need an E-numbers fix" and introduced us to Doug Powell's amusing food safety site: [...]. We copied the lists of flavors used in various ethnic foods and the chart of substitutions for foods that commonly cause allergies to keep in the kitchen for easy reference and inspiration. Cooking For Geeks offered us a method to explore many of the questions we've had about food and cooking. Yes, we wish the recipes were more detailed. No we don't plan to use liquid nitrogen the next time we make ice cream or to flash-pickle cucumbers with a vacuum sealer. Even so, we appreciated and enjoyed this book--it's a far more entertaining introduction to science than anything we read during our K-12 years.

The Z-axis of cooking, September 6, 2010
This book was designed for me. I've never been comfortable in the kitchen and I haven't been a fan of cooking, as I just don't "get it" and always fear I might ruin other people's meals botching the cook job. I've tried cookbooks, or getting recipes online, but just following directions rote is tedious and boring and I still feel like I might screw it up.

This book really goes into the how and why of Cooking. I'm learning things like how temperatures and seasons can effect the quality, consistency, and nutrition of foods. It's like learning the legos of cooking, the building blocks, and the recipes are examples of the types of things you can make. But once you understand the blocks, you start to see how you can re-assemble them in new, exciting ways, and its ok to experiment.

There are also great inteviews with cooks and twitter/internet celebrities. The latter is kind of an interesting choice; Some of them work, others don't, but it's like the author experimented with the traditional recipe for a book, so I still dig it.

My only real complaint is with the table of contents. I'm reading the ePub version in iBooks on an iPad. I don't know if it's the publisher, the technology, or a combination of both, but the TOC links don't line up with the correct pages. As I read, I have insights and/or get excited about a topic and want to jump to other sections of the book to see the recipes, but the links are quite a few pages off in some cases. The book also tells me there are 929 pages, which I don't think is the case, but if true, I guess that makes it the cryptonomicon of cookbooks. So there is much page flipping, but all in all, a great, useful read!

The Why of Cooking, August 15, 2010
Cooking is chemistry. With maybe a little physics thrown in on the side. You know, temperature control, stuff like that.

You may think you don't like to cook. Too boring, too restrictive, you have to follow the recipe - or else. If so, this book is for you. It answer questions that most cook books don't think about asking. And if you have any curiosity about why recipes turn out like they do, and are interested in experimenting, using a knowledge of chemistry and physics to improve your dishes, this is a great book. It includes interviews with fellow geeks who explain why and how they prepare favorite dishes, including one with the publisher, Tim O'Reilly. Each interview adds something to the final mix.

Although there is some organization to the book, like most cook books, it can be opened to any page, and you'll likely find something interesting to peruse. It is not put together as a textbook on cooking, more as a smorgasbord. Some of the more basic elements of cooking are covered in the early chapters, but the science is available in side bars and short essays throughout the book.

Other reviews have listed the books table of contents, I won't repeat them. Suffice it to say, if you enjoy experimenting, using the scientific method in your cooking, if your curiosity isn't satisfied by just following a recipe time after time, if you like to know the "why" as well as "how," you'll enjoy this book. Would also make a great gift for that nerdy son/daughter newly living on their own. Highly recommended.

Great cookbook from an unlikely source!, August 9, 2010
To tell you the truth, I was a little hesitant about a cookbook coming from O'Reilly Media. They produce design and programming books like Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps and HTML5: Up and Running, not culinary books...or so I thought...

While waiting for the book release, I checked out Jeff Potter's videos on Facebook and on the O'Reilly site. From there I was hooked. This book, just like the title says, is designed by a geek for geeks (and non-geeks). This book is all about getting hands on with your "software" and "hardware" in your "lab" :) Jeff Potter did a great job in making easy for cooks of all levels to get started. My girlfriend, who claims she's a novice, enjoyed reading cover to cover. Someday I'll read it cover to cover myself, but I'm having too much fun learning about the science of cooking a la carte.

The cool recipes I keep experimenting with are the timeless "shock & awe eggs" and the 30-Second Chocolate Cake:)
Awesome job Jeff and O'Reilly to get everyone I know reinvigorated with cooking! Highly recommended for geeks, non-geeks, foodies and novices alike!

Don't be afraid to burn your dinner!, September 7, 2010
Reading this book is like listening to an old friend who has taken an interest in cooking and is trying to convey his knowledge to you, his good old friend, because he has learned some best practices he would like to share. It's an interesting journey about temperatures, melting points, chemical reactions and what not, it's all in there. One of the main lessons is; "Have fun! Learning is about curiosity, not work," which should not only appeal to us geeks, but to people, eager to learn, in general. Another great lesson "Don't be afraid to burn your dinner!"... In our daily routine, don't be afraid to make mistakes! That's the only way you'll learn what NOT to do. Life lessons.

Cooking is all about time and temperature, chemistry and flavor, smelling and tasting and you can experiment right in your own kitchen. Sometimes the result of the experiment is even edible, now isn't that cool! In what other cooking book can you read sentences like this: "buttermilk has a pH of 4.4-4.8, while regular milk has a pH of ~6.7, so it follows that baking soda will buffer and neutralize the more acidic buttermilk," not in my moms!

The book is littered with jokes and references to our geeky-jobs, like RTFR (last R being the "recipe", you know the other letters in this acronym ;-) Or making 'subclasses' of a sauce, and trying various 'instances'... You know exactly where to place these kind of sentences. Brilliant stuff! Apart from that this book is very complete. It covers setting up your kitchen and tools, talks about the various flavors and to smell and taste food, has great interviews with people with various types of relation to cooking or food and is packed with great recipes and ideas. I bet not only geeks have found its contents invaluable and a must read for everyone who regularly has to turn on the stove or oven!

Great job to Jeff and his team! I wonder what other subjects he and the team could geekify! These could turn out to be much more interesting than the "For Dummies" books!

P.S. One thing I haven't found yet in the book... How to best clean my burned pan!

Excercises in creativity AND molecular gastronomy!, September 6, 2010
Sometimes I forgot I was reading a cook book. Cooking for Geeks reminds me of other books I've read and they're mostly craft books. Lots of info about the craft, short but inspirational interviews with people who have done amazing things, and projects that are as much about the process as they are the finished object. The book is already being compared to Alton Brown and it's definitely a must read for AB's fans but it's also for people who want to play with food, experiment, and learn by doing.

I love Jeff Potter's attitude about cooking. Especially about failure. You will make things that will turn out poorly so stop worrying and start learning. I've messed up plenty of dishes but it's rare that I can't salvage it in some way and this is one of the few cook books I've seen that encourage that kind of thinking. Most will just suggest a few alternative ingredients instead of leading toward thinking up entirely new applications.

The recipes are more examples of things explored earlier. This isn't a staple cookbook in terms of recipes but it would be very, very good for a beginning cook to have this (as well as anyone else interested in cooking). Concepts, philosophies, and, yes, science are all explored and then demonstrated with recipes. Many recipes have alternate serving suggestions as well.

The section on molecular gastronomy is very cool. I thought I'd never get to do much of that kind of thing since the ingredients and equipment are expensive and it looks rather difficult for a regular home cook. I was wrong! There are plenty of things the home cook can do without breaking the bank. Granted, I now have more agar flakes than I really need but I can give them to friends who want to make panna cotta pie. It'll be like that Amish friend bread recipe only with strange ingredients and probably more taste. And more calories. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The updated and revised 15th edition of America's favorite cookbook

The Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book has been an American favorite since 1930, selling 40 million copies through fourteen editions. This new 15th Edition is the best yet, with hundreds of all-new recipes and a fresh, contemporary style.

Plenty of new chapters have been added to meet the needs of today's everyday cooks, including new chapters on breakfast and brunch, casseroles, and convenience cooking. 1,000 photos accompany this wide selection of recipes, which cover everything from Pad Thai to a Thanksgiving turkey.

• NEW FEATURES: icons that call out fast, healthy, or classic dishes; an expanded and revised chapter on canning and freezing foods; and new chapters on pizza, sandwiches, wraps, and more
• Presents more than 1,200 recipes, including 750 brand new to this edition
• More than 800 helpful step-by-step, how-to images and photos
• New suggestions for personalizing family dinners, new twists on favorite dishes, and plenty of recipes that yield leftovers you can use again in other recipes

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 15th Edition covers it all! Completely revised, revamped and updated, this is a must for every kitchen.

Reviews

The Best Cookbook for Novice and Experienced Cooks Alike, January 14, 2003
If I had to cut my extensive (over fifty) cookbook collection back to just one book this would be the "keeper!" When my beloved twelve-year old copy of this cookbook finally fell apart I purchased the 11th edition thinking I would mostly be replacing what I already had and knew well.

There was so much new and useful information included in the eleventh edition I wished I'd let go of my old copy earlier. I am especially fond of the nutrition analysis included with each recipe and the tips for making recipes lower in fat. The prep-times included with each recipe were also a new, and very useful, feature to me. Plus the editors upgraded the book to reflect the wider availability of formerly "exotic" fruits and vegetables now in the everyday market.

The fledgling cook will find everything needed to confidently accomplish any task from hard-boiling an egg to properly setting the table for a family meal or a buffet-style party. Pesky, but common, cooking terms like "al dente" and "crisp-tender" are explained in a straight forward manner in the cooking basics section where you will also find great tips for stocking a pantry or purchasing the basic cooking equipment you might need when just starting out.

Useful features for all levels of cook are scattered throughout the text. For example, there is a full-page photograph of different pastas with the name under each (finally! I now know the difference between Gemelli and Fusilli!). Also very useful are the extensive illustrative photos of retail cuts of meat cross-referenced to the wholesale cut and listing the best way to cook each cut.

One of my favorite things about the hardcover cookbook is the three-ring binder format. This makes it possible to lay the book flat on the counter or prop it up nearby with, or without, a cookbook stand. It also makes it easier to add your own notes right alongside your favorite recipes.

I love to give this cookbook as a gift to a young person just starting out -- inside a big crockpot or tied together with some fun kitchen tools.

New to Cooking, or Prefer Traditional Meals?, October 25, 2002
You need a basic cookbook. This is it.

No frills. No essays about the enduring history of kumquats, and how they saved Milwaukee 1,000 years ago. None of that. Just a cookbook with lots of helpful tips, to be used by ordinary people.

What do you get? A good old fashioned cookbook filled recipes you'll actually use, with ingredients you've seen before.

From this cookbook, I've made yeast donuts, breads, BBQ ribs, various sauces, and more. My copy has a few stains on it; good eating makes small messes. I like to think of the stains as battle scars.

Buy if you can the ring-bound version, as it will nicely open as you cook. I have the paperback edition, and use a bag of sugar to keep it open (place the sugar at the top of the open spine).

Helpfully included are photos of meat cuts, so you know pork ribs from beef ribs. There is a similar chart of grains and pastas.

Also, there are general instructions for preparing fruit-pie fillings, methods for cooking meat, and how to can produce. There's shopping tips, nutritional charts, measuring techniques.

Ever wonder the difference between cubing and dicing is? That, and many more great tips are explained here.

I fully recommend "Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book" for any basic kitchen cooking need you have. However, I am sorry, but detailed kumquat information will need to be found elsewhere.

Anthony Trendl
http://anthonytrendl.blogspot.com

All in the family., May 26, 1999
This is not the only cookbook I have but the only one I use. It is reliable and proven by time. My parents had one when I was little and I loved looking at the pictures. My dad taught me how to cook using it. When I got married, it was a wedding present. I have since bought several new additions and have given one to each of my children as they have moved away from home. Everything you need to know is in there from the basics like measuring, storage and definitions to more complex recipes. Even though I am a grandmother now, I still like the pictures. Nice to know what some things are supposed to look like :o)

A Bible for the American Cook, July 1, 1998
When I was married, my mother insisted I could not survive without this book. Little did I know then, but she was absolutely right! For someone who was skilled only at burning food in the kitchen two years ago, I can now make satisfying meals for my entire family. The cookbook not only offers receipes, but great information about time preparation, how to properly prepare and store foods, and how to make good decisions about substitutions. There are lots of pictures to help cooks know what is the difference between exotic fruits and the various pastas, not to mention the difference between stiffly beaten eggs and lightly beaten eggs. Most importantly, the recipes are very easy to prepare and are very tasty.

A must for every kitchen, as my mother once told me., January 2, 2003
I asked my mother to get me this when I moved into my own apartment. She taught me, for I was the attentive son, how to cook from her edition of this book, and this was the first gift I got when I moved out on my own.

Her copy, she told me, came from her parents.

It's a must-have. The recipes are easy-to-follow, first of all. I learned how to follow recipes by using this book with my mother.

One of my first-ever on-my-own cooking experiences came from this book, the orange chicken. I'm still alive and well-fed, and everyone loved that meal. So the book works.

When I hosted my first dinner party a couple weeks ago, a Thanksgiving feast, no less, this book taught me easy ways to do EVERYTHING required. I knew how to make the turkey, where to insert the meat thermometer, what spices to add to the mashed potatoes.

This book helps you get every meal just right. It's essential, an heirloom, a tradition and a must for everyone who cooks.

The only cookbook you'll ever need!, January 7, 2000
This book is absolutely fabulous. My husband gave it to me for Christmas, in an attempt to get me back into the kitchen, and it worked. Already I've taken the opportunity to go through the binder several times, and it contains a wealth of information, whether you're a gourmet cook, or a novice like myself. The cooking techniques in the beginning of the binder are especially helpful, and I've taken a lot of wonderful tips to help ensure the success of the recipies. My husband encourages everyone to try the Canadian Bacon Cheeseburgers. They're delicious.

AN OLD-TIME FAVOURITE!, December 24, 2001
This book would make a perfect gift for someone who is not yet feeling quite "at home in the kitchen." It is a basic, straight-forward, simple to understand cookbook with lots of facts on planning menus and proper nutrition. We have often heard the saying of an inexperienced person in the kitchen, "He or she would not know how to boil water!" Well, this book will tell you how to do such simple things as boil an egg and have it come out the way you want it - softboiled or hardboiled. There is a section dealing with various cuts of meats that will help the reader to understand which ones make great stews and pot roasts, and which ones provide the more tender, lean oven roasts. If you have a sweet tooth, you will learn everything from how to make a pie crust (easier said than done the first time around) for that scrumptous apple pie, to how to make some of your favourite candies. This book comes highly recommended and is one you will likely keep in your kitchen even after you have gathered experience and progressed to more complex, detailed recipes.

Chock full of good ideas and recipes, February 11, 2008
This cookbook is full of recipes that reads like your mom's sticky, well-loved recipe box. I haven't found anything ground breaking, but that's not really why I purchased it. Although I am already an experienced cook, I've had so much success with BHG recipes in the past that when I saw this new updated edition I decided to add it to my cookbook collection. It's got lots of illustrations of both recipes and techniques. When I first received it I settled back in my favorite chair, snuggled up in an afghan, and browsed through the whole thing. So often I saw a recipe that I recalled eating at a party, picnic, shower, etc. I think BHG is very All-American and this cookbook reflects the foods we've come to know and love. That's not to say it is just a collection of old-fashioned foods. There were plenty of new recipe ideas I've come across, too, but there' nothing too exotic, too expensive, or too difficult for the typical busy but food loving American. A lot of the recipes are good for rushed week day dinners, but they're better than throwing a can of soup on chicken and instant rice and calling it dinner. I've only had it a few weeks but I have already made several recipes from it and they have all been straightforward and a hit with family and friends. This is probably the cookbook I will recommend for my sons, who are 20 and 22, when they move out on their own. FYI: I would recommend this ring bound edition. I first purchased the plastic comb edition but returned it in exchange for the ring bound edition. The paper in the plastic comb edition was very thin and the plastic comb was so tight that page turning was going to forever be a very delicate affair. The ring bound is only a few dollars more, but unless you are very careless there doesn't seem to be much chance of tearing.

Ain't what it used to be, January 27, 2004
My 1970s edition of this cookbook was a surefire guide to simple, straightforward homecooking. The current edition has lost the charm -- and many of the best recipes -- of the original without gaining compensatory sophistication.

Take, for instance, biscuits: old editions had the best basic biscuit recipe. The new biscuits require a special trip to the market for ingredients. Yet the cookbook held onto horrors like chop suey!

The recipes over-emphasize canned and packaged ingredients and under-emphasize basic cooking techniques that might allow the aspiring cook to figure out how to substitute convenience ingredients for more complicated recipes. It's very much a cookbook for people who want to reproduce the food at the local supermarket deli, at twice the cost.

That said, there aren't many basic, put-food-on-the-table-every-night cookbooks out there. If you need to smack some chicken and rice on the dinner table every night of your life, you could do worse.

Required in Every Kitchen, March 10, 2000
This is probably the best cookbook in print for novice and experienced cooks. It's written in plain English, has exceptional recipes, includes standard cooking instructions as well as more complicated dishes, and it's well categorized and indexed. I bought this book when I moved into my first apartment many years ago, and I still refer to it regularly. The ringbound format is so convenient! Coupled with The Joy of Cooking (older version), a new cook needs no more expensive volumes on the shelf. ... Read more

Editorial Review

With The New Best Recipe, we invite you into America’s Test Kitchen where you will stand by our side as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese, the best meatloaf, the best roast chicken, the best brownie, and nearly 1,000 more best recipes for all your favorite home-cooked foods.

Behind this book is a deeply felt understanding of how frustrating it can be to spend time planning, shopping and cooking only to turn out dishes that are mediocre at best. With The New Best Recipe in hand, you will have access to a wealth of practical information that will not only make you a better cook but a more confident one as well. In fact, as long as you follow our instructions, we guarantee that these recipes will work the first and every time.

We have also included 800 illustrations showing you the best way to do almost everything from how to carve a turkey and beat egg whites properly to how to frost a layer cake and set up your grill. Also, get valuable information on how and when to splurge on that expensive knife or baking pan and when the basic model will do just fine. We also explain the science of cooking since understanding the science of food can help anyone become a better cook.Complete with recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts, The New Best Recipe ... Read more

Reviews

The Cook and the Baker (who hates to cook) both love it, November 5, 2004
I'm the Baker. When my husband-to-be first came to my house to cook me a dinner, he rummaged through my cabinets and said "Where are your pots and pans?"; then he looked through the pantry and fridge and said "Where is your FOOD?" I had to explain that, in my vocabulary, "cook" is a verb meaning "to put into a microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes." Food? Small boxes in the freezer, of course.

I tell you this so you'll understand how improbable it is that the first thing I tackled from "The New Best Recipe" was chicken stock. A real-deal chicken stock, I'm talking here--the kind that turns to a jelly when cooled, is deep gold, and can improve nearly any dish you add it to--the kind that takes eight or ten hours to make, the classic way.

See, I had picked up this massive (1028-page) book in the bookstore and idly opened to the Soup chapter, where I read a three-page explanation of how to make real chicken stock in one hour. They detailed all the blind alleys they'd explored in trying to come up with the perfect recipe for stock--the different cooking techniques, times, ingredients--until they'd found a way to make rich golden stock in an hour. The technique was, er, unorthodox to say the least, but it all seemed to make perfect sense, so I bought the book and decided to try to make a stock to present to the Cook as a fait accompli.

Holy smoke, it worked! And I gotta tell you, if I can make a couple quarts of chicken stock between the time my daughter gets home from school and the time my husband gets home from work, then you can too.

So, enough anecdote; now for details.

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1. The book is a compilations of recipes from Cooks' Illustrated magazine and the America's Test Kitchen TV show (which I've never yet seen). The title seems presumptuous: "best" according to whom? Isn't "best" a matter of taste? Well, yes, but they are at pains to describe for nearly every recipe just what they MEAN by "best." Here's an example, for pound cake:

"...the main difficulty with pound cakes of the classic type is textural. Cakes might be said to have five 'texture points': moist/dry, soft/hard, dense/porous, light/heavy, rich/plain. To contemporary tastes, cakes must be relatively moist and soft; the three remaining texture points are negotiable.
"The problem with pound cake is that we ask it to be moist and soft on the one hand but also dense, light, and rich on the other. This is an extremely difficult texture to achieve unless one resorts to baking powder, with its potent chemical magic. Air-leavened cakes that are light and soft also tend to be porous and plain, as in sponge or angel cakes; moist and dense cakes inevitably also turn out heavy, as in the various syrup-soaked Bundt cakes that are so popular. From pound cake, we ask all things."

Or for broiled salmon:

"We set out to find the best way of cooking a whole side of salmon, enough to feed eight or more guests, in the oven. We wanted fish that was moist but not soggy, firm but not chalky, and nicely crusted, with golden, flavorful caramelization over its flesh. If we would work some interesting flavors and contrasting textures into the bargain, all the better."

Or for roasted potatoes:

"The perfect roasted potato is crisp and deep golden brown on the outside, with moist, velvety, dense interior flesh. The potato's slightly bitter skin is intact, providing a contrast to the sweet, caramelized flavor that the flesh develops during the roasting process. It is rich but never greasy, and it is accompanied by the heady taste of garlic and herbs."

In other words, before telling you how to make X, Y, or Z, they tell you what you're shooting for. I appreciate this. Mostly my goals and theirs coincide, but if they don't I'm aware of it BEFORE I start to cook.

2. After they describe the goal, they tell you the variations they tried to achieve it. This might include fiddling with cooking temperatures and times, number or type of ingredients, cooking techniques, tools, containers, phase of the moon... whatever! The folks in those test kitchens apparently have an infinite supply of time and money, not to mention patience.

So, for the chicken stock, they tried blanching, roasting, and sauteing the chicken; backs, wings, legs, or the whole chicken; carrots, celery, onion: yes or no? A sidebar details issues like what kind of chicken to buy, how to cut it up, and tips for storing the stock once you've made it.

You find out what works, and why, but also what didn't work, and why not. Knowledge really is power. Time after time in the past I've followed a recipe (or so I thought) and messed it up--with no idea of where I went wrong or how to fix it. Most cookbooks assume that cooks just don't make mistakes. This one tells you just about everything you could do wrong, so you won't.

By the way, I LOVE it that they attribute techniques and recipes found in other sources (including, in the case of pound cake, recipes from 1772, 1824, and 1985).

3. Is there some science about your ingredients or techniques or equipment? You'll learn about it. Why is is that butter and eggs for a cake should be at room temperature? Some cake recipes say combine everything at once ("quick mix" technique) and others say to cream suger with butter, then add the eggs and flour. Why do they both work? What's the difference in the end result? And what about those dark non-stick cake pans? Will they change anything? You'll find out.

4. After you understand the issues around your recipe, they give you the recipe itself. Many have three or four variations given after the main recipe. Each step is spelled out clearly, with both visual and time cues (e.g., "until the pork is in small, well-browned bits, about 5 minutes"), often accompanied by clear B&W illustrations and useful sidebars.

5. There are separate mini-essays on ingredients and equipment, comparing them a la Consumer Reports. We learn which are the best brands of chocolate chips for cookies (with different recommendations for thick/chewy vs. thin/crispy, no less!) and which paring knives were rated best.

I found a chart that lists the volume of medium, large, extra-large, and jumbo eggs. For that alone, I'd have bought the book, since the Cook (who's also the shopper) buys XLs, but the Baker's recipes all assume Ls. Now I actually know by how much they differ (8:9 is the ratio, in case you wondered).

6. Have I mentioned that everything I've made so far has rocked?

----

Downside? The Table of Contents and the Index both stink like the stinkiest of stinking fish. Does 22 lines ("Pork... 385", "Cakes... 823") seem to you like enough detail for the contents of a thousand-page cookbook? Me neither, especially as the individual sections don't have their own ToCs. This is ridiculous. But the index is even worse. Tiny print, uniform font sizes for all three levels of indent, no indicator letters at the top of the page to remind you where you are, and a distinct lack of cross-indexing make it a near-total waste of time. Someone could make a lot of people happy by preparing sectional ToCs and a decent index for this massive tome.

We don't accept every single bit of information in this book (the Cook has a serious bone to pick with them vis-a-vis their unflattering assessment of bluefin tuna, for instance), but for each item we disagree with, there are ten that have us nodding in agreement.

It could be described as a scientific cookbook, but that might leave you with the impression that it's dry and colorless. Quite the contrary--I find it fascinating reading, especially the parts about how they screwed up.

The prose is not lyrical or charming, as The Joy of Cooking frequently is, but it's truly engaging in its eagerness to give you all the tools you need to succeed. I doubt there's a cook in America who couldn't learn something from this book. I think it's that rare cookbook that is equally suitable for beginners, experienced cooks, and everyone in between; as much fun to read like a book as it is to use as a manual. Get it!

These Recipes Consistently Deliver, January 6, 2005
I consider myself an experienced cook but I have had frustrating experiences with cookbooks and recipes I'd find in magazines and newspapers. Something would sound wonderful, I'd buy ingredients, spend hours cooking and the results would be...OK. Not terrible, not inedible, but a disappointment none the less. Even cookbooks that I love and contain recipes I think are wonderful would also have recipes that I found pretty so-so. In fact, in many cookbooks the ratio of successes to non-successes is pretty small. Finding The Best Recipe (the edition that preceded this one) was a revelation for me. Each recipe I tried was a success. When The New Best Recipe was published, I bought one immediately and was thrilled to find so many new recipes.

This is now my go-to cookbook, the first place I look when I want to find a recipe, and a book I check other recipes against when considering recipes from other sources. I use this book in the way my mother used the Joy of Cooking when I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s. And just as Joy was the book she used when she needed a recipe for a classic like beef stew or a then fashionable food such as quiche or cheese fondue, The New Best Recipe has recipes for classics (spaghetti and meatballs, pot roast, coq au vin, shrimp scampi) and also has recipes for foods that have hit the American culinary radar more recently such as pad thai, beef fajitas, and pozole. In fact the huge range of foods is one of the things that makes this cookbook so wonderful; for instance, the pasta section includes recipes for lo mein, tuna noodle casserole and ravioli.

This is a great book for beginners because of the detailed explanations of how the ultimate recipe was achieved which include discussions of different techniques that were considered or used and why they were rejected, as well as the many sidebars which give information on technique and equipment. Plus there is nothing that teaches you to cook like cooking, and nothing that keeps you cooking as much as having success. But it is a book that an experienced cook will find just an interesting and useful. I have been cooking for years and I have learned from this book.

This is not (and does not represent itself to be) a low-fat cookbook. The recipes are about achieving maximum flavor and taste. It is also not (and does not represent itself to be) a cookbook full of fast recipes. However, this book contains so many recipes that low fat and fast recipes can be found among them. The recipes are always clear and easy to follow, and the results will speak for themselves.

I love cookbooks and have many but if I were forced to have only one cookbook, this would be the one

Absolute best cookbook, November 16, 2004
I've been cooking for over 40 years, but I still consider myself a very bad cook. I almost always use a recipe, but if I don't have something, or don't want to bother with some technique, I try to substitute. Not a good idea for me. Or often the recipes don't include little details that they assume cooks will know, but I don't. I look through numerous recipe books and think I've found the best one for something, but it often doesn't come out perfectly. But that's all changed now! This book is amazing at not only giving you terrific recipes, but it explains why the cook made the choices she did in creating the recipe. It is so fun to read the background of how they created the perfect recipe for something and they discuss all the other things I would have done and why those things don't lead to a good product. I've tried one recipe from each chapter and had so much fun because they all came out terrific.

ONE OF THOSE MAMMOTH COOKBOOKS, January 26, 2005
I'll be honest. I've never really been one who likes these huge, mega-recipe cookbooks as I've always preferred smaller, more specialized books. This one did come as a surprise as a friend loaned it to me who just raved about it. The recipes are culled from the pages of Cooks Illustrated Magazine which I am not overly familiar with. With a 1000 pages and 1000 recipes, you're sure to find a LOT that you can use.

One thing important to note is that these recipes are not simply thrown into the book. Cooks Illustrated tests these receipes in their kitches many times, evaluating all facets of the recipe from ingredients and preparation to cook times and equipment. More than just recipes, the book acts as a guide to everyday kitchen techniques, many designed for the novice but certainly still valuable to more experienced cooks. There's also great advice on buying cookware and utensils, as often your receipes are only as good as the equipment you use to make them.

Everything from simple casserole dishes and crockpot favorites to more elegant receipes can be found within its pages. The receipes are VERY step-by-step, obviously written for the beginner in mind and will ensure a great meal everytime. Add to that the editors have put in a generous helping of over 800 illustrations perfectly complement the well-written and well-tested recipes.

If you are going to own just one of these massive type cook books...toss out Betty Crocker...Give the Joy of Cooking the heave-ho...let the Gourmet Cookbook gather dust, and pickup this fantastic book. Simply put it's the best of its kind anywhere! Highest recommendation.

Be the most amazing cook ever, right now!, December 16, 2004
Would you like to be a fabulous cook? Can't afford a ritzy cooking school? Ever wondered if the mortals in your kitchen could learn to cook like GODS??!!

Wonder no more...this cookbook comes to us courtesy of the team at Cook's Illustrated magazine, which while not widely known, is the single best source of cooking information and recipes on the planet.

Cook's takes classic recipes, deconstructs them and puts them back together, streamlined for the home kitchen but sacrificing nothing in terms of knock-your-socks-off flavour. Bonus: these recipes don't fail, unlike those in most other cookbooks.

I was always a decent cook, but after finding Cook's Illustrated I became an amazing cook...this book will make you one too. I didn't know food could taste this good; you will produce dishes that rival 4 star restaurants, I kid you not. The directions are crystal clear, and you get lots of expert advice on how to choose ingredients and equipment. Most recipes show you master-chef level tips and tricks that are easy to learn.

I can personally recommend the Coq au Vin p. 341 (my family literally begs for it), and if you cook the steak and Madeira pan sauce p. 389, they will probably name a religion after you. Other highlights, French Onion Soup p. 43, various pastas with garlic and oil pan sauces p. 238, Fresh Tomato Sauce for pasta (INCREDIBLE!!!) p. 241, Molasses Spice Cookies p. 785, Lemon Pie p. 907, Key Lime Pie p. 908, Creme Caramel p. 958. Well, you get the idea...I could go on and on, the recipes are so utterly delicious.

This cookbook is kick-ass, world class. Everyone you cook for will wonder where you learned to cook like that. I have lots of cookbooks and almost never look at any of my old ones any more. This one is just that good!

Get it, get it now, you will be so very happy you did, and so will any cook you get it for. The Best Recipe rocks.

they've made the mistakes so you do have to, May 21, 2005
I LOVE IT! I'm excited about getting into my kitchen again. I have not had a failure since I bought it. I'm Australian, so American fare is not always my favorite style of cooking, mac and cheese and meatloaf? But living here, I have to deal with American ingredients, and to be honest I've had some spectacular failures since I've moved here. I can't totally blame having to work in oz and F.

I was skeptical about the title and I'm really glad I overcame my bias. This book is good - REALLY good. Most people consider me a good cook, and I have a veritable library of cookbooks and recipes. While I did not really need 1000 more, I was intrigued enough to open the book - it fell open at a meat page which "finally" I was able to find a diagram to tell me what the various local meat cuts equated to what I was used to. I started flicking though earnestly. I stumbled across the Pork area, I'd just made pork chops that turned out the equivalent of industrial brake pads. Cooks test kitchen pointed out that today's leaner cuts of pork, needed to be treated differently. Cooked on a medium heat. I figured that what I just wasted in meat, the investment would be worth it, so I bought it home. Since then I've had tender meat, superb roasts, great pancakes, a fabulous summer pie. The book sits on my kitchen counter - it is the ultimate resource. I still use other recipes, but I find myself always coming back and consulting it and ultimately using the techniques it teaches.

It explains the process of recipe building and talks about recipe variants, a great knowledge to go forth with if you are prone to substituting as I am. I've since subscribed to their magazine, bought their baking illustrated and look forward to their new barbeque and grilling book. I'm more confident than ever in my American kitchen, and I have the America's test kitchen to thank for it.

I think the greatest compliment is I've come back to Amazon to buy a copy for a friend that is about to get married. A true gift of domestic harmony.

Don't throw away your orignal "Best Recipe!", February 20, 2005
This is a wonderful cookbook and I'm looking forward to exploring this edition as I did the original Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe. However if you own the original copy, be aware that this new edition is not simply an expanded version of the original. The editors have eliminated some of my favorite recipes and replaced them with others. The chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is indeed my favorite version of this classic treat, has been eliminated in favor a new thin & crisp variation. The quick cook carrots, which I love, have been dropped. I haven't done a comprehensive comparison between the two editions so perhaps it was just a fluke that several of the first few "old favorites" I tried to cook were missing, but I suggest you keep your original copy around just in case. However the new recipes I've tried have been up to the Cook's Illustrated standard, and I'm thrilled to have more recipes to try in one convenient cookbook.

A great resource for recipes and information, April 24, 2006
I feel I need to refute the previous reviewer's allegations. I've had this book for a year and a half, and while I've always enjoyed cooking, this book has taken me to a new level, in both enjoyment and skill. I read it front to back (and have since subscribed to the magazine) and found it fascinating reading. I love the explanations on the development of each recipe. I've made at least a hundred of the recipes in here, and very few have failed me. Most have been amazing.

Because I have not made either the Osso Buco or Beef Burgundy recipes the previous reviewer mentioned, I cannot attest to their quality specifically. However, one of the goals of these recipe developers is to take culturally traditional food and make it accessible to the American home cook. Many traditional recipes include ingredients and equipment that are not practical or available, and the recipes in this book do their best to work around this and still produce fantastic food.

I have however baked both the Baguette and Rustic Italian Bread recipes from this book. When I removed the baguette from the oven, I realized that I had finally made a great baguette, after trying many other recipes. The crust was great and the crumb was perfect. (The taste was bland-I forgot to add the salt.) I've made the Italian bread several times and gotten a ridiculous amount of compliments on it.

I've found their equipment testings valuable, even more so because they do not advocate buying tools that will be useful for only a specific food. Since reading this book, I've put my breadmaker, egg cooker, and deep fryer in storage, because the stove and oven can do it all. I've also found their tastings useful, especially because the magazine does not accept advertising. The science explanations peppered throughout the book have really wet my appetite for more kitchen science.

I will admit that this book is not for everyone. A lot of people aren't interested in the "best" recipe, they're interested primarily in the easiest or healthiest recipe. Also, there are no color pictures. I don't find this too detrimental because a lot of the focus of the book is on developing the best recipe for classic dishes, like mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli, and I know what those are supposed to look like. There are line drawings to help explain techniques, and these are helpful.

For me, this has been a great book. It's a large resource of recipes from a source that I trust, and because every recipe starts by explaining their goals, I know what to expect from the finished product. I've also been able to take what I've learned here and apply it to everything I cook. Perhaps most importantly, it makes me excited to learn still more about food and cooking.

Indispensable Kitchen Wisdom, November 15, 2004
This book gives you the most thorough description of how and why to cook recipes a certain way for the sake of taste and efficiency that I have ever seen. It also rates various brands of kitchen equipment and provides simple but extremely useful graphics. Best of all, the recipes turn out consistently terrific food. I just got this book a few weeks ago and feel I can't live without it.

I don't know anything about cooking, September 5, 2006
I don't have experience cooking and I sure don't know much about cooking technique. I have personally made all the recipes my family has enjoyed from this book with "technical" help from my wife. When my wife has made "new" recipes from other sources, we don't know what the final product will be like. With this book, not only do they tell you what the final product should be like, it most likely will turn out that way. I've watched America's Test Kitchen and thought that I could make some of the recipes they prepared. I like how detailed the instructions are on the show and the book is even more detailed. I've seen Cook's Illustrated magazine in the book store and this book is similar though slightly condensed (explanations of the testing they did and why the final recipe is the way it is).

While they have incredible detail on how and why, they do have to assume you have some rudimentary knowledge of cooking technique. So, when I tried the brownie recipe and it told me to "fold" the flour into the batter, I was clueless - fortunately, my wife supervises. As others have stated, they purposely change their recipe from "classic" recipes to make it more likely the average home kitchen has the tools required along with the ingredients being available at your supermarket.

The brownies are incredible - the difference between out of the box brownies and the "classic" brownies is why people make food from scratch. Light and fluffy pancakes came out just the way they describe it...not the dense version I usually generate from packaged mixes (my wife had to give me a lesson on flipping pancakes - that's how inept I am in the kitchen). BBQ spare ribs with the BBQ dry rub - just like the ribs I had at "Smokey Bones" in the Atlanta area (the book tells you how to cook grill recipes for charcoal and gas grills). Cheese Straws drew rave reviews at a party (although not as pretty because my daughter and I couldn't get the twists described in the recipe so we just laid it out flat - the guests didn't care). Fallen chocolate cake (molten lava cake) was better than the local Chili's. Every recipe I've made has come out they way they said it would.

As a totally novice cook, if I can get good results, then anyone should be able to do the same. As a novice cook, I do run into problems when timing is important when making a recipe the first time - like frozen dough becoming too warm because I took too long with something else before getting to the dough. They assume the average cook can get something done in X minutes while someone like me takes double the time. Fortunately, from America's Test Kitchen, I knew to just throw the dough back into the freezer when it got too warm.

On my wife's advice, I am writing all over the book with my own notes on each recipe I make with any adjustments on spices or time allotments so each recipe will be MY Best Recipes.

It's a great book. One day, maybe I'll let my kids use it and they can personalize it with the stains/spills they've put into the other recipe books we have (yeah, the books where the results are hit and miss). ... Read more

Editorial Review

WHEN YOU KNOW A RATIO, IT’S NOT LIKE KNOWING A SINGLE RECIPE, IT’S INSTANTLY KNOWING A THOUSAND.

In Ratio, Michael Ruhlman, recognized as one of the great translators of the chef’s craft for both home cooks and culinary professionals, shows how cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen—water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs—work. Detailing thirty-three essential ratios and suggesting enticing variations, Ruhlman empowers every cook to make countless doughs, batters, stocks, sauces, meats, and custards without ever again having to locate a recipe. ... Read more

Reviews

essential home-cook revelations, April 17, 2009
Ever since Ruhlman first started pondering this book on his blog years ago, I've been eagerly anticipating its arrival, and it has not disappointed. The theory of ratio and its present and historical value are engagingly presented, and the book quickly ushers openminded readers to the kitchen to see these things at work themselves. So far I have baked two "experiments" I would never have had the bravery to tackle without this knowledge, and both have been educational and delicious accomplishments!

This is not a cookbook -- indeed, it is an anti-cookbook. Those expecting complex recipes, or the "best" way to make something, will be dissatisfied. This is a manual for real cooks who want to understand the fundamental underpinnings of what makes food FOOD in order to play, tweak, recontextualize, and personalize their methods in infinite variations. It's a book for culinary explorers who don't wish to be, pardon the pun, spoon-fed.

As always, Ruhlman's fresh, engaging, personal writing style leaves this an entertaining read even if you're not stopping every few pages to try your hand at the techniques. (If telling you it was a real page-turner while I was awaiting jury duty doesn't convince you, I don't know what will!)

Almost getting teaching kitchen improv right: priceless, May 13, 2009
(This review originally appeared in a somewhat different form at my blog, OffSeasonTV at Blogspot.)

This book purports to be the latest and greatest in books claiming to teach how to cook without recipes, a trail blazed not all that successfully by authors such as Pam Anderson. Derived from a chart Ruhlman acquired from Chef Uwe Hestnar, at the Culinary Institute of America, it actually does a fairly creditable job of showing how certain aspects of cooking (particularly baking, charcuterie, and saucemaking) are based heavily on ingredient ratios (weight, by the way, not volume ratios, which are somewhat useless due to differences in ingredient density). Hestnar felt quite strongly (and presumably still does) that these ratios were the most critical things a professional chef needs to know, and that pretty much anything else is secondary.

As is often the case with books of this sort, Ratio oversells itself; anyone who's spent a great deal of time studying politics can tell you that something that claims to be the utmost in simplicity seldom really is, and truthfully this book has a tendency to downplay technique (entire books can be and have been written on the subject, which really isn't a very simple subject at all), as well as hyperfocusing on classical Franco-international cuisine. The question really comes down to this: how valid is Hestnar's point, and can a non-cook learn to cook from Ruhlman's book?

Well, Hestnar's not wrong. Certainly a lot of this book comes down to the interactions of the chemical components of food; mayonnaise, for example, and its dependence on egg yolk as an emulsifier is an extreme example, since it really takes very little yolk to emulsify oil and vinegar (indeed, Ruhlman quotes a 20:1:1 ratio for oil/vinegar/yolk), but the ratio in question is extremely squishy compared to the rather strict 5:3 ratio of flour to water for a standard loaf bread (hardcore bakers will recognize that as a baker's percentage of 66%). And indeed these ratios are fairly important for the subjects that Hestnar's chart covers -- too little liquid will create a gloppy sauce, and too much will create a hard-to-handle bread dough (although this is something you actually want for a ciabatta). And fat ratios make the difference between a bread dough and a pastry dough.

But as I said, I do think it's oversold. The simple fact is that these ratios really aren't as general as Ruhlman wants to think; they cover only certain parts of the culinary arts, and are mainly of use for troubleshooting purposes outside the realms the book covers. And Ruhlman's work only covers classical French-based cuisine; there isn't a tomato sauce to be found in here, for example, nor any discussion of rice or other grains (if cooking rice isn't ratio-driven I don't know what is). But what is in here is quite useful, and it does promote the use of weight measurements in the American kitchen, something people seem to be afraid of. It's an interesting read, and I do recommend it, but as a guide to improvisational cooking it only does half the job.

I didn't think I could cook, April 17, 2009
I don't claim to be a chef, I wouldn't even go so far as to call myself a cook. I rarely venture outside the comfort zone of a microwave or a toaster oven. However, between Ruhlman's incredibly engaging writing style and exceptional mastery of the information, I found myself drawn to experiment.

Recipes certainly have their place and can be useful tools. I've begun to discover, however, that only using recipes put me into a position of not ever learning anything and falling continuously into the "I can't cook" mantra. Learning the ratios and the ideas behind them left me feeling that not only might I be able to accomplish something (and the results are certainly tasty), but gave me an understanding and appreciation for why people might enjoy cooking.

In short, you don't need to be an expert to get a lot out of this book, although I suspect even the most talented among us would learn something. Ratio definitely belongs on the shelf next to all the recipe books you'll end up not using.

An important concept, but not much depth, December 8, 2009
Have you ever doubled or halved a recipe? Have you ever successfully added an extra ingredient to a recipe to "spice it up" or give it a different flavor without changing the basic recipe? Have you ever thrown together some soup or made up some oil-and-vinegar dressing by adding "a pinch of this, a handful of that, a lot of this, and maybe about twice as much of that," and then repeated the same approximate amounts again?

Congratulations -- you've learned 95% of what you can learn from this book. Move along.

The basic idea of this book, which you can find out from the numerous other (mostly glowing) reviews is that cooking and baking are based on ratios of ingredients. If you didn't realize that from following a few recipes, you can do the same thing this book does by finding a recipe that works and then doubling, tripling, or halving all the quantities. Often it works. (Actually, in baking, it often doesn't work if you make a particularly large or small batch, usually due to problems with leavening agents, but nevermind -- that's already more advanced than this book usually is.) Moreover, if you've never tried this, you can actually modify good recipes by adding or removing a flavor ingredient. So, go ahead -- got a good butter cookie recipe in a cookbook? Try adding some lavender flowers. You'll get lavender butter cookies. Go crazy and double it, and you'll get twice as many cookies -- amazing! Or, do you have a good white bread recipe that you use? Try adding some herbs or some dried fruit or whatever -- you'll get bread with stuff in it. That's basically what this book is about.

I guess this book is meaningful to a certain type of person who only follows recipes religiously and never varies them, or who never noticed that that new pancake recipe you're about to try uses twice as much milk per cup of flour compared to every other pancake recipe you've ever made. But I think for most people, this is common sense. You can add a little bit of X and vary a recipe, and if you see something weird compared to every other recipe you've ever used, you're probably going to end up with something different.

There are a couple other good points this book makes. For example, measuring by weight is generally a good idea, particularly in baking. Most people who have read any other good cookbooks specializing in cake-making or bread-baking already have heard that. (Ruhlman is a little inconsistent about when he uses weight instead of volume measurements; sometimes, for things often done in small amounts, volume would be easier.)

And the table of ratios is useful. In fact, if you could buy that separately, I'd say that'd be worth a few bucks right there. But only a few bucks, because the table only gives a selection of possible ratios, and the ratios that are there are only rough approximations to get you into the ballpark. For example, bread is a weight ratio of 5 parts flour to 3 parts water (with a little salt and yeast), so the book tells us. Well, that's a good general guideline. But if you want to make stiff dough (e.g., for bagels), you'll want a ratio closer to 2:1. If you want a slack dough (e.g., for ciabatta or focaccia), you'll want something closer to 5:4. That's a HUGE range of ratios and huge range of different types of bread dough. And all of this says nothing about the type of flour used (all-purpose versus bread versus high gluten versus whole wheat, etc. all could require significant adjustment to a ratio). Even the humidity and room temperature can greatly change the way bread dough behaves, and the baker has to take that into account.

One could say the same for most of the ratios given -- they are not magical or correct in every circumstance, nor are they even the best starting off point for many dishes if you want a particular variant. Many of them give a sense of exactness that is undeserved -- vinaigrette and mayonnaise, for example, can be made with a large variety of ingredient ratios and still be successful, often depending on other ingredients and desired consistency and flavor.

Moreover, each of these types of bread dough requires different handling procedures. That is really where the "ratio" argument falls apart. Cooking and baking are about ratios, but in a larger sense they're about FORMULAS. That is, you have a ratio of ingredients, but you combine things in certain ways (using different mixing techniques, timing, etc.), and then you prepare them by cooking them in certain ways (at certain temperatures, with certain timing, perhaps adding or changing things at various times, etc.). A ratio tells you very little if you know nothing about the rest of the formula and the techniques required to prepare a dish. If "ratio" was the only thing needed, recipes would only consist of lists of ingredients with no instructions.

For another example, take Ruhlman's sponge cake formula of 1:1:1:1 for eggs, flour, fat, and sugar. (That's also the same as his ratio for pound cake, requiring a different technique, which immediately points out the fundamental flaw of a ratio without anything else.) Compare Ruhlman's ratio to a chart of ratios for sponge cake alone in Bo Friberg's "Professional Pastry Chef." Friberg gives ratios for eight different types of sponge cakes, all with different ingredients and vastly different techniques. For the weight equivalent of 12 eggs, flour varies from 5 to 21 oz. (and types of flour vary from 100% cake flour to mixtures with bread flour or cornstarch), fat 0-12 oz., and sugar 6-24 oz. So much for Ruhlman's simple ratio. What he's really giving you is a specific recipe that isn't very useful at all. In the process, he ignores the natural variation in recipes that come from small (or large!) variations in ingredients and technique to produce superior results. Lest you think that Friberg's table is only for professionals, I need to point out that over half of these sponge cake types are found in standard home cookbooks, and only two are rather advanced types generally only used by pastry chefs. With Ruhlman, you get one ratio, and it isn't really close to any of Friberg's ratios, and Friberg writes books on cake and pastry technique for professional cooks. Whom would you trust?

That's not to say that the ratio is useless. In fact, it's the way people used to remember recipes. They are particularly important for successful baking using leavening, where ingredient ratios determine the success of the chemical changes; generally most other cooking is more forgiving. My mother still can recite baking recipes for cakes, icing, biscuits, etc. this way. My grandmother probably knew 4-5 times as many recipes by heart in the same way. Ruhlman's book basically repackages these rules of thumb your grandmother might have known. But these only work when you know the rest of the technique, and even then, they are generally only guidelines that don't always produce stellar results without careful tweaking. Otherwise, you get a successful -- but generally mediocre -- result.

People make a big deal out of the idea of varying a recipe, or knowing that by adding more of X or subtracting Y, your batter will turn from pancake batter into crepes or into biscuits. That's fun to know, but it doesn't actually help in the kitchen very much, particularly since changing one thing into another usually involves significant changes to preparation. Certain professional cookbooks that discuss the theory of building a recipe will provide more insight than a simple chart of ratios (with minimal instruction) can. If Ruhlman really wanted to make this part useful, he would provide some more charts for each of the ratios that show what happens as you vary each ingredient. What happens if there is less liquid in your pancake batter, for example? Well, the batter will be stiffer, which means thicker pancakes, which might be useful if you want large, thick diner-style pancakes, but you'll have to lower the heat in the pan to cook them. If you add more liquid, the opposite applies. Vary too much, and you'll need to play with baking soda/powder.

Other charts could be devoted to the discussion of adding other common ingredient types, and the way the ratios (as well as the technique) require adjustment. For example, if you enrich a bread dough with oil, milk, and/or eggs, you'll need to decrease the water content, perhaps raise the yeast content (or modify rising time), and lower the baking temperature while lengthening the baking time. (Ruhlman, if you use these ideas for your next book, please give me a footnote!)

And a final set of charts could be troubleshooting -- you try to vary a recipe or a new recipe from your favorite book doesn't turn out? Why not? Well, it could be that the ratios are off -- Ruhlman could point out that the most useful aspect of basic ratios for professional cooks is not actually to develop recipes, but rather to serve as guidelines to see why a divergence from a ratio doesn't work in a particular case.

Yes, these ratios could be immensely useful in the kitchen if they went beyond the basics. But, of course, such charts would be boring, and most people don't want to buy a book full of charts. So instead we're left with pages and pages of sometimes insightful and sometime rambling prose that are essentially annotations, explanations, and corrections to those master ratios that are supposed to be so important. But the annotations, explanations, and corrections are what makes one a good cook. The ratio by itself is meaningless and almost useless. The infinite variety that Ruhlman promises is most successful when you know how to alter a formula or how to correct for a problem.

People compare this to cooking as "engineering," but an engineering textbook would be filled with these charts and equations to help one derive a correct formula and ratio for a given situation. For some things, such equations do exist in research done for professional cooking and in food science, and certainly there are plenty of tables and charts in such articles and books that give more information on varying ratios than is possible in prose. Most people wouldn't want that, but that's what an "engineering approach" to cooking would actually be. This isn't it.

In the end, it's a good idea, but the basic idea is only enough to keep you occupied for a few weeks of cooking. The ratio approach is too simplistic to go further. After that, the more useful thing to do is to start noticing how other recipes in other books draw on or diverge from these ratios and why. You can find good recipes and vary them yourself. Or buy some cookbooks that tell you about the theory behind cooking that goes beyond basic ratios. Or simply start comparing recipes for similar dishes from different books and notice the proportions yourself; it's that easy. But you don't need "Ratio" to tell you these things. It appears to be inspirational for a lot of people, but the basic ideas are simple, and I've already told you them here. Now go out and play with your own recipes -- you don't need Ruhlman's permission.

Two stars -- one for a generally good idea that people have forgotten about simple ratios in cooking, and one for the useful abbreviated chart. I would have given three stars, since there are more insights, but the poor organization of the writing and the many typographical errors make it undeserving.

Changes the way you think about food and cooking, June 12, 2009
I've been cooking without recipes for 20 years now, pretty much since I could reach the counter, and I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the fundamentals of home cooking.

Still, there are certain things that remained mystical. For some reason, we think of dough as something only a baker can make. It's not. It's 5 parts flour and 3 parts water. Home-made pies are too much trouble, right? Wrong. I can make a pie dough in less time than a typical TV commercial break (and now I know where the term 'easy as pie' came from). Homemade mayo is great, everyone knows that, but emulsions are hard to make and easy to break, right? Wrong. Just make sure you have the proper ratio of water to oil and you'll be fine (and you can easily re-emulsify if it does break).

If you're a novice in the kitchen, this book is going to really do a lot for you. You'll walk past the cake mixes and straight to the bags of flour. You'll find yourself never throwing leftovers away because leftovers+stock=fantastic soup. You'll transcend simple bread baking (which is still quite enjoyable) and discover the splendor of choux paste.

More importantly however, if you're very comfortable in the kitchen as I was, but still see a division between home cooking and fine cuisine, this is even more so the book for you. It will help bring things to your plate that you thought were reserved for the outer world. The best bread is the bread you bake. The best sauce is the sauce you dream up. The best soup is the one you made from scraps.

Of special note is the very important fact that everything in this book is not just possible, but it's easy as well. I am a big Alton Brown fan, and his endorsement of this book played a big part in my purchasing it, but ironically it was Alton himself that gave rise to much of my fear of trying to make certain types of food. As much as I love him, sometimes Alton makes things sound more complicated and delicate than they are. Ruhlman does the exact opposite and makes you realize just how simple most things are (or the foundations of those things at least). I've made some pretty bad stuff in my experiments so far, but the important thing is I know what made them bad and how to correct next time. I also understand how to manipulate ingredients to vary the results of the finished food (even when baking), which is priceless.

The bottom line is this: whether you're an experienced home cook or a slave to box mixes, you will learn a lot from Ratio and will be rewarded constantly. There hasn't been a Sunday morning since this book hit my door that hasn't been spent enjoying fresh, hot biscuits (3 parts flour, 1 part fat, 2 parts liquid; 5 minutes from brain to oven).

Enjoy.

Changed the way I cook-wish there was more, May 10, 2009
I LOVE this book, the ratios work! I haven't been able to put it down since I downloaded it to my Kindle. It is extremely freeing to go into the kitchen, armed with a ratio and whip up a batch of biscuits (which were wonderful even without chilling the dough), muffins, (also excellent) and bread(wonderful). I'm sure ratios are not new to professional chefs, however this book makes this information available forthe home cook.A rmed with just the knowledge of the correct ratios and a good understanding of technique you can do anything. This is NOT a book for beginners and it is not a "how to cook" book. I am an experienced, avid baker, and an average, less avid meal cook. Many of the instructions assume you are knowledgeable about cooking basics, there are many "cook until done" type instructions. The book does not purport to be a "how to cook" book. But if you are an experienced cook and know how to judge when a cookie or bread is done, this book will change the way you cook. The goal is to open the world of ratios to those cooks who want to expand their expertise beyond recipes. I have always been very "recipe dependent" but no more, this concept has freed me up to do what I want in the quantities I want. This has definitely changed the way I cook. I've made smaller batches, tried my own variations and everything works. The ratios rely on weighing ingredients so it is best to have a kitchen scale in order to make the ratios work. I have 2 caveats: You can't see the charts well on the Kindle edition, and I wish there were more ratios.

Engaging and inspiring, April 17, 2009
I grew up thinking that cooking was about recipes. My grandmother had to be using recipes, but when asked for one it might include instructions such as a couple of pinches of salt or a spoon of bacon grease. I assumed that she had a recipe. I suspect now that a lifetime of cooking had taught her instinctively to use ratios.

This presented me with quite a conundrum. When I started to make cornbread she was no longer around. How did she make it? My mom had some approximation, I could find a bazillion recipes. But how much flower to cornmeal? Milk, buttermilk, no milk? Eggs? Oil? My options became more confusing as I watched Alton Brown and I learned about substitutions. Eggs and avocados are compositionally very similar, they can be substituted for each other in some preparations. What!?! How can I ever make sense of this?

"Ratio" is a large piece of the solution to this part of the cooking puzzle. Michael Ruhlman in his latest book has taken much of the mystery of the why out of cooking. Cornbread, pancakes, or cookies are what they are because of the proportions of flour/cornmeal to fat to egg to liquid to sugar. So cornbread is cornbread whether it uses 1/2 C of flour and 1 1/2 of cornmeal or one of each. It is up to me to find the right flavors of the end result, but using the right ratios I should end up with cornbread.

Mr. Ruhlman is technically a good writer. But he is also interesting and engaging. Far too often technical books become dry recitations of recipes, techniques, and procedures. This is not the case with "Ratio". Some of the material that is presented may be repetitive, but that is what is necessary in a book like this. It is a book that you will read through once. But then you will want to keep it close for reference. When you do pick it up to look up how to make corned beef you do not want to have to go back and look at the canadian bacon section to determine what the purpose of sodium nitrate is.

There are many recipes presented, but they are just places to start. Included with the recipes are numerous variations designed to get the cook to think beyond the ratio and imagine what they could do to make the basic food into something different and extraordinary.

For me this book has opened up a new way of thinking about food. I am inspired and excited about and not quite as intimidated by things I have not tried because of it. It has expanded my cooking horizons and made me think. That is the best recommendation I can make for any book. It is very accessible and you will not be disappointed by it.

Great Concept!, April 17, 2009
This book makes so much sense! The section on stock alone is worth the price of the book. I'm encouraged me to make my own without having to contemplate hours and hours of careful tending. And I love being given the tools to be creative with doughs and batters without having to continually refer to a recipe.

Worth a read, wouldn't buy, May 20, 2009
I was very excited when I heard of this book. This is basiclly how I cook anyway. It is way longer than it should be. He states the same things over and over. There is no real flow to the book. I found it dry and clinical. The ratios themselves are fine. I honestly wish there was less chat so it would be straight on to the ratios. The book could have easily been half the size and still had the same content.

It's a CRAFT!, April 17, 2009
Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking

Michael Ruhlman has done it again! Another insightful, fun to read, book about the CRAFT of cooking.

Ever since I became a professional cook I had been hearing about the culinary ARTS. This book makes the point of describing and teaching about the real basics of cooking, the CRAFT ingredient. With a scale, the right ingredients, and this book you will learn the basics of kitchen ratios that have been around for ages. The scale is optional of course, but it will make ratios a whole lot easier to master. Then after learning the craft, and learning the technique just beyond the ratio, you can then learn the ART. The ART of flavoring the dish you have created with the ratio.

I've already purchased 4 copies. One for my own use in the kitchen, another signed version by the author, and 2 more going to the libraries of two culinary arts programs.

Wonderful work Michael ... Read more

Editorial Review

The cast-iron skillet is the original gourmet-cooking tool. This cookbook aims to show modern cooks how this inexpensive cast iron tool is the best pan in their kitchen. Fusing new and traditional recipes and gathering farm-fresh produce and ingredients, the authors show cooks how to make delicious food in this versatile skillet. Recipes include: Succulent Seared Pork Chops with Plum-Mustard-Cornichon Sauce; Dutch Baby (puffed pancake with lemon and powdered sugar); Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Radicchio; and Warm Pear Upside Down Cake. ... Read more

Reviews

Comfort Food with the Undisputed King of Comfort Cooking, January 14, 2005
`The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook' by mother and daughter, Sharon Kramis and Julie Kramis Hearne, has roots deep in American culinary tradition based on both the subject and the fact that Kramis senior is a James Beard prot�g� from Beard's western cooking lessons. Based on the Beard / West Coast connection, the authors get a very nice blurb from senior Beard assistant Marion Cunningham.

This is very much of a `comfort food' rather than a `gourmet' oriented book, with many of the potential weaknesses to which this kind of book can fall prey. The best thing about this book is that in spite of some weaknesses in keeping on message, this is a really nice book to have if you like cooking with cast iron cookware.

The most obvious weakness in the book is that even though both the title and the subtitle, `Recipes for the Best Pan in Your Kitchen' suggest that the book is all about the classic ten (10) to twelve (12) inch skillet, the book actually contains recipes for a wide range of cast iron ware, including Dutch ovens, grills, griddles, popover pans, and special molds.

The thing I miss most in this book is a clear explanation of why the seasoned cast iron skillet is better for some tasks than any other cookware material. My understanding is that well seasoned cast iron has the non-stick advantages of a Teflon coated pan without the weakness of teflon in giving a good sear or good color to saut�ed protein. Cast iron is not as responsive to heat changes as copper or aluminum, but this is its strong point when it comes to maintaining heat when you add room temperature or cold food to a hot pan. This advantage is especially good when you are cooking on an electric range, where the power to the heating coil turns on and off to maintain a particular level of heat. Thus, the heat in a pan on an electric element may fluctuate much more widely than the same pot on a gas burner. Another advantage is that cast iron is both virtually indestructible and unwarpable. So, a carefully maintained pan is good for one or more lifetimes, at least. According to Alton Brown's excellent `Gear for Your Kitchen', the down side of cast iron is that it is just a bit brittle so that it can literally shatter if dropped hard enough and it is prone to corrosion. It is also highly susceptible to rust, leading to pitting. And, if your seasoning is less than perfect, an acidic dish can easily leach iron from the pot, leading to an unpleasant taste.

It you limit yourself to the recipes for the skillet, you may also feel that many of the recipes are not necessarily optimized in a cast iron skillet. While the cast iron pan is a real champ in saut�ing, browning, and cooking quickbreads such as pancakes, I think it's advantages really do not come into play when you are frying in oil or braising. While the authors briefly allude to enameled ware, I personally find that good enameled cast iron may be as good or better than bare cast iron for braising, especially the French `bistro pans' (flat two handled saute' pan shapes with heavy lids) and marmites (large casseroles with heavy lids). The authors' recipes clearly exceed their material when they give dishes such as a paella for which there are classic pan shapes and materials which are not cast iron.

The recipes in this book are almost all relatively simple, with `just enough' detail to enable an experienced amateur cook to be able to execute them. These are not gourmet recipes. They are `good enough' for easy home cooking. This means the recipes include some probably mistaken cooking lore such as the notion that searing protein seals in moisture. It also includes instructions with almost comically mistaken statements such as the Pecan Sticky Buns recipe which instructs us to put the ingredients into a mixing bowl with a dough hook attachment. This will be easily understood by most to be referring to an electric mixer and attachment, but it demonstrates Sasquatch Books typical weaknesses in copy editing.

On the positive side, I am really willing to accept the authors' opinion that a good cast iron pan is an excellent substitute for a wok for stir fried recipes. A cast iron pan will never go higher than the maximum temperature of the burner, but it will maintain a high temperature better than a thinner pan or a pan of more highly conductive material.

The selection of recipes is wide enough so that this little book will go a long way toward filling several different cooking application niches. The two most useful applications by far are the recipes for breakfast and for outdoor cooking. In fact, the authors would have done well to devoting more space to outdoor cooking, as cooking over an open fire is where cast iron can really come into its own. And, the book does not limit itself to all the conventional classics. Some of the more interesting recipes for breakfast are the Dutch baby and the savory Dutch baby, both of which are dishes that fill the pan. Other dishes that fill the pan such as apple tarts and skillet breads are just the thing to have handy for outdoor cookery.

There are some breads that I would not do in cast iron. I have reservations about an Irish soda bread getting the right kind of heat when baked in a pan with 3 inch high sides. The scones recipe is also a little suspect for the same reasons. The scones recipe is also suspect in that it calls for margarine instead of butter or lard and incorporates this fat with an electric mixer, where most pastry experts would call for the fat to be worked in carefully with the fingers or a pastry cutter.

Best cookbook purchase in a while!, March 21, 2006
This is the best cookbook I have purchased in a long time. I own a couple of hundred cookbooks and I had originally purchased this for my son. Now I have my own copy and have tried 70% of the recipes. The meatloaf is great, so is the stirfry. Love the apple cake as well. Get it, you won't be sorry.

delicious, April 14, 2005
The Chicken with Calvados and Apples was delicious. I made it along with the Rosemary Roasted potatoes, and it was an excellent dinner enjoyed by my girlfriend and I. The recipes are simple to create, clearly written, ingredients are readily available, and the flavors of the dishes are outstanding. You can certainly do these recipes using something other than cast iron, but the cast iron is part of the "fun".

Like having a cooking expert standing next to me while I learn to cook, January 10, 2008
I've always thought of cast iron cookware as too much trouble to bother with and way to heavy. I actually bought this book to help me come up with some ideas for my electric skillet! But - after reading her opening chapter on how to choose cast iron, how to season it, how to care for it I was hooked. I immediately went out to the local Ace hardware store and purchased my first cast iron skillet. That was a month ago. Thanks to the excellent writing, I no longer fear cast iron. I am confident about seasoning it (I never understood what that was for!), cleaning it, caring for it.

Now for the good news - these ladies can cook! And - they can pass along that knowledge through the written word. I keep trying the recipes in this book and am enjoying them. And - because I'm no longer afraid of cast iron cookware, I'm not afraid to expirament on my own. LOL - I tossed out my old teflon coated crap and ordered two more lodge cookware pieces - all because of this book.

Be prepared to be amazed, as this amazing cookbook takes you from simple food done well to gourmet food. From breakfast through dinner and dessert. The book also has an excellent list of sources at the end of the book for cookware, special ingredients, etc.

To the authors - a huge thank you from a recent cast iron convert. To you who might be considering this book - the recipes are wonderful. You could make them in any skillet it's just that after reading it you'll understand why cast iron can really make a difference in your cooking. At last - I finally understand why my mothers treasured possession is a 100 year old cast iron skillet that belonged to her grandmother!

HAPPY COOKING ONE AND ALL

The ultimate cookware, May 10, 2008
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The introduction of the book is dedicated to cast iron pan itself; selection, care and use. The rest of the book is recipes that use the cast iron pan. With cast iron, all you need is the basics to get started and lots of practice.

The soda bread recipe brought me back to my childhood in grandma's kitchen, that alone is worth the price of this book.

My favorite recipe was the Rose-Mary Crusted Rack of Lamb, and there are several others.

Yummy Garlic Crab, April 6, 2005
If you've never owned an iron skillet, this book will make you want to run right out and buy one. I do own several iron skillets, so when I saw this book touted in the New York Times last winter, I knew I had to have it. I used two skillets for a double portion of the garlic roasted crab recipe, and the dish was the hit of a dinner party. Not to mention incredibly easy. What fun!

Awesome, March 17, 2007
Bought some enameled cast iron pots (Lodge, and at a steep discount at a superstore) and after cooking some tried and true recipes with them, decided to expand my horizons and buy a cookbook just for the cast iron pots. I read the reviews and looked at some other cast iron cookbooks before I went to Barnes and Nobles to check it out. Loved how the simple and attractive the book was and really liked how they sounded.

Made my first meal from the book tonight and I love it! Going on another reviewer's suggestion, I made the Chicken and Apples and Roasted Rosemary Potatoes. Worked out fabulously, even though I refused to buy the Calvados for the chicken/apple dinner. Instead I used a much cheaper brandy and a quality apple cider as a substitute, mixing them half and half. It was still absolutely delicious. My college age son even said that I had to show him how to make it before he moved out on his own, lol. That alone says a lot. The rosemary potatoes were good and simple to make.

Very happy with it all. I'm planning on trying the pomegranite glazed lamb chops next with the skillet roasted asparagus.

the best cook book I own!, May 11, 2008
I have literally bought hundreds of products from Amazon over the past several years and this is the first I've taken the time to write a review for. The recipes in this cook book use basic ingredients that are most likely already in your Kitchen. I've created about half of the recipes and I can easily say that at least 10 are regulars in my meals already. I am now a huge fan of my cast iron pan and this cookbook!

Recipes look great but the title is deceiving., June 30, 2008
Yes, the recipes seem delicious and the one I made tasted great, but I bought this as a cast iron SKILLET cookbook - for the best PAN in my kitchen (just like the name says). In reality only about three quarters of the recipes utilise a standard 12" cast iron skillet - the rest call for a deep skillet, a dutch oven, specialist pans such as ebelskivers or an 8" or 10" pan as opposed to the 12" pan that I own. (For the record, I don't know what would actually happen if you tried the 8" or 10" recipes with the 12" pan but the recipes which specify the smaller pan sizes are generally egg-based or baked so I imagine it's important to use the correct size).

Simply delicious, November 10, 2005
I'm a beginning-intermediate cook and I think I'll be able to make about half of the recipes in this book, but no matter what, it's totally charming--the writers really care about food, seasoning and eating! In particular, I'm so happy about the "Dutch baby," which is what my mother always called a "Dutch pancake." She makes it in a pie plate, but I have the feeling it's going to be amazing in my new old Griswold skillet. Mmmm! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Demystify the sushi bar experience

Stuffed with tips and tricks -- you’ll roll, press, and mold sushi like a pro!

From rolling sushi properly to presenting it with pizzazz, thisbook has everything you need to know to impress your friends withhomemade maki-sushi (rolls) and nigiri-sushi (individualpieces). You’ll find over 55 recipes from Tuna Sushi Rice Ballsto Rainbow Rolls, plus handy techniques to demystify the art of sushimaking -- and make it fun!

Discover how to:

• Find the right equipment and ingredients
• Understand the special language of sushi
• Make fragrant sushi rice
• Prepare vegetarian and fish-free recipes
• Dish up sushi-friendly drinks and side dishes

Reviews

Everything about sushi, from A to Z!, April 1, 2004
Wow. I just finished reading Sushi For Dummies, and was amazed at just how much I learned. The authors have created what must be THE most complete and detailed guide to sushi available anywhere at any price -- and they have done so in a highly readable way, with just the right amount of humor. If you've ever been curious about sushi -- all the different ingredients and styles of sushi, how to make proper sushi rice (an important step in the process, which merits an entire chapter in this book), safe handling techniques, cutting and storing, history and traditions, proper sushi bar etiquette, and much, much more, then you will do no better than buying this book. Five stars!

The best sushi making instructions, June 9, 2005
After getting tired of spending $8 for two pieces of sushi at the local sushi bar, I decided to learn to make sushi at home.

I was not interested in spending the next 20 years learning to become a master sushi chef (or "itamae" in Japanese). I just wanted to have some good sushi without paying a fortune for what was basically nothing more than a couple tablespoons of rice and salmon roe.

I ordered and read several sushi books, including Sushi for Dummies. As a basic primer for learning how make sushi, this book can't be beat. Sushi is all about the rice, and hands down, the author has the clearest and easiest description of how to accomplish this task. It is like she is right there in your kitchen telling you exactly how to cook the rice (including soaking it beforehand, something other books neglected to mention) and what proportion of vinegar/sake to use.

The other instructions are equally superb. How to roll both traditional nori covered, and "inside out" sushi, and how to form cone sushi are all easy to understand and follow along.

Because I just wanted to learn how to make sushi, I skipped all the intro and history stuff. However, this information is included in case anyone else is interested.

Once you learn how make and roll sushi, it's time to look at some recipes. Admittedly, I have not yet tried any of the sushi recipes in this book, but intend to do so in the future. In the meantime, I did try some of the exotic recipes in D.K.'s Sansei Sushi from Hawaii, a book which I highly recommend.

Look out! Here comes the Sushi expert..., April 14, 2004
After purchasing the book and reading a few of the recipes, I decided to give some of them a try for dinner. The instructions were so easy that I pulled off a sushi dinner for my family that they thought I had practiced making for days. I have taken a sushi making course before, but having the book with me while making dinner proved to be a much needed aid and I am glad I made the small investment. I have also been enjoying the other areas of the book that talk about Sushi Bar manners/etiquette, terms and definitions, and sushi party planning. Most cookbooks I have purchased are just used for recipies and not for reading or cultural education. This dummies book is actually interesting to read from cover to cover and gives the reader more depth than other cookbooks.

Sushi demystified, April 9, 2004
This book actually gives you enough information to go to a sushi bar and NOT be a barbarian. It's easy to read and understand, and well organized. If you want to go the extra mile and prepare your own sushi, the directions are clear and easy to follow, with tons of side information (like how to know if the fish is REALLY fresh) and fun ideas. I found the part on correctly making the vinegared rice especially helpful, and the diagrams on how to cut things are great! There is also a section on manners which I found fascinating. This book is interesting as well as useful!

Simply the best, May 16, 2004
As a sushi fan and amateur chef, I've struggled with this simple but challenging fare for years. This is the handbook I've always wanted. Concise, user friendly, smart and entertaining - here is the book that we've been waiting for.
I'm giving copies to friends and keeping mine right by my chopping block and rice cooker.

I don't feel so dumb any more!, April 27, 2004
This book is terrific. Sushi is all about technique and the authors have managed to convey those techniques clearly and simply. It demystifies the process and explains all those Japanese terms that I can never remember. I only wish it were bigger (next edition, Wiley???)

No Longer A Dummy!, April 10, 2004
I have been a sushi lover for some time now and have just recently realized that I have been a dummy when it came to how vast and versatile sushi really is. (I never thought about having fruit, cheese, or guacamole as ingredients). This book has so many great recipes, I can't try them fast enough. And who would have thought that it is this easy? Beyond the recipes I love all the history and information on Japanese culture. This book was truely enjoyable to read and will be of permanent use in my kitchen!

"For Dummies" marches on!, May 30, 2007
This is the first "For Dummies" book I've seen with pictures. It's a nice try, but I wouldn't make this my only sushi cookbook. The explanations are pretty good and well in keeping with the "for dummies" tradition. I think sometimes they waffle a little bit on principles (saying one thing, but then admitting that they do it another way).

After reading reviews for this rather unlikely book and for another book with reputedly superb photography, I elected to purchase both and I wasn't disappointed: the other book with the amazing illustrations wasn't expensive and the two really complement each other: The Complete Book Of Sushi! The price is right: buy both.

Like having a teacher right with you, November 9, 2006
I loved this book. I have bought other sushi books that SAY they can teach you sushi, but end up just being picture books of one style. This book has all of the favourites from the restaurants and an outstanding set of directions for how to CUT the sashimi! This is the only book you will ever need.

Well-written and informative, April 3, 2007
I used this book to make sushi over the weekend and found it to be very instructive and simple to use (as well as humorous and pleasant to read). I followed the directions for making the rice on the stove top and it turned out perfect! The detailed maki-rolling instructions/diagrams were easy to follow, and my rolls ended up looking (and tasting) great! My friends were all impressed. I also learned a ton about the cultural aspects of sushi that I didn't know before, and I considered myself fairly knowledgable.

The only reason I give four stars instead of five is that I didn't feel there were enough recipes for different types of rolls, or nearly enough pictures. But the focus of this book is on technique and the process of making sushi (not necessarily recipes) and for that it was invaluable. I plan to purchase another book to use solely for recipes.

Side Note: The only other special equipment I purchased was the Joyce Chen Sushi Mat and Rice Paddle Set. You can make great sushi using the techniques in this book without buying a lot of extra kitchen gadgets. I turned my rice out onto a large plastic bowl and it worked great. ... Read more

Editorial Review

For thousands of years humans have enjoyed the taste and nutrition of fermented foods and drinks. We rely on the transformative, almost magical power of fermentation to preserve and improve all sorts of food, making them tastier, more digestible, and more appealing. Author Sandor Katz takes readers on a whirlwind trip through the wild world of fermentation. The book is divided into chapters that focus on particular types of food and Katz provides readers with delicious recipes-—some familiar, others exotic—-that are easy to make at home, including vegetable krauts and kimchis; sourdough breads and pancakes; miso and tempeh; beers, wines, and meads; yogurt and cheeses.

The recipes provide a veritable smorgasbord of tastes, like homemade tempeh, sauerkraut, and borscht, along with a basic description of yogurt and cheese-making, complete with vegan alternatives.Whether you prefer to wash down your meal with Elderberry wine or Nepalese rice beer, there's something here to satisfy any palate.

Katz, a leading expert on the history of these foods, has written a revolutionary and informative culinary guide he calls "a cultural manifesto." He has experimented with many forms of fermentation and has developed and collected a wide range of techniques and recipes from around the world. ... Read more

Reviews

Wild Fermentation, September 15, 2003
This is the only cookbook that I know of that you will read from cover to cover. It is not the dry "do this in this order" kind of book, it walks with you on your culinary endevors like your mom or grandma would, telling you stories along the way, including the secrets that make not just sourdough bread, but unforgettable sourdough bread.

Sandor doesn't just tell us, he shows us, how to be self-sufficient about making and storing food (with little need for a stove or a refrigerator): making sourdough, cheese, miso, making tempeh, making wine, beer and, it seems, almost every other fermented food made the world over. And he gives you a list of resources where you can order the most mundane and exotic of starter cultures and even seaweed from our own Atlantic coast.

And your concept of "self" will never be the same again. He shows us how to reclaim and restore a part of ourselves that has protected us like the ozone layer protects the earth: the world of microbes in and around us, the protective cloak of the microecology that is meant to be a part of us like our skin.

Fermented foods restore a health balance like no probiotics and vitamins can. Happy reading, happy fermenting, happy eating!

viva fermented foods!, October 29, 2003
To refer to this as a 'cookbook' is disingenuous; it's a book about life and living foods! Having first read through a 20-ish page xeroxed copy of Katz' guide to fermented foods, I welcomed the increased breadth and volume covered in this published edition. I especially appreciate the cited references, although some works are relied on too heavily and there is a relative dearth of scientific citations. That said, there are some and the critique is balanced by the realization that Western science and nutrition have not been overly interested in such topics. A friend with Krohn's disease is hopeful it will help him to find foods he can more easily digest. Katz' book is an unconventional guide to storing foods with methods proven useful over centuries of preservation....and years in his own kitchen. It's detailed, thought provoking and contains a host of colorful characters worth reading about all on their own. It gets four stars because I look forward to a 2nd edition - thanks for a fine book!

OH So Good!!!, December 2, 2005
I love this book! I've tried a few of the recipes and just love the results! I can't believe none of the "back to nature" type books and publications I read talk about the simple and healthful ways of preserving food through fermentation!

Sandor does a fantastic job of taking the mystery and careful measuring out of fermentation. Most of the recipes I've read for fermentation say you must follow the recipe exactly or risk food poisoning. I'd rather play around with the recipes, so this is just perfect for me! I'm also impressed with his research into traditional recipes.

I just read that kimchi may cure Avian Flu, and the recipe in this book is a fantastic hit here! We use it as salad dressing with some sesame oil!

This is the cookbook of my dreams!, October 8, 2003
This cookbook has all the mundane and esoteric recipes I've ever wanted to own but have not been able to find all in one glorious place. Non-vinegar pickled pickles? It's there. Amazake? No problem! Kimchee? Likewise! And it's all written in a very intelligent, humorous and engaging manner with short and entertaining anecdotes that do not go on forever or stray far afield. **This book is a gem.** I recently attended a cooking class conducted by the author, who is just as amazing as his cookbook. He is full of energy and enthusiasm for spreading the gospel of these traditional and oh-so-nourishing foods. I own about 60 cookbooks, by the way, and this book is in my top five. I can't say enough good things about it. Buy this book!

Highly Recommended Modern Treatment of Ancient Technique, June 26, 2004
`Wild Fermentation' by Sandor Ellix Katz appears like a living fossil of the sixties counterculture, surfacing after forty years of being both shaped and scarred by the currents and tides of the last forty years. The author is a member of a very sixties hippie influenced rural community whose lifestyle seems to be grown directly from the soil laid down by `The Whole Earth Catalogue', `Easy Rider', `Alice's Restaurant', and the Hog Farm, but without any trace of the Merry Pranksters' antics or inclinations towards mind-altering drugs. The shaping of the last forty years is seen in the author's being HIV positive AIDs infected young man with a major interest in sharing his passion for fermented foods with the rest of the world through modern publishing and scholarly rigor.

Fermented food products are probably much more common in our lives today than they have been since the advent of the processed foods industry. And, this is a fact that even the average foodie may not be conscious. A quick inventory of fermented foods commonly used in modern American homes will show how widespread they have become.

The most obvious fermented product is beer, which has always been with us. Their cousins, wines and meads are also the product of fermentation. Virtually all cheeses are produced by fermentation, and our interest in and consumption of artisinal cheeses is rising fast. Yogurt is a close cousin of cheeses and consumption of yogurt has been rising since the early seventies. Sauerkraut and Choucroute have been with us since the beginning, but Asian fermented cabbage such as Kimchee and other fermented vegetables are becoming more popular. Pickles have also been a part of western cuisine for millennia Another part of the increasing interest in Asian foods is an increase in consumption of miso and tempeh, both from fermented soybeans. Asian fermented fish sauces from Thailand and Vietnam are also much more common today than they were 50 years ago. The granddaddy of fermented foods for Western cultures is yeast bread, especially sourdough breads.

Fermentation has at least four beneficial results, two of which have been known since prehistoric times. The first and most important effect is that fermentation is a method of natural preservation by the creation of acetic acid (acid in vinegar) or lactic acid (acid from milk sugar). The second, represented most clearly by the brewing of beer, is in the action of microorganisms on sugars to produce ethanol (alcohol in beer, wine, and liquor). The third is based on our physiological salivation response to acidic foods, or even the anticipation of acidic foods, thereby making the mouth feel of these foods more succulent by the combination of natural food moisture and our own saliva. Ancients may have sensed the last beneficial result, but it probably has not been fully realized until the 20th century. This is the ability of fermentation to break down foods which were hard to digest into different products which are both easier to digest and more nutritious. The two best examples of this action are the conversion of soy carbohydrates into miso and the conversion of milk into yogurt.

All of this has made fermentation into a darling of vegan advocates, as it broadens the range of useable non-animal protein and makes it all more palatable. It has also made fermentation into a favorite of alternate lifestyle nutritionists such as Sally Fallon, the author of the excellent book `Nourishing Traditions' who supplied a Foreword to this book. Fermentation is also one of the hallmarks of the slow food movement. Aside from the North African method for preserving lemons, I know of no other culinary methods that take as long to complete.

Anyone who has made pickles, sourdough bread, or beer should have a very good idea of the times involved in fermentation. And this doesn't even get into some of the olfactory `delights' that accompany the process of fermentation.

The author covers all of the types of fermentation mentioned above, devoting the greatest amount of space to vegetable, bean, and dairy fermentation. Bakers should not miss the lesser attention paid to breads, as for every book on yogurt, pickles, and kraut, there are ten books which cover artisinal baking with its sourdough sponges, poolishs, and begas.

On the political front, the most active issue regarding fermentation is the issue of unpasteurized cheeses being imported into or made in the United States. It is truly ironic that the home of Louis Pasteur relishes their raw cheeses while the squeaky-clean US won't let it in.

Aside from the thoroughly careful presentation the author gives of his material, the veracity of the book is strengthened by the extensively footnoted research behind his statements and the fact that the fruits of fermentation are essential to the lifestyle of the author and his comrades at their rural homestead. The similarity to both the hippie counterculture doctrines and the Amish lifestyle are unmistakable. One would almost take them for being scions of the Amish except for the names cited in the acknowledgments that I found myself checking against the names of the communities' goats. We owe this book in part to humans who go by the names Echo, Nettles, Leopard, Orchid, Spark, Book Mark, and Ravel Weaver.

I also thank Echo, Nettles, Leopard, et al and author Sandor Ellis Katz for this deeply thought out exposition of a pervasive and growing part of the modern culinary and nutritional environment.

This book may not be for everyone, or even for every foodie, but if anything I said sounds a chord in your psyche, I recommend you get a copy of this book and read it carefully.

There is no guide better than this one!!, January 31, 2004
This book is trully awesome. My husband has Crohn's disease which affects his digestive system and he was told that he needed to recolonize his gut with good bacteria and one of the ways is to eat fermented vegetables. This book guided me thru the process joyously and easily. Well researched and fun to read. Recipes for all kinds of vegies, dairy ferments and breads. Makes you pine for the simpler life in an intentional community.

Not a "Flip Open and Cook" Kind of Book, April 11, 2010
While the introductions to the chapters and the recipes definitely catch my interest and make me want to prepare these recipes, I am finding over and over again that the recipes are not written in a way where you could flip to the page and go.

Frequently, the instructions refer in an unclear manner to a different recipe that you need to follow in part, but make some changes.

Other times one of the ingredients is a recipe in itself, but no page number is given for where to find these extra instructions. For instance, many recipes call for "honey water," but give no information about how to prepare "honey water" or where in the book to find this concoction, leaving you to page through and search for it. Once you find honey water, you find that it is in a recipe for honey wine. Are the the recipes that call for "honey water" intending for you to use the ingredients from this honey wine recipe or use the final product? No answer is apparent.

I feel like I will have to re-write each of these recipes to include their FULL INSTRUCTIONS to make them user friendly. I don't know whether this was a choice made to save space, a sign of a disorganized mind, or simple laziness on the part of the author.

The stuff of life, January 17, 2004
I didn't expect how much I'd get into this when I picked it up, but Sandor's writing is clear and engaging and the subject is universal. I love that he talks about the history and the culture of fermentation alongside the concrete details of just making it work yourself with the kinds of things you have at hand.

It's true that fermentation is a fundamental chemical process that human beings have used for thousands of years to make food edible and tasty, but we've lost touch with that when we peel back the plastic on store-bought food. We've also forgotten the magical transformations involved, and this book lets you do that for yourself. Now I just have to find a good crock somewhere.

Awesome, October 19, 2005
I love this book, I have made sourdough bread and ginger beer. They both turned out great. I am now looking to make kimchi and sauerkraut. Recipes are easy to follow and taste great. Love it.

For those looking for an introduction to fermenting, April 9, 2005
In response to the two-star reviewer...could you direct me to the pages where you found those anecdotes and transexual behavior? Because I've had the book for a few days, read most of it, and didn't find any of those anecdotes. I skimmed through the whole book to check, and I didn't find any. The closest he comes to doing so is describing his experiences in dealing with AIDS, and how his passion for fermented foods have aided him in this process. That's far off from anecdotes about sexual behavior. Maybe you were reading an earlier edition of the book.

Anyways, I like this book because it addresses all of the subconscious thoughts that I had about fermentation, such as why we ferment foods, how we discovered the process, and the subjectivity of distinctions between foods fermented to perfection and rotten foods. Most of all, I like how he encourages us to experiment and tells us that fermentation does not require precision and control, as others may tell us. The simplest recipe in the book involves leaving fresh apple cider out. I also like his desire for us to recycle foods as much as possible, such as by making fruit peel vinegars. He gives us about fifty recipes, which includes all of the popular items, such as sauerkraut, miso, and beer, along with a few more obscure ones, and he encourages us to experiment with these. Although over half of the book seems to be anecdotes and stories, they give helpful knowledge for anyone new to fermentation. You may find his writings on the analogy of fermentation to cultural revolution and the process of life cheesy. (Damn, I spent more time on this review than I wanted to.) ... Read more

Editorial Review

Amazon.com Review Fall into Cooking Featured Recipe: Roasted Pork Loin with Wild Mushrooms, Garlic, and Sage Pan Jus from Eric Ripert’s Avec Eric

This recipe was inspired by my visit to Tuscany and the flavors of the autumn season that were so prevalent while I was there. Searing the pork loin to lock in the juices keeps the meat moist, and the rich pan sauce is made using the drippings from the roasted pork along with the earthy mushrooms. I like to put the garlic cloves in the pan with their skins still on so they sort of roast inside their case; the result is tender roasted garlic. --Eric Ripert

Serves 4

Ingredients

PORK LOIN AND JUS
1 (2-pound) pork loin, trimmed
2tablespoons olive oil
1garlic head, cloves separated, unpeeled
3sage sprigs
2bay leaves, lightly crushed
¼ cup dry white wine
½cup chicken stock
– fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

MUSHROOMS
12ounces assorted wild mushrooms, such as morels, porcini, chanterelles and/or oyster mushrooms
2tablespoons canola oil
2tablespoons butter
1small shallot, finely minced
2teaspoons finely minced garlic
2thyme sprigs
– fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions

Using kitchen string, tie the pork loin once lengthwise and then crosswise, spacing each tie 1 inch apart. Season the pork generously with salt and pepper.

Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Carefully add the pork loin to the hot pan and sear on all sides until golden, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add the whole garlic cloves. Lower the heat, cover, and continue roasting until medium, about 25 to 30 minutes. Check the doneness of the pork loin by inserting a meat thermometer into the center of the loin; it should register 150°F (it will continue cooking while resting). Transfer the loin to a cutting board and let rest. Reserve the sauté pan.

Meanwhile, prepare the mushrooms: trim and clean all of the mushrooms. Heat the oil and butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the shallot, garlic and thyme, and cook until the shallot softens, about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and sauté until the mushrooms are tender and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Heat the pan (reserved from the pork) over medium heat. Add the sage and bay leaves, and deglaze the pan with the white wine. Simmer to reduce the wine by half, then add the chicken stock and bring to a simmer to lightly reduce again. Add the sautéed mushrooms to the sauce and remove from the heat; set the mushrooms and sauce aside for about 5 minutes to infuse.

Slice the pork loin crosswise into 1-inch-thick slices and lay 3 slices on each of 4 plates. Spoon the mushrooms over and around the pork loin, spoon the jus around, and serve immediately.

Gail Simmons:When did you decide that cooking was something that you wanted to pursue?

Eric Ripert:I always had a passion for eating and being in the kitchen and looking at cookbooks.I was a weak student, and my teachers told me that I needed to find a profession that would allow me to build on my strengths.I was fifteen at the time I decided to become a chef.

Gail Simmons:People come to Le Bernardin for the ultimate dining experience, but Avec Eric was created for the passionate home cook. Is there any advice you can give the home cook about how they should approach these recipes?

Eric Ripert:I was thinking like a home cook who invited friends to my home for a simple meal, following the seasons and using those ingredients to create one amazing experience that would allow me to mingle, eat and drink with my guests. The recipes and ingredients always reflect a place and the inspiration I took away from that place.On the show, we talk a lot about respecting the ingredients, the seasons, and the people who are providing those ingredients, from farmers and fisherman to hunters and butchers.

Gail Simmons:It’s one thing when a chef has the opportunity to go out and meet the farmers and place big orders and think locally and seasonally but if I’m cooking at home, how can I embrace those philosophies?

Eric Ripert:It depends on where you live! If you live in New York, we often find that we are disconnected from our food sources, but, even here, there are farmer’s markets available to us.We can establish relationships with these people, who make the effort to come with their harvests, and we can ask them to give us tips about using these ingredients in the kitchen. Even if you go to a big market, you can talk to the butcher and ask him questions that will help you at home.If you can share that special moment, it can be fun and inspiring, with the opportunity to cook with ingredients that you may otherwise have not dared to touch.

Gail Simmons:How did you decide to make Avec Eric?Where did the original idea come from?

Eric Ripert:I wanted to do some television and demystify where inspiration comes from for a chef.When we produced the show with Anomaly, we decided that we would introduce the audience to the kitchen of Le Bernardin and show them the behind-the-scenes work; travel to inspiring locations and share the interaction with growers, farmers, fisherman, and hunters; and finally return to my home kitchen and cook a fresh, simple dish inspired by my travel.

Gail Simmons:How did you come to decide what pieces of your kitchen you would show everyone?

Eric Ripert:For me, the saucier lives in the most sacred place in the kitchen because the combination of knowledge and wisdom makes someone a true saucier.It’s all about displaying the craft, using strong knife skills, learning how to sauté a fish, and more.You don’t measure flavors.They are in the mind, and then they are transformed into a remarkable sauce by the combination of complex flavors. I wanted to show how the saucier is creating complex flavors with different ingredients and maintaining them in a dish with big flavor.

Gail Simmons:What is your favorite recipe in the book?

Eric Ripert:I always go back to ones that remind me of my grandmother and were inspired by her, Tarragon and Citrus-Honey Vinaigrette and Roasted Chicken with Za’Atar Stuffing, among many others.

Gail Simmons:Was it your hope for this book that, for example, if I never get to Chianti or have the opportunity to hunt wild boar, this book could provide a small window of inspiration?

Eric Ripert:If you cannot get to these places, you can dream about them.Someday, you might visit or you might have a similar experience that will remind you about the times that you have used and enjoyed this book in the kitchen. You can create excitement by going into your kitchen and cooking something from your own experience, whatever it is, even if it is not one from far away.

Gail Simmons:It sounds like this book is a template of your stories, along with the instructions for going into the kitchen and creating the stories on your own.

Eric Ripert:Yes, exactly.If you are a beginner cook, I encourage you to follow the recipes and menu suggestions. If you are a more experienced cook, you should feel free to substitute other fresh ingredients for those that I suggest in the recipes. This book should represent the beginning of your culinary adventures in your kitchen. The recipes are simple and can be modified if you don’t have certain ingredients.If you want to make salad and you don’t have Romaine lettuce, then you can use Boston lettuce.Be passionate in the kitchen and let my inspirations guide your own.

Gail Simmons:When you’re away from your home, what food do you crave the most?

Eric Ripert:If it’s on the weekend, I crave meat because I eat fish all week!

Gail Simmons:What’s your favorite way of eating meat?Eric Ripert:The Whole Roasted Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Butter Sauce or Seared Skirt Steak and Spinach Salad with Red Wine-Shallot Vinaigrette are two great choices from Avec Eric.

More Recipe Excerpts from Avec Eric

Deviled Eggs with Smoked Salmon

Grape, Almond and Radicchio Salad with Black Olives

Seared Salmon with Sautéed Pea Shoots and Ginger-Soy Vinaigrette

Reviews

Chefwife review of Avec Eric, December 1, 2010
Avec Eric: A Culinary Journey with Eric Ripert , by Eric Ripert, $34.95, Hardcover (Wiley)

original post: [...]

I have put off writing this review for almost a month now. Out of fear. The minute I received this book, I was mesmerized. The "culinary journey" begins with a foreword by Anthony Bourdain. In the beginning, one may possibly assume that this is going to be another mediocre book thrown together and sold based on a name. Far from it.

The book takes you from the kitchen of Le Bernardin, to Love Apple Farm in California, to Tomales Bay, Tuscany, Caymen Islands, and back again. With the journey comes over 100 recipes ranging from seaweed to beef tartar, and everything in between. The recipes and the trip that you are taken on is proof of how, and why, Chef Ripert has managed to maintain a four star review for over 20 years.

About the Book:
In my initial opinion, the recipes were geared to a middle or advanced cook. I felt lost. In hind sight, it is geared to everyone, including beginners....I just felt insecure about cooking some of the dishes. The mix of the recipes is fantastic. Drinks, seafood, beef, salads, etc. Most people cook only 5-10 recipes from any given cookbook. This one is a "full cooker". I have tagged an additional 30 or so, after the 3 I cooked for this review. The only drawback, and I use that term loosely, is that a handful of ingredients may not be easy to find in some areas. Not impossible; just not easy.

The photography gives you the feeling that you are looking through a personal vacation album. Chef Ripert is smiling in every picture and it is certainly not a wonder why. There is food, wine, ocean, boats, bonfires, cigars, oils, cheeses, and culture. The most important is culture. The photography completely grasps the culture of the journeys.

My favorite is the "Family Meal at Le Bernardin". Its a simple photo of the tradition of the family meal time at Le Bernardin. Between prep and dinner service the staff shares a meal together. Something to admire.

Considering the Holidays are knocking on our door, I would highly suggest this as a gift. This is a book that will be cherished by any cook. Mine hasn't left my kitchen since the day I got it.

So again, as I stated in a previous post, Thank you Chef Ripert. You have summoned the confidence in me. And thank you for allowing a peek into your "strangely enchanted world".

More about Avec Eric - [...]


My dabble into two of the recipes ~ Turned out phenomenal and one that will be prepared numerous times in the future.
[...]

Check out City Harvest - working to bring together New York's top chefs and restaurateurs to raise funds and increase the quality and quantity of food donations to New York's neediest.

"He's one of the world's best chefs." ~ Anthony Bourdain
Yes he is.

For cooks and travelers alike, December 9, 2010
I am far from an advanced cook. I am, however, a fan of reality TV and
French men. Ergo, I received not one, but TWO copies of Avec Eric for
my birthday. I'm not as culinarily articulate as the reviewer who
preceded me, but I do share her enthusiasm for this book.

While I do enjoy food, if forced to choose, I'd probably take a fancy
vacation over a fancy meal. That said, I think I find this cookbook so
compelling because reading it is like taking a mini vacation. The
photos are INCREDIBLE. I've attempted only two of the recipes so far -
the deviled eggs with smoked salmon (p 249) and the pasta carbonara (p 159). I was proud of both dishes. (Point of reference: I once took a cooking class in Mexico, and when I came back to the states I wanted to show off my mole sauce skills. I ended up destroying my best friend's most beloved pot, bursting into tears, and ordering Mexican food from the place around the corner. Just sayin. You don't have to be an expert to attempt these recipes.)

If you (or someone in your life) is a foodie, or a traveler who enjoys cooking even a little bit, pull the trigger and buy this cookbook!

Perfect for foodies, lovers of Le Bernardin, or Ripert-philes!, December 13, 2010
I have loved Eric Ripert ever since I had the chance to dine at Le Bernardin in 2009, so I was delighted to receive a copy of Avec Eric as a gift from a very good friend. Avec Eric starts off with the loveliest foreword by Anthony Bourdain. Most forewords are so impersonal, but this one (which really sets the tone for the entire book) is so beautifully fun and personal. And such is the remainder of Avec Eric--this cookbook is just that--a fun and personal look into Ripert's travels, history, thoughts and cooking.

This book is filled with gorgeous "food porn" along with beautifully photographed glimpses into Ripert's travels, personal moments, and working life. There are great little informational tidbits throughout the book (complete with references to websites for additional information) that I loved poring over. Ripert somehow manages to be a wonderful teacher while keeping it light.

You would think that with Le Bernardin being known primarily for seafood, that this book would be focused on that. However, I was thrilled to find that although seafood recipes feature strongly in Avec Eric (cooking seafood makes me nervous since it is so easy to overcook), Ripert also includes a lot of recipes for cocktails, meats, pastas, appetizers and desserts! There is a wonderful mix of more advanced as well as simpler recipes--some adapted from dishes from Le Bernardin, some which are adaptations from Ripert's favorite eating experiences at restaurants around the world, and some of which come out of Ripert's own kitchen.

As a native Californian who grew up in the SF Bay Area, I was excited to see how much Ripert's experiences in Sonoma were featured in the book. My favorite chapter was perhaps Chapter 2 ("Star Ingredients") because Ripert does a wonderful discussion on David Kinch's Manresa (which is just down the street from where I grew up). Actually, I take that back. My FAVORITE chapter was the one in which Ripert writes about his annual Cayman Cookout which hosts some of the biggest name chefs in the US. Being a restaurant junkie, I thrilled just reading about Ripert hanging out with some of the key players that are on the food scene: Jose Andres of LA's Baazar, Grant Achatz of Chicago's Alinea, David Chang of NY's Momofuku and of course, Anthony Bourdain.

This book should definitely make the Christmas list for any lovers of Le Bernardin, Ripert-philes, or just anyone who loves food! For those who don't cook but love food and eating well, the book itself is so beautiful that it could easily be a coffee-table book. I am thrilled to add this to my collection of cookbooks in my kitchen!

great cookbook, December 10, 2010
Fabulous cookbook

-the recipes are accessible to cooks with moderate skill levels
-the recipe selection has broad appeal
-the number of ingredients and preparation time are not overwhelming
-the more little known ingredients are thankfully easy to find in my area of SoCal
-entertaining to read

But best of all, this cookbook inspires, starts you thinking about how you can insert some of the dishes into your daily routine; visions of dinner parties start flowing through your head...... ... Read more

Editorial Review

Amazon.com ReviewProduct Description
You'll never run out of meal ideas for your slow cooker with this massive, photo-filled compendium. The second book in the Ultimate series, following The Ultimate Cookie Book, this giant collection of recipes will keep your slow cooker meals delicious and exciting for years to come. There's way more here than just pot roasts and stews; this book offers recipes for main courses, appetizers, sides, and even desserts and breakfast. With all that, you'll never lack for ideas again!

Nearly 500 pages in length and packed with full-color photos and hundreds of inventive recipes—The Ultimate Slow Cooker Book is a great deal at a great price.

    • Includes 400 recipes, including main dishes, appetizers and beverages, soups and stews, side dishes, breakfast, and desserts
    • 200 full-color photos and a beautiful design will help inspire your next slow cooker sensation
    • Features tips on converting many of your favorite conventional recipes for soups, stews, and roasts so they can be prepared in the slow cooker
    • A great big cookbook at a small price

Whether you've been using your slow cooker for years and need new ideas or you're a first-timer looking for easy dinner solutions, this is the ultimate slow cooker book for you.

Recipe Excerpts from The Ultimate Slow Cooker Book

Pumpkin, Chickpea, and Red Lentil Stew

Lemon–Poppy Seed French Toast

Better-Than-Grandma’s Chicken and Noodles

Reviews

Your field guide to expanded use of your slow cooker, March 23, 2010
So many of us have slow cookers and yet so few of us get much beyond pot roasts or stews. Why is that? I think it is because we don't really understand the potential of a slow cooker and the basic cooking techniques that can enhance what you can cook in them.

This book is for everyone who has a slow cooker and wants to explore all the things you can do with it. The first ten page chapter teaches you how to best use your slow cooker, what you need to be concerned about, including how to adapt regular recipes to slow cooker recipes. You will also get really good advice on food safety, when to add various kinds of ingredients, and how to layer them in your cooker. They warn you, for example, to not have your timer start your cooker more than two hours after you put the ingredients in the pot. And never cook your meat from a frozen state. Also, if you have large roasts, cut them in half. When you should add your pasta, how you prepare ground meat for clos cooking, and how to use dry versus fresh herbs. Helpful tips, right?

Since this is The Ultimate book on slow cooking, you get recipes for things I know I never even expected could be done in a slow cooker, but once you think through the recipes they really do make sense. You get chapters on appetizers and beverages (yes, drinks such as hot chocolate, hot punches, and the like), breakfasts, soups, stews, poultry, beef & veal, pork & lamb, meals without meat, side dishes, and even desserts.

Each recipe tells you the ingredient list, the size of slow cooker the recipe is made for (so you can adjust to yours), the steps to make the dish (remember it isn't all just dump it in, turn it on, and come back 8 hours later), and nutrition information. Many of the dishes have appetizing photographs of the dish. Helpful notes about the recipe and tips for slow cooking generally are given throughout the book and will help you make better dishes more easily and with easier cleanup.

The book is colorful, laid out clearly, and the page edges have different colors for each section. In addition to an index you are also given advice for metric conversion of the recipes and the very last page has a list of emergency substitutions you can make for ingredients you suddenly realize you don't have on hand. These substitutions will be helpful to you for any dish you make, not just slow cooker meals.

Now, these recipes often include canned ingredients, mixes, and so forth. Since the idea of slow cooking is so much about convenience and ease of preparation, these kinds of choices can make sense. If you want to cook from scratch ingredients you could, but you have to add a lot of prep time. Just do what you want and have fun!

A very useful resource for home cooks wanting to push their slow cooking boundaries.

slow cooker lover, April 15, 2010
Love having the slow cooker for preparing meals AHEAD of time! It is so easy, and great to be out and about, and come home to the ready to eat dinner there! And this cookbook is outstanding! Recipes are easy to prepare, and absolutely delicious. I usually prepare them the evening before; put them in the cooker in the refrigerator, and then set it up, turn it on in the morning. The delicious aroma greets one when you open the door when you arrive home. And all you have to do is get yourself seated, and enjoy a GREAT meal!

Great cookbook! Lots of choices!, February 22, 2010
This cookbook is great! There are lots of pictures. Of the several meals I've made so far, I've liked them all.

Great book, July 16, 2010
I have made about 5 recipes from this book so far. Each time they have turned out great. Once in a while the meat seems a little dry, so I'm trying to figure out how to prevent that from happening. Each recipe has the nutritional information. I have found it very helpful.

Glad I read others' reviews, December 15, 2010
Got my Hamilton Beach Slow Cooker along with this book that I ordered according to customer reviews & ratings. Glad I did...recipes are not cumbersome with exotic ingredients & saw things in this book that I had not imagined one could cook in a slow cooker. Glad I invested in this book. Have had other slow cooker cookbooks & was either discouraged or bored with them. This IS the BEST slow cooker cookbook!


Happy Camper ... Read more

Editorial Review

Kitchen Confidential reveals what Bourdain calls "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine."
Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

Anthony Bourdain is the author of Bone in the Throat. This is his first work of non-fiction. He is the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City. 'Benedict Arnold. Alger Hiss. Anthony Bourdain.'-London Evening Standard

'With equal parts wit and wickedness, Bourdain [does] the unthinkable by revealing trade secrets that chefs and restaurateurs cringe to read.' -Restaurant Business magazine ... Read more

Reviews

Telling It Like It Is, November 2, 2000
In this book, Anthony Bourdain, executive chef at New York's Brasserie Les Halles, takes us on a wild ride through that city's food supply industry that includes surprises such as heavy drinking, drugs, debauchery, Mafiosi and assorted seedy personalities.

It is clear that Bourdain enjoys a true passion for both food and cooking, a passion he inherited from the French side of his family. He tells us he decided to become a chef during a trip to southwestern France when he was only ten years of age and it is a decision he stuck to, graduating from the Culinary Institute of America.

Kitchen Confidential is a surprisingly well-written account of what life is really like in the commercial kitchens of the United States; "the dark recesses of the restaurant underbelly." In describing these dark recesses, Bourdain refreshingly casts as many stones at himself as he does at others. In fact, he is brutally honest. There is nothing as tiresome as a "tell-all" book in which the author relentlessly paints himself as the unwitting victim. Bourdain, to his enormous credit, avoids this trap. Maybe he writes so convincingly about drugs and alcohol because drugs and alcohol have run their course through his veins as well as those of others.

The rather raunchy "pirate ship" stories contained in this fascinating but testosterone-rich book help to bring it vividly to life and add tremendous credibility. The book does tend to discourage any would-be female chefs who might read it, but that's not Bourdain's fault; he is simply telling it like it is and telling it hilariously as well.

In an entire chapter devoted to one of the lively and crude characters that populate this book, Bourdain describes a man named Adam: "Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, the psychotic bread-baker, alone in his small, filthy Upper West Side apartment, his eyes two different sizes after a 36-hour coke and liquor jag, white crust accumulated at the corners of his mouth, a two-day growh of whiskers--standing there in a shirt and no pants among the porno mags, the empty Chinese takeout containers, as the Spice channel flickers silently on the TV, throwing blue light on a can of Dinty Moore beef stew by an unmade bed." Apparently Bourdain made just as many mistakes at the beginning of his career as did Adam, but the book however, doesn't always paint and bleak picture.

Another chapter entitled "The Life of Bryan," talks about renowned chef Scott Bryan, a man, who, according to Bourdain, made all the right decisions. Bourdain describes Bryan's shining, immaculate kitchen, his well-organized and efficient staff. It's respectful homage, but somehow, we feel that Bourdain, himself, will never be quite as organized as is Bryan, for Bourdain is just too much of the rebel, the original, the maverick.

Kitchen Confidential can be informative as well as wickedly funny. Bourdain is hilarious as he tells us what to order in restaurants and when. For instance, we learn never to eat fish on Mondays, to avoid Sunday brunches and never to order any sort of meat well-done. And, if we ever see a sign that says, "Discount Sushi," we will, if we are smart, run the other way as fast as we possibly can.

Kitchen Confidential isn't undying literature but it's so funny and so well-written that no one should care. It made me hungry for Bourdain's black sea bass crusted in sel de Bretagne with frites. It also made me order his novel, Bone in the Throat. If it is only half as funny and wickedly well-written as is Kitchen Confidential it will certainly be a treat.

I laughed so hard, I forgot (on purpose) to eat! Yes! Yuk!, May 15, 2000
Oh, you are really going to enjoy this book...while you're reading it, that is. Then afterwards you'll be torn between the memories of the hilarious antics Bourdain describes in his book...and memories of the disgusting things that go on every day in restaurant kitchens. Believe it or not, it IS worth reading! (And take it from a former restaurant manager, it is, unfortuately, true - the after-hours shenanigans, especially!)

Bourdain has put together a truly gonzo collection of restaurant tales that aren't all depraved...but, like his restaurateur/chef subjects, most of them are! Kudos to him for a book that is this honest while being this hysterical. If you have the, um, stomach for it, this is a book you'll remember fondly. Well worth digesting!

Is it so bad to be an arrogant SOB?, August 3, 2000
I don't think you're going to regret reading this book. But when you're done, you might find yourself wondering what exactly you just read. Just be aware beforehand that it's much more about the author than it is about cooking or restaurants.

I was surprised at the incredible coarseness of the book, but I thought, OK, that's real life in the restaurant world, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen so to speak. But then towards the end he shows you that actually that's NOT how it is all through the restaurant world. Forget the last couple hundred pages.

So maybe he's just a jerk. Do I feel good about giving my money away to some jerk? But then again, he'll gladly TELL you he's a jerk. That's almost his point. Isn't the view of a crude, wild, hedonistic lifestyle that most of us would never live but still find fascinating why we buy these memoirs in the first place?

I found myself saying, "Wow, what an SOB (turn page) I can't stand this jerk (turn page)..." And that's not necessarily a bad thing, although it did leave me wondering whether I could really say I "liked" the book. What bothered me more was the poor structure of the book and the almost total lack of editing. Really weird things, like commas constantly popped up at random in the middle of, sentences. Like that. It grew more than a little annoying. And it was almost the last chapter before he actually defined all the cooking terms and the slang he had been using for hundreds of pages. People showed up whose significance he didn't explain until a number of chapters later.

So he's annoying, in many ways the book is annoying, but it's a fun and wild ride that will definitely give you something to talk about with your friends.

Macho, macho chef, April 26, 2005
This is a fascinating, alternately hilarious and appalling account of one chef's career in the restaurant buisness. Bourdain, now the Executive Chef at Les Halles in New York, regales the reader with a behind-the-scenes look at the kitchens of "gourmet" restaurants he has worked and the characters he has known. To call his account (and his fellow workers) "colorful" is an understatement.

There is much to like in this book. Occasional insights into why ordering fish on Monday is not such a good idea (it's left over from Thursday's delivery) and the logistics of running a major restaurant are fascinating. Also, the anecdotes about management style and successful vs. unsuccessful restaurants make for interesting reading. Bourdain demolishes the mystique of cooking as an art to be mastered by only a few. From his perspective, cooking is a craft that can be learned through grit, endurance, and hard knocks. As he points out, the mainstays of his and many other kitchens are immigrants from Ecuador, Mexico, Bengal and elsewhere who are taught how to recreate consistently and under pressure dishes as directed by the chef. Restaurant work is not easy, and only the strong survive. It's a war out there--and the kitchen is the combat zone.

That said, "Kitchen Confidential" is an uneven book that should have had a good editing. The individual chapters have the feel of freestanding pieces, and some of their content is repetitious. Much of the jargon and some of the details of how a kitchen is organized aren't explained until late in the book, even though he's been referring to them from the beginning.. By the time he finally does explain the slang and the esoteric details, the astute reader has already figured it out.

My major complaint about the book, however, is that the book seems to be as much about the author and his excesses as about the places he's worked. Bourdain was a heavy-duty heroin addict and coke sniffer during the 70s and 80s, and he conjures up the craziness of the period with zest. He's always worked in kitchens where the culture was testosterone-drenched and the language beyond macho. Although I didn't find the coarseness particularly shocking considering the primarily male crew and the amount of pressure under which they work, it did get a little wearisome after awhile. Towards the end of the book, Bourdain gives examples of chefs and kitchens with entirely different ways of doing things. As he himself admits, his testosterone-drenched kitchens may be as much an offshoot of his own personality and experiences as restaurant culture itself. In the end, Bourdain comes across as a kind of kooky romantic--the kitchen staff is his family, albeit a dysfunctional one, and he loves their quirks and idiosyncrasies, even (and maybe especially) when they veer off into the criminal.

Overall, I can't say I disliked this book--in fact I enjoyed parts of it immensely--but Bourdain's "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" attitude began to lose its appeal toward the end. This is quick, revealing and at times funny read, but take it with a grain of salt (fleur de sel of course). 3.75 stars.

An irreverent look inside the professional kitchen, July 13, 2000
The first 253 pages of "Kitchen Confidential" would certainly give one pause before ever choosing to dine out again. Author-Chef Anthony Bourdain describes the professional kitchen as a collection of drunks, derelicts and drug addicts the likes with which you would never want to have a close encounter. And as chef de cuisine of Brasserie Les Halles in New York, you'd certainly think he'd know. But on page 254, Bourdain begins to show the other side of the street by describing the kitchen of chef Scott Bryan at Veritas, an upscale restaurant down the street from Les Halles. In this comparison the ultimate lessons are revealed, and what had been up to that point just an amusing 'tell all' book, becomes something considerably more. We learn that Bourdain's world is one of his own choosing, and other chefs at other restaurants can be very different. While Bourdain was propelled thru his early years by drugs and alcohol, Bryan was more serious. While Bourdain reached for the top right out of school and ultimately fell on his face, Bryan carefully refined his craft by working in the kitchens of one expert chef after another. For Bourdain it's about the pace of life leading a hectic restaurant kitchen; for Bryan it's all about the food. The lessons come together in the penultimate chapter entitled "So You Want to Be a Chef?", which spells out the rules for kitchen success as clearly and as vividly and any would-be chef would want. This chapter along with Michael Ruhlman's "The Making of a Chef" (ISPN 0805061738) should be required reading before any student begins Day 1 at culinary school. The rest of us might just want to chose our restaurants more carefully. Oh, yes...and avoid the fish on a Monday.

True-to-Life Kitchen Adventures, August 3, 2001
As a seasoned veteren of the culinary trenches, one thing comes clear from reading the on-line reviews for this book: The people who didn't like it are completely clueless when it comes to restaurants and food! Yes, Chef Bourdain is arrogant, self serving, and foul mouthed, but that type of personality is simply a byproduct of the cooking industry. Massive egos, high stress, and horrific working conditions are par for the course.

Whatever faults the author and the book may have, this is a knee-slappingly funny account of what really goes on in kitchens, and anybody who wants to be a chef should be forced to read this book before attending cooking school. Those of you benighted souls who have no interest in fine cuisine and four-star restaurants probably won't understand the truth and humor that underly Chef Bourdain's cutting prose.

A slice of life told from the pit of the stomach, July 4, 2000
Although not a universally likeable book by any estimation, Bourdain's narrative voice, as crass and straightforward as one would believe the man himself to be, is definitely endearing. He makes few attempts to describe for the lay person the many digestibles he hints at in the book, relying on the wit and sheer perusability of the rest of his work to grasp the reader. And it does, for over 300 pages. Kitchen Confidential is a must read for anyone remotely affiliated with the hospitality industry and well worth reading for those with at least a passing interest in the inner-workings of the kitchen from hiring to the way to make one's purveyors arrive on time. A person with generally no knowledge of fine cuisine will find the first half of the book fine, but the second half less friendly as it delves into the more specific nuts and bolts of the restaurant business. The book is really part culinary textbook, part biography, with a few eye-catching treks into hedonism. It's uneven in parts, but this is altogether in keeping with the life of Bourdain, as the reader will come to find.

Great stuff!, April 27, 2004
This book recapitulates the life of Anthony Bourdain, a New York City chef. Bourdain describes how he decided to become a chef, and his training, from washing dishes for a Provincetown surf-and-turf, to studying at the Culinary Institute of America, to boot camp with Bigfoot, an unnamed New York City restaurateur from whom he learned how to survive in the big leagues. He introduces us to the backrooms of a busy restaurant kitchen, where we meet the people who prepare the fabulous food, learn about their tools and slang, and begin to get an inkling about the daily responsibilities of a head chef.

Thanks to his French heritage, Bourdain had learned to appreciate superb food as a youngster, and his parents had the resources to send him to any college he chose. Bourdain, however, likes to live on the edge, and his desire to live life to the fullest and push the limits soon led to multiple drug dependencies and heavy alcohol usage that kept steady employment difficult to maintain for a time. Remarkably, though not detailed exactly how in this book, Bourdain managed to beat his addictions, and has gone on to become not only a talented executive chef, but also a successful novelist and writer in his spare time. How anyone could even find spare time in a chef's life as he describes it is unfathomable- -Bourdain obviously thrives on stress and challenges.

The pace of the book is relentless- -it's one of those volumes that you can race through in a single day, not allowing anyone to interrupt you. Bourdain's language is not for everyone though- -he accurately records the words that are said behind the kitchen doors, so if you are squeamish about sex or take offense easily, this book is not for you.

This book confirms the importance of knowing who is cooking your food. After all, food is something you put inside your body, so it is a real act of trust to consume something that someone else has prepared. It's remarkable that many people are quite content to let total strangers prepare their food. Why would anyone frequent fast food restaurants where most of the cooks are teenagers with no talent or interest in food preparation, doing it all for minimum wage? At least in kitchens like Bourdain's, although some of the cooks may be oversexed drug addicts with filthy mouths, only those who can consistently achieve high cooking standards manage to stay on. Bourdain also reminds us to use our heads when placing our orders. After all, when you tell the waiter what you want, the food isn't just going to appear on the plate out of thin air when the cook snaps his fingers. If the fish market isn't open on the weekend, then Monday isn't a great day for ordering fish. Today's luncheon special may indeed contain leftovers from last night's menu. Some items take longer than others to prepare- -hence shouldn't be ordered at five minutes before closing. This book provides a fascinating perspective on what it's like to study at the CIA, how an executive chef spends his time, and what may be happening behind those closed doors at your favorite restaurant.

What a wonderful read this is..., May 21, 2000
I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a book more! From the first page to the last, this brutally honest testament of a life as a chef is an absolute "can't put it down" page-turner.

It's wicked, funny, touching and fascinating. I went on errands with my wife, so that I could read to her while she drove -- it's so good that you want to call up strangers and just start reading pages to them -- any page will do.

The best writing is honest writing -- and it doesn't get more honest than this.

What a geat read. I'm sure that Les Halles, where he works his craft, will be "booked" to infinity because of this book -- as it should be.

Anyone who loves food will devour this with greed...and wish it were longer.

Some Good Laughs, Been There, He's Right., July 2, 2007
This is Bourdain's memoir that chronicles his adventures as a newbie in a fish restaurant in Provincetown, to his life at Les Halles in NYC. He is blunt, coarse, yet his honesty is refreshing. He gives the reader the often true impression that disturbed folks are attracted to the cooking industry. From drugs, mobsters, booze, etc this is not a dull read. His disdain for tv chefs like Emeril, Flay, & Rachael Ray may be overstated? But, he shows high reverence for the 3-4 star chefs who work hard & rarely get any attention or credit. This is the loudest part of the book.

He is equally honest about his own faults, drugs & his distaste for authority. Two chapters shine through the most. "Bigfoot," practical info for the reader on dining out, & "Cook like the pro's," on the art of managing people. All in all a fascinating look into an industry that only a small percentage of people ever experience. ... Read more

Editorial Review

• More than 65 all-new recipes are age-appropriate, kid-tested and kid-tasted.
• Every recipe has a full-color fun illustration and recipe photo.
• Recipes use short ingredient lists and easy step-by-step instructions.
• Written and designed to appeal to 8- to 12-year-old children who are just beginning to cook on their own, as well as those who have some cooking experience.
• Cooking Basics chapter covers all the things kids need to know, such as kitchen safety, menu-planning, basic nutrition information, and how to read food labels.
• New illustrations and new features make this a must-have reference cookbook for kids and their parents to use together.
• Simply delicious recipes that kids will have fun preparing and the whole family will enjoy eating.
• Yummy recipes include: Farmhouse Breakfast Pizza, Sun-Up Sandwiches, Fast Fixin’ Fajitas, Mighty Melts, Ooey Gooey Fudge Sauce, Raining Berries Turnovers.
• Includes recipes for special celebrations and diabetic exchanges.

Reviews

Let the Kids Cook!, July 2, 2003
I picked up this cookbook in the hopes that I could teach my 7-year-old some basics about cooking that would last him well into his life. (And that it would hopefully prepare him for cooking in his single life, and possibly even encourage him to cook for his wife when he gets married someday!) I loved the bright graphics and beautiful pictures of the recipes, and the easy-to-follow format was great for my son. There was a lot of helpful information included regarding cooking basics, planning a menu, setting a table, how to eat healthy, reading food labels, and great pictures of different types of equipment used for cooking.

Some of the recipes that we enjoyed making together included Eggceptional Breakfast Bake, Tom Thumb's Tacos, Tangled Twisters, Chicken Dippin' Sticks, and Chocolate Pudding Bottoms Up Cake. He was really proud to be able to make something for the family to eat, and I thought he learned good lessons about shopping, food preparation, and clean-up. This is a great book to share with your kids! Enjoy!

Easy recipes with the results also enjoyed by adults, November 23, 1999
We stumbled upon this book in the library and didn't want to bring it back. My 9 year old daughter has made several of the recipes completely on her own. The delicious results have been enjoyed by the entire family. Most recipes are quite nutritious with nutrition facts per serving accompanying each recipe. The "Groovie Smoothies" were truly groovy. With the variety of recipes contained in this book, there is something for everyone here. Great layout too.

Great Beginner Book (for even NON-beginners), December 4, 2002
I purchased this book for my son who had expressed an interest in cooking.

This is a great beginner book that lies flat on the table/counter ... you don't need 4 pair of hands to hold the book down (which ultimately might break the binding of the book).

The recipies are easy to read and sorted in a good manner.

We've even pulled a new 'favorite' recipe for Macaroni and Cheese from this book. Anytime we want homemade M&C, we dig out my this book!

My son .... we'll he's headed off to a Culinary Arts school.
Buy this book and you'll eat well. =-)

A very useful book!, June 15, 2001
This book is fantastic for the younger set. The recipes are very clear, and they are good. The book starts out with breakfast recipes, serving up speciality pancakes, and much more. The book also has a great deal of main dish recipes that the whole family can enjoy. I like this book because it chooses recipes that are simple, but yet they are not too simple. This book is perfect for the younger person that has done some cooking and is looking to do more. The book also contains extra information regarding how to do certain things like cutting up vegetables, how to use certain appliances, and much more. This is definately a worthwhile book to add to a growing chef's library.

TERRIFIC for young cooks., February 3, 1999
My eight year old can make entire dishes all on her own -- from start to finish -- from this book. She is so proud when she does it! Step by step instructions are accurate and complete. Dishes taste good, too. I am recommending this book to all of my friends.

It may be yummy, but it isn't good for you., December 18, 2007
I purchased this cookbook for my five year old daughter for Christmas so that she could become a bigger participant in the cooking process. She already helps me make dinner most nights but I wanted her to have her own cookbook so that once a week she could pick our dinner menu, help me do the shopping, and prepare the meal (with supervision). My hope is that she can form a plan and see it through to a finished meal, all the while learning about nutrition and balanced foods. I was so excited when the box with the book arrived, but that excitement quickly turned to revulsion when I saw that most of the recipes had more than 15 grams of fat per serving and they were all the things people seem to think that kids want to eat. My daughter may only be five, but she enjoys vegetables and will eat more than chicken nuggets and hamburgers. I was looking for a teaching tool, and instead I got a cookbook that wants to undo all of the work I have done to ensure that my child eats a balanced diet full of vegetables, lean meats, and lots of flavor.

great for kids and teens, May 13, 2003
This book offers any age from 6 and up fun recipes. It offers nutrition tips and meal plans. I am using it in my cooking classes from children. They love it!

Junk food galore!, April 23, 2010
I got this cook book for my 8 year old daughter who loves helping in the kitchen. We were really disappointed to see how unhealthy the recipes were and loaded with candy, fat, and sugar. Imagine making a popcorn cake with 1.5 C of corn syrup, 1.5 C sugar, 1.5 C. of M&M's and 1/3 C. of unpopped popcorn - wait, that is not all, add in a jar of marshmallow creme. First of all, I don't know what possessed me to make this recipe, secondly, it was gooey and syrupy sweet to the point of making us nauseated. Pretty apparent there was no test kitchen trying out this recipe. Most all of the desserts follow suit and are sickeningly sweet and loaded with candy. Most everything else in the cookbook is full of processed meats and cheeses. Recipes are the typical burger, fries, sub sandwiches and meatballs. If you are cool with thinking children's food is what you find on children's menus in restaurants, you might just like this one. Check out "Children's Quick and Easy Cook Book" by Angela Wilkes if you'd like a quality kid's cook book that has real food recipes, great instructions and photos, and is a healthier alternative.

Too many prepared food ingredients, but ok other than that., February 17, 2008
I gave this kid's cookbook only three stars because the recipes contained within rely too often on packaged/prepared food ingredients (canned soup, crackers, refrigerated dough, etc). I cook real food from whole-food ingredients and want my children to learn this way of cooking as well. The recipes that use whole foods are fine and kid appropriate.

A present for a 10yo..., September 27, 2005
I just purchased this as an upcoming birthday present for a 10yo boy who loves to cook and considers himself a budding chef. I've actually read through the first section of the book (the intro section) and glanced through and reviewed some of the recipes, so far. My only reservation right-off is that the illustrations themselves might be a little "young" for him -- all in all, it's *very* cute, though I also don't want to "insult" the kid and make him think it may be "too young" for him, as precocious as he may be I must admit (there's actually a lot of good info in the book, looking past the cartoons).

The book has a lot of really good advice and rules of thumb, including how to measure different items, prepping tips, common lingo and tool illustration, food and cooking safety, along with meal planning, setting the table and good table manners. It also has some notion of balancing meals and how to read food labels in it. Most of the rest of the book is devoted to fairly easy recipes, some of them (such as the stir fry) simplified to use pre-made or frozen mixes rather than doing absolutely everything by hand or using more "advanced" ingredients -- don't get me wrong, there are definitely things in here which should be reviewed and coached by an adult, too!

All in all, it seems to be a very good book with a few "for parents only" notes written in the margin, too (ie. to help you better help/enable your kid without being too insulting to the parents, either). Overall it seems very well written with clear and consistent directions and pictures of sample items -- though again, with the illustration level it remains to be seen when the "but my food doesn't look quite like that" reaction comes out! ... Read more

Editorial Review

In this timely new book, Darina reconnects you with the cooking skills that missed a generation or two. The book is divided into chapters such as "Dairy," "Poultry and Eggs," "Bread," and "Preserving," and forgotten processes such as smoking mackerel, curing bacon, and making yogurt and butter are explained in the simplest terms. The delicious recipes show you how to use your homemade bounty to its best, and include ideas for using forgotten cuts of meat, baking bread and cakes, and even eating food from the wild. The "Vegetables and Herbs" chapter is stuffed with growing tips to satisfy even those with the smallest garden plot or window box, and there are plenty of suggestions for using gluts of vegetables. You'll even discover how to keep a few chickens in your backyard. With over 700 recipes, this is the definitive modern guide to traditional cooking skills. ... Read more

Reviews

A Treasure Trove of Recipes and Inspiration, April 5, 2010
This book is an amazing tome of culinary secrets that I've been in love with ever since it arrived. First of all, the quality of the book itself is top notch. It's a rough textured hardback sans paper flap cover. Darina Allen is drawing comparisons to Julia Child, and that marketing pitch seems to have translated into the layout of the pages. They are glossy and in the exact style of every cookbook of Julia's that I own. It reminds me in particular of The Way to Cook, Julia's master class, which was uncustomarily accompanied with ample photos.

Admittedly, there are things in Forgotten Skills that I'll never venture to try, such as the tripe on page 184, or the brawn on page 320. I'm not exactly tempted by the recipe for beef dripping on toast on page 177. But there are plenty of examples of recipes that are staples in many of our kitchens, reimagined from a fresh, farmy (to invent an adjective) perspective, such as beef stew (pp. 163), quiche Lorraine (pp. 250), and a delicious bacon and cheddar cheese strata that you absolutely must try (pp. 579). It seems like we've skipped spring altogether this year and headed straight into summer. In this current heat, I can't wait to try the recipe for Ballymaloe vanilla ice cream (no ice cream maker required!) on page 207. The simplicity reminds me of how my grandmother used to wait for a second snow, and then set out a large metal bowl to collect enough flakes to add in condensed milk, and, voila!, delicious ice cream.

Don't be discouraged by the opening chapter, which addresses various edible flowers, herbs, and weeds that you can scavenge and prepare in various dishes. Those recipes set the tone for the rest of the book, but in no way define it. In fact, if I had to try to sum up the essence of this book, I'd go back to the comparison to Julia Child's The Way to Cook. Julia's book was meant as a step-by-step class for the uninitiated to the steps of traditional French cooking. Ms. Allen's book is rather a guide to the traditional country cooking of Ireland, often with hints of the global culinary influence of France, Italy, and even the United States (she has a delectable recipe for American-style short ribs on page 165). And then there are the traditional recipes like calves' liver with caramelized onions on page 183 that put me in mind of my grandmother's kitchen.

A great deal of these recipes and skills are indeed forgotten legacies of the Old World, but the majority are at least relatively current and adapted for modern kitchens. Scattered throughout are notes on farming, slaughtering livestock (a note from Ms. Allen: don't bend the chicken's neck back too far, lest you pull off the head!), instructions for making everything from homemade butter to sausage, and natural cleaning agents for around the house. Ms. Allen's book will no doubt be an indispensable source of inspiration and reference for my culinary adventures. Also, the Amazon price is a steal. Highly recommended!

A Wealth of Information, May 2, 2010
I've had a ball reading this book. I love the history. I love the simple cooking skills taught in it. I love the recipes. I love reading about the Irish culture. There are exotic ingredients from the shores of the sea that I would never think of as cooking ingredients. But there they are, as exotic as anything in a Japanese restaurant. There are techniques for using over the hill ingredients. There are recipes for all sorts of leftover things you might throw away. I've made all the quick breads now - they are simple and excellent. I've made a few of the desserts, simple and excellent. Seafood recipes teach you cooking techniques and how to treat fresh ingredients. You can make your butter from scratch! If you are interested in the world and traditions of cooking, not just the recipes, this is a valuable addition to your culinary library.

Everything you wanted to know about cooking but were afraid to ask!, April 26, 2010
This is a great book... great (as in it practically weighs a ton) and great ... (as in it has loads of interesting and entertaining information). My expert son-in-law chef discovered lots about preparing wild game (and he's a former forest ranger). I loved learning basic Irish cooking since my family hails from Connemara. Finally, because of "Forgotten Skills of Cooking," I can devour a perfect Spotted Dog (with no animal cruelty involved).

Not to be missed - must have!, April 2, 2010
Darina Allen is perhaps not as well known on this side of the pond as Gordon Ramsey (pushing for the use of more fresh, local ingredients in restaurants), Jaime Oliver (great success in moving British schools towards a more healthful school lunch menu, now here in the US working towards the same goal) or Prince Charles (highly involved in the organic/slow food movement in the UK) but she should be.

Darina, called by some "The Irish Julia Child", has been running a cooking school in Ireland for some twenty five years. This book is the product of those lessons, imparting kitchen wisdom and food lore that our generation imbibed with our mother's milk along with the oft-repeated "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!" - wisdom that has disappeared under the onslaught of prepackaged, pre-prepared "food."

Darina and I are of an age. About the time that she started her cooking school I stood in my kitchen one day baking a cake. A young mother from the neighborhood dropped by as I mixed and asked what I was doing. "Baking a cake," I replied. My neighbor looked all around the kitchen, then asked again "What are you doing?" - and again I replied "Baking a cake." This time the young woman examined every nook and cranny, even looking into the trash bin, and then in great frustration practically shouted at me "Tell me what you are doing!" When I again replied that I was baking a cake this young woman said to me "You can't be baking a cake. There is no box!"

Darina's inspiration for her Forgotten Skills classes, which have resulted in this book, was a bit different. She recounts the time she caught a student preparing to dump overbeaten cream into the pig slops instead of simply turning it into butter. In Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time-Honored Ways are the Best - Over 700 Recipes Show You Why Darina teaches us how to make numerous dairy products (yogurt, simple cheese & more), corn a beef, smoke fish, raise chickens and much, much more.

While not everything translates to North America - they have some wild edibles we do not and vice versa - this is a gorgeous book, well laid out, and just delightful to read. Whether you live on a mountain in the wilds of northern Vermont or a Manhattan apartment, you'll find treasure between these covers. Highly recommended, this is a book that will have a prominent place on my bookshelf for years to come.

Awesome!, June 24, 2010
My husband loves to cook for us and anyone who visits. When I saw this book on Amazon I knew it was perfect for him for father's day. Well, when I tell you he LOVED it - I am not exaggerating. He's reading it all the time and planning something special for dinner! Can't wait!

Wonderful!!, April 22, 2010
What can I say about this book only I think it is fantastic. Having grown up in Ireland it brings back great memories of me and my mom collecting blackberries and making wonderful pies. It is by far my favorite book on my shelf right now, and I have been married 20 years. Its is interesting and full of beautiful pictures and packed full of knowledge. Well thought out and written by Mrs. Allen. This would be a wonderful gift for anyone.

Slight luddism aside, this is an awesome hands-on book about food traditions, May 28, 2010
Knowledge of the ways of past kitchens is not (as this book would have you believe) necessarily the *best* way, but it's still very important to preserve, since old techniques are responsible for many classic flavors that would be lost with total modernization. Welcome to the Forgotten Skills of Cooking, one of the best Irish cuisine imports I've seen in years... and yet...

You know you've found something a little more than a cookbook when you find recipes you might never be able to use that you still learn a lot from. This book frankly has a very strong rural bias; much of it won't be of much use to a city dweller, even someone with a garden in the back of their triple-decker; such is life. Be that as it may, I remember a few years ago a group of chefs in France trying to get French food declared an endangered cultural treasure (or whatever it is UNESCO's category is called), and I pointed out the absurdity in a blog entry by taking a picture of every French cookbook I had at the time; this book takes the same attitude I had, and commits a lot of this material to paper, in one fairly large book that brings together techniques and ingredients that are traditionally very scattered. Of course, it isn't just the recipes -- there is information on numerous varieties of preservation, including plans for hot and cold smokers. The very first chapter is about foraging for wild greens. There's plenty of data on game, fish, herbs, and cuts of meat, and everything from bread to milk.

On the other hand, there's one majorly bothersome aspect -- in common with many other books that seem to be coming from Ireland and the UK, there's a bit of a luddite streak to the book -- among other things, she prefers raw milk (although she isn't dogmatic about it, raw milk is too dangerous to trust even from the cleanest of dairy farms) and speaks approvingly of Andrew Whitley's knee-jerk, painfully ignorant antimodernist approach to breadmaking. Because of that mentality, I can't give this book the five stars it otherwise deserves; preserving this knowledge is very important, but excessive crunchiness is a slap in the face to people who understand the value of scientific cooking and combining the traditional and modern.

Upshot is, this is a great book, highly to be recommended. I just wish that the book didn't fall so much into the "old is better" and "all-natural" traps; preserving the past and living in it are very, very different activities. You still won't be disappointed.

Comprhensive, August 1, 2010
A long awaited acquisiton and well worth the wait. As a country woman and a lover of cookbooks and how to books this one did not disappointment me. I do recommend it to anyone who loves digging into the 'time-honored' country ways.Cherie Cook ... Read more

Editorial Review

A New York Times' bestselling author's guide to quick and healthy everyday meals

As weekly host of the Food Network's Healthy Appetite, Ellie Krieger is known for creating light and healthy dishes that taste great and are easy enough for the busiest people to prepare. Now, Ellie has put together a collection of meal solutions for those of us who love food and want to eat well but struggle to make it happen given life's hectic pace. With 150 delicious, easy-to-prepare, fortifying recipes, Ellie provides dishes that tackle every possible mealtime situation. Illustrated with 50 full-color photos, there are recipes for:

• Grab-and-go breakfasts for hectic days, as well as easy breakfast options for more leisurely mornings
• Lunches to go, each road-tested in a cooler pack, along with at-home lunches for when you have the luxury of eating in
• A month's worth of different rush-hour dinners-fabulous meals you can whip up in less than thirty minutes-as well as dinners for days when you have a little more time to marinate or roast, but still want it all to be effortless
• Decadent desserts, some ready in minutes, others truly worth waiting for-all easily pulled together

As a mom with a full-time job, Ellie knows how busy life is when you're juggling your family's needs. Now, you can stop stressing over whether to eat healthily or to eat fast. The recipes here-from Cheddar Apple Quesadilla, Pork Piccata with Spinach and Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Marinated Flank Steak with Blue Cheese Sauce to Chocolate-Cream Cheese Panini Bites and Fig and Ginger Truffles-are ideal, regardless of the time, or experience, you have in the kitchen.

When so much in life is complicated, isn't it nice to know that eating doesn't have to be? After making and enjoying the meals in this book, you will say along with the title, "That was SO EASY!" ... Read more

Reviews

Even better than the first one!, October 19, 2009
I just received this book and read through it. It is even better the first one!
When I got Ellie's first book, I was thrilled to know that healthy food could still taste good.
However, there were still some recipes that I wished I had in Ellie's version.
This book definitely fills that hole. Ellie recreated many dishes in her healthy versions, and some of them are the ones people usually think to be impossible to be healthy. I can't wait until try every one of them.
Another thing that I like about this book is, the recipes were divided into breakfast, lunch, and dinner and each of them were again divided into slow and fast. So, you could pick the recipe that fits your schedule.
Fast lunch has recipes for lunch boxes, so as a working girl who tries to eat healthy, I couldn't be happier. Thanks Ellie for another great book. You are the best!!

Another fine cookbook by Ellie Krieger, October 23, 2009
Ellie Krieger's "The Food You Crave" is a terrific cookbook. I enjoyed a number of menus therein. This is a worthy addition to her body of work. One of the pluses of a Krieger book is her dual skill set--her ability to create tasty recipes coupled with her knowledge of nutrition.

Some quotations from her Introduction indicate her approach (Pages 10-12): "If you love food and want to eat well but struggle making it happen with life's hectic pace, keep reading. . .Every recipe here hits the delicious healthy easy trifecta. Deliciousness is first and foremost. . .My golden rule: no food is ever off limits. . .The third part of the trifecta is the easy factor."

One useful touch at the front of the book: what should be in one's pantry. The book, then, is divided into several chapters--two for breakfast, two for lunch, two for dinner, and two for dessert.

"Breakfast is the meal of fresh starts" (Page 19). There are some very nice recipes for breakfast that capture one's attention. A Spicy Egg and Avocado Wrap features eggs, lettuce, whole-wheat wrap breads, an avocado, a tomato, cucumber, Thai chili sauce or hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Accessible ingredients and a pretty straightforward recipe. Yummy! Another: Egg Muffin Sandwich (her take on an Egg McMuffin; her recipe is more enticing!).

"Now that the lunch hour is more like the twenty minute lunch, it is harder than ever to eat right at midday" (Page 65). Some interesting recipes to show how one might have a good meal with little preparation time. Lemon-Cumin Grilled Chicken Breast. Boneless chicken breasts, cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil/cooking spray, and lemon juice. Takes only about 15 minutes to cook this. Other samples: Ham and Cheese Panini; Chicken Paillard with Watercress and Tomato Salad; Open Face Chicken Parmesan Sandwich.

Dinner: As a side dish, Garlic Mashed Potatoes are terrific! Krieger's recipe is simple and delicious. Double dipping--she also has a cool recipe for Herbed Mashed Potatoes. Want a fish dish for dinner? Flounder with Almond Topping, Saffron Rice, and Lemon Broccolini.

All in all, a fine cookbook. Healthy, fairly simple to make. The couple items I have tried have been fine tasting. A good addition to a kitchen library!

love it!, October 25, 2009
I just made our first recipe from this book - the top sirloin with chimichurri sauce - and it was delicious and filling! Since I got her first book, the food you crave, 3 months ago, I've cooked from it 3 or 4 times a week and loved every recipe. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one too - more of the same great stuff!

definitely easy but maybe not as healthy as it could be, November 28, 2009

Delicious, November 1, 2009
I got this cookbook last week and I have made two new recipes-Cherry Vanilla Smoothie and Mocha Java Smoothie. Both were wonderful.

I have already made the Salmon Florentine and Chicken Mushroom Quesadillas on previous occassions. Also the pesto potato salad. All of these recipes were featured on her show and I got them off Food Network. Its nice to have them all in one place though.

The one thing I do not like is for the section of lunches, all of them involve wraps/bread. I try not to eat very much wheat so lunches it would be nice to see options that don't involve it. But I love Ellie's recipes anyways and ALL of the recipes look delicious.

Healthy meals, easy preparation, full taste. What more do you want?, January 28, 2010
I want to begin by admitting that my learning to cook from the Food Network shows did not include Ellie Krieger. Why? Because of my experience based prejudice against nearly every other "healthy eating" advocate. They ask us to add too much fantasy to convince ourselves that their bland, boring, and generally undesirable dishes are just as wonderful as the glorious and indulgent dishes you can prepare. I want to say that I was wrong to avoid Ms. Krieger and that I will definitely spend more time with her shows and will explore her cuisine more fully.

Over the past year of learning to cook I learned some other things along the way. I found that when I cook my own food I actually eat less. Not because I am tired or am denying myself anything, but because handling and smelling the food contributes to satisfying my love and need for food. I have lost weight without trying. As my family has explored this new approach to food they have also begun to approach food differently and I am proud of their new attitudes and achievements.

This beautifully done book will further contribute to my cooking adventures by helping me think more carefully about the nutritional aspects of what I am preparing without compromising taste, appearance, and visual appeal.

Krieger provides us with 150 recipes that are divided into our main meals of the day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even desserts. One really neat aspect of this book is that each of these meals is divided into a group for quick preparation when you want to prepare something quickly or have it prepared ahead for a grab and go healthy meal. The other group is for the same meals when you have more time to prepare and want to enjoy something a bit more indulgent while still focusing on health and nutrition.

Each of these recipes has a beautiful photo (and I do mean beautiful) and supplies you with solid nutritional information. In addition to serving size and the usual information on calories, fat, protein, carbohydrates, fiber, cholesterol, and sodium, the author also lets you know the other vitamins and minerals the dish provides.

The ingredient list is clear and the cooking instructions are clear. You will find these recipes surprisingly easy to prepare.

She also has pages offering nutritional advice on a variety of topics. For example, on why skipping breakfast is a very bad idea, how to manage salt in your diet, how to cook dinners ahead and freeze them, and much more.

A very good book that I think you will enjoy exploring.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Best Cookbook Ever!, November 29, 2009
I own many, many cookbooks. However, since getting So Easy, this is the one I constantly reach for. All of the recipes are amazing and amazingly quick! I'm a
Registered Dietitian and also recommend it to my clients. If you are looking for healthy, tasty, and easy recipes, this is the book fory ou!

Excellent Cookbook for Healthy Foodies, December 4, 2009

Great addition to anyone's cookbook library, October 28, 2009
Just received my copy of Ellie's book this past week and made the chicken-mushroom quesadillas. They were fantastic!! So easy to make so incredibly healthy. Her cookbooks make cooking so much fun because you know that each recipe is going to be wonderful!!!

Healthy and Delicious, November 28, 2009

Editorial Review

• Shows beginning cooks how to do just what the title implies—and a lot more—without a hint of intimidations.

• Features classic comfort foods such as no-flip fried eggs and soul-soothing grilled cheese for one and bolder, ethnic recipes like Tacos Picadillo and Southeast Asian Beef Salad.

• Exquisite photography and Food Network recipes, both inspire and build the confidence needed to make every dish a success.

• Hundreds of must-know hints, tips and short-cuts for those new to the kitchen. ... Read more

Reviews

a dummy's cookbook for smart people, September 22, 2006
This book is incredibly informative. It's everything I wanted to learn about food, but was too lazy to ask -- where it comes from, what to look for when buying it, how to cut it all up... and that's aside from the great recipes. This mass of info is fortunately so intelligently written and laid out that it never really feels like overload. I'd put the book on my coffee table if I didn't need it so much in the kitchen.

you always need to review the basics..., October 30, 2006
If you're one of those "Sure, I know how to cook...except I don't want to" people, you need this book. This book gives you the basics on how long you can keep meat, how to pick good cuts, what to do with vegetables, and the essential hints on everything you need to get started. The best part of this book aren't the recipes, but rather the reference guides on the things you never quite know, like how to cook specific vegetables and how to build a soup or smoothie. Great for someone who has just moved into an apartment, or for anyone who wants to get a primer on cooking. If you are puzzled about what tools you need, fear not--it's all very simple, and there are many, many diagrams in case you freak out with too many words.

I would say it's useful for anyone with less training than professional cooking experience. The pictures are wonderful.

How to Boil Water, November 9, 2006
I ordered this cookbook for my daughter who is away at college. I reviewed it before I sent it to her. It has all the basics, how to shop for food, how to store it, how to prepare it, even basic cooking utensils that a beginner would need. She loves it and uses it all the time. So I think this the true measurement of the book being user friendly.

The Book I've Needed, September 18, 2006
I like to eat - other people's cooking. This can be a problem as friends sometimes expect you to reciprocate and invite them over for more than beer and peanuts. Thanks to this book, I was actually able to have a dinner party - well two friends - over to the house on Saturday and feed them a roast chicken and green salad. That may not sound like much to you but it was a big deal to me. The nice thing about this book is that it doesn't make you feel stupid even if you know nothing about cooking. For know nothings like me, it can start you at the beginning, but if you already have your four standby recipes it looks as if it could help you double or triple that number. I recommend it for everyone.

Not such a great basic manual, June 18, 2008
I'm a decent cook, but I always like to review the basics once in a while. This book just increasingly irritated me the more I read it. As a basic manual (so implied by the title!) it is haphazard and rarely informative, if you can find the information, that is.

Several things about the format of this book I didn't like. White font on a light yellow or green background? Are you serious?? There were a couple pages I couldn't even read. There are also several font-style changes. The hand-written font is often very small and difficult to read.

The pictures are frequently unlabeled, although very pretty. Many times I had no idea what I was looking at because there was no caption, or no sense of scale, or the pictures were very small. I couldn't tell if I was looking at a grain of rice or a loaf of bread.

Some of the recipes are simple enough, but there are some that require ingredients that I would never normally have in the cupboard, nor make a special trip for.

I think the writers from the Food Network may have been too advanced to realize that a book with this title would need to be a lot simpler. I think this is an intermediate book at best, and not very well put-together.

Visually appealing; makes me want to cook something immediately., July 3, 2008
There are definitely more pros than cons about this book.
Pros
Visually appealing; the photos could cause salivation in just about anyone.
Illustrations for basic kitchen know-how from holding a knife, folding an omelette, or setting the table.
Recipes keep up with current trends in cooking, from sundried tomatoes to tofu.
Detailed charts for steaming and and roasting veggies.
Detailed, illustrated instructions for making coffee, smoothies, and putting a well-balanced meal together.
Useful "Wisdom" pages for various foods and techniques.
The photos, the photos, the photos.

Cons
Difficult to read white writing on a color background.
White or yellow type on a white page is tough to read even for those under 50.
Recipes call for fairly exotic ingredients, unfamiliar or extravagant for new cooks, like fresh herbs, chutneys, and fresh mozzarella.

This Food Network Kitchen book is very well thought out, visually stunning, and has abundant information for the semi-beginning chef. While some basic instruction - hardly ever seen in cookbooks - is here and much appreciated, the recipes' ingredients and information is slightly upscale for the very beginner, and in that respect the title is misleading.
That said, there are enough beginner cooks with an appreciation of food who would certainly get a lot out of this book. And beginning cooks of all sublevels would find the illustrated instructions and basic information helpful. It's a great graduation gift for those moving out on their own. You will be helping them ease into independence a little better equipped to take care of themselves. 50 Ways to Leave Your Mother

I Boiled the Water...Now What?, January 1, 2010
I'm a decent cook, but working fulltime, I don't have time to make frilly recipes, so I'm always on the lookout for stuff that's not time-consuming or complicated. So when I got *How to Boil Water* as a gift, I thought it would be right up my alley. Well, as someone with actual experience cooking and planning meals, I found both good and bad things in the book.

I noticed right off that many recipes call for stuff like arugula, miso, and so forth, that are not that easy to find, are hard to obtain in such small quantities, and aren't used often. If you're single or in a household of two, which seems to be the target audience, you will end up having to throw these products away before you're ready to use them again. I would've liked to see recipes that use the real basic staples everyone keeps (ground beef, for instance, which can be packed in the freezer in small quantities, or bell peppers) instead of fancy ingredients that aren't much good on a day-to-day basis in the real world.

Then we get to the salad section. As the cook in a household of two, I couldn't believe what I was reading. First, the editors advocate bagged greens. Well, bagged greens are already stinky when you first open the bag, and then they go bad within 40 seconds of being out of the bag, so they're a terrible choice for a small household. The other choices, such as baby spinach, watercress, etc., also go bad fast and are never available in the small quantities called for. Worst of all, though, there is no information on the real staples--celery, carrots, peppers, and the like. How much should you buy if you want to make salads for two on Monday and Thursday? How can you plan your week's menu to use them up before they go bad? How do you keep them from going bad since you won't be using them all up at once? (For instance, carrots and celery can be kept for at least a week and a half if packed in water, but there's no mention of any techniques like that.)

As for the good, I think the "upgrades" idea is great because it helps you start thinking like a cook--what else can you use that will add to the recipe and/or use up leftovers from other recipes? Also, there are some recipes that do sound good and not too hard to make. There is also abundant information on how to choose produce and meats, sanitation, and food preparation.

I think the value of this book is handicapped by the desire of the editors to purvey "hip" food instead of stuff that's actually easy to make and uses widely available ingredients in realistic quantities. *How to Boil Water* can be a helpful book, but I don't think it can stand on its own as an introduction on how to cook and run a kitchen. A good companion to this book would be *The Fannie Farmer Cookbook,* which has a lot of information on staples plus many recipes that call for few ingredients, are fast to make, and taste good.

Great if you've never stepped foor in the kitchen before!, June 8, 2007
This gives you STEP BY STEP instructions on how to make hard boiled eggs, baked potatoes and other simple procedures that all new cooks should learn. It has lots of photos so you can see how your food should look.

The GREATEST COOK BOOK ever, September 4, 2007
Alright, where do I start? If you are thinking to buy this book for yourself to learn to cook, BUY IT! If you are considering it for a wedding gift, or graduation gift - BUY IT! In fact, buy more than one. This book is the perfect gift.

So far I have made several recipes, and I am AMAZED at how good each one is. My husband is thrilled I've found this book. I am cooking more than ever, only because I can't wait to taste how good the next recipe will be. I am continually pleased.

I can't stress enough: BUY THIS BOOK.

Great for even experienced cooks..., October 17, 2008
I love cookbooks (I have 20+), and this is one of my favorites. When I look at a cookbook, I am looking for (a) something that is "modern" - not a cookbook that is just chock-full of frozen casseroles or potted meat product, (b) has skill levels, (c) doesn't call for fussy ingredients or at least gives me substitutions for those fussy ingredients, (d) has lots of brightly-colored pictures and some "step-by-step" methods, and (e) is at least vaguely health-conscious (for example, finds other ways to be fresh and flavorful without calling for 16 oz. of sour cream in a two-person dish).

This book meets all of those criteria. It has regular recipes for chocolate chip cookies, deep-dish brownies, "date night chicken" and smoothies, but also teaches you the basics of putting together a killer vinaigrette, how to buy and cook different cuts of meat, and how to make a good gravy by deglazing. There are a lot of normal recipes with minor tweaks that make them fresh and modern - for instance, we tried their recipe for oatmeal that added lemon zest and strawberries to plain Jane oatmeal, and it turned out amazing.

I haven't had any of these recipes fail me, taste awful, or call for unobtainable ingredients which can occasionally happen in the other compilations. Although I regularly turn to the internet for recipe ideas, "How to Boil Water" is still one of my foolproof, top-two keeper cookbooks, along with "Anyone Can Cook" by Better Homes & Gardens. Although I can cook and bake fairly well now, I still enjoy books that take the time to break directions down for me, tweak tried-and-true old recipes with fresh new flavors, and includes helpful hints that I can use in other recipes. I would definitely buy this book again, and I think it's a bargain for beginning and experienced home cooks alike. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Packed with 350 recipes and 500 illustrations, Baking Illustrated brings you inside America’s Test Kitchen, where the test cooks and editors have exhaustively examined every ingredient, technique, and piece of equipment that is critical to your baking success. Have you ever wondered how long you can keep that can of baking powder in your cabinet or what brand of chocolate will yield the best brownies or flourless chocolate cake? Or puzzled over the key to making pizza crust that is thin and crisp or cookies that bake evenly? The editors at Cook’s Illustrated have pulled back the curtain on the seemingly complex world of baking to give you the answers to these and thousands of other questions.

Recipes range from quick breads and yeast breads to pizza, cookies, cakes, pastry, crisps, and cobblers to all manner of pies and tarts. And they feature American home classics (including Southern Cornbread, Pecan Sandies, and Sour Cream Coffee-cake) as well as more contemporary favorites (such as Rosemary Focaccia, Orange-Almond Biscotti, and Chocolate Truffle Tart) and European baked goods (such as Brioche, Black Forest Cake, and Tarte Tatin). Every recipe has been exhaustively researched and tested to bring you the "best" recipe (we’ll let you be the judge), along with detailed and precise explanations from everything from why you should use unsalted butter to what is the best oven temperature and why it all matters. We’ve also tested every kind of baking equipment available, from mixers and food processors to the humblest spatulas and loaf pans, and the results of our experiments are described throughout so you can benefit from our trial and error.

And because we know that good baking depends on understanding basic techniques, Baking Illustrated features a 16-page, full-color insert that shows you how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls in baking, such as overmixed egg whites, cheesecakes that crack, and bread dough that has overproofed. (We know a lot about mistakes – we’ve made them all.) We don’t want you to take the time to bake a layer cake from scratch only to settle for the "homemade" look. The visuals in this insert show you how to do it right. Color photographs demonstrate good results as well as bad, and hand-drawn step-by-step illustrations help you to perfect your technique for fail-safe baking.

Baking Illustrated also gives you the handy tutorials on baking basics, including how to stock your pantry and how to store and measure ingredients, cream butter and roll out pie dough. A master baking class between two covers, Baking Illustrated takes the guesswork out of baking and will expand your repertoire without ever losing sight of your ultimate goal: making family favorites that taste better than ever. ... Read more

Reviews

Excellent Resource for Baking Enthusiast, April 28, 2004
This volume, `Baking Illustrated' is a compilation of articles and recipes from `Cook's Illustrated' magazine. This is the same source as many other volumes presuming to provide the `best' recipe for various dishes. Overall, I find the recipes in this book very good, but with several reservations.

I am really happy to see the `America's Test Kitchen' crew turn their attention to baking. Unlike savory cooking, baking is highly dependent on accurate measurements of weight, volume, and temperature. Therefore, it is an area where a scientific approach of varying various quantities will have a more beneficial result than in the savory world.

This book is subtitled `The Practical Kitchen Companion for the Home Baker'. This means the book is directed at the amateur home baker. This facet does not really distinguish the book that much from dozens of other baking books I have reviewed. In fact, I would warn occasional bakers who simply want recipes that this book might just be a bit too wordy for you. You may be much better served by a general baking book by Maida Heatter, Nick Malgieri, or even Martha Stewart. On the other hand, if you love `Cooks Illustrated' or simply reading about cooking and baking technique, then this is a book for you!

My biggest reservation with the whole `best recipe' approach by `Cooks Illustrated' is that a recipe is best only by a certain set of criteria. What may be the best FAST recipe may fall flat on its face for ENTERTAINING or for MOST HEALTHY. The `Cooks Illustrated' team generally goes for a good compromise between fast and tasty. A corollary to this reservation is the presumption that the `Cooks Illustrated' approach has a unique insight into baking truth. This is simply not true. I just finished reviewing professional baker Sherry Yard's new book `The Secrets of Baking' an I believe it is unequivocally the best book you can get for understanding baking technique. She spends no time on discussing failed approaches. Everything in the book is right to the point. With only slightly less enthusiasm I would recommend the `Bible' series of baking books by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

One clue to my preference for Yard and Beranbaum is the way they treat brioche and challah. Both deal with these two recipes as two variations on a common `master' recipe. Thus, when you understand how to make one, it is clear that you are very close to knowing how to do the other. This `Baking Illustrated' volume gives the two recipes side by side, but gives little other clue that the recipes are related.

Another symptom of where the `Cooks Illustrated' method may be less than satisfactory is in their carrot cake recipe. Carrot cake is a really interesting product, made even more interesting to me by Sherry Yard's explanation of why it is so good and so versatile. I have been making a three layer carrot cake for birthdays from a Nick Malgieri recipe for over a year now, and I am very happy with the results. `Baking Illustrated' gives a passle of advice on what works and what doesn't work and ends with a recipe for a single layer sheet cake. This simply does not have enough WOW quotient for an important birthday.

Yet another weakness in the `Cooks Ilustrated' method is illustrated by a recent Jim Villas book which has over a hundred recipes for biscuits, with over twenty for simple, unflavored biscuits. Each of these twenty recipes has their own charms. The current volume has only one `best recipe'.

After all these reservations, I must still say that for the person who treats baking as a hobby, this book is a rich resource for all sorts of recipes. Some few baking books such as those by Yard and Beranbaum do a lot of explaining and offering alternatives, but most books do not. If you really want the straight scoop on what is the best ingredient to use, this is your book. It is also a rare source of excellent pictorials on technique based on line drawings that focus on the important aspects of a technique and do not distract as many photographs may do. The explanation of differences in types and results with butter you may not find anywhere else. The discussion of variations in flour is good, almost as good as the one you will find in Beranbaum's books.

I give the book five stars but there may be many potential buyers who may not want the extensive why and what ifs and just want the recipes. For those people, I suggest Nick Malgieri's `How to Bake'.

Get "The New Best Recipe" Instead, January 5, 2006
I loved the Cooks Illustrated "The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition with 1,000 Recipes" so much I asked for this for Christmas based on the glowing reviews here. Big mistake- this book is just the baking chapters from that book with 1 or 2 recipes added in each chapter and a couple of pages of color photos. Buy "The New Best Recipe" instead. It is the same price and you get 90% of the recipes in this book, plus 600+ other recipes!

The pefect tone for aspiring bakers, March 6, 2004
For somebody who already spends a lot of time in the kitchen, this book is a revelation. I own several good baking titles, but Baking Illustrated just runs circles around them. The book is literally packed with tips and information. Even the areas I thought I knew something about were covered in such exquisite detail and straightforward instruction that I have all but stopped making the usual dumb mistakes which torpedoed my many attempts at pies, tarts, cakes, brownies, etc. And as always, the folks at Cook's Illustrated have filled the book with clear, simple illustrations that show exactly how to do it--a difference between this and other titles that makes ALL the difference.

Baking Illustrated is a gem; it will find a prime spot on my bookshelf.

Excellent Book, But there's an error, April 8, 2004
I like the way Cook's presents recipes. They tell you how they experiment which give you, the home baker, the skills to experiment on your own! This is great.

There are a lot of recipes here and they are all well-written. Please note, there is an error in their Basic Pie Crust recipe. It should be 1/2 cup of shortening rather than one cup. This was sent to me in an email from the America's Test Kitchen website.

Awesome desserts when typos don't mess them up, November 22, 2005
The best general book on baked goods out there.

THE GOOD:

The recipes -- as with all Cooks Illustrated books, the people at America's Test Kitchens have tried every variation reasonably possible to come up with baked goods that taste the best to a majority of people and don't contain any wasted steps (such as macerating apples in sugar before baking them in a pie). For instance, for their cranberry nut bread, which is one of the most delicious baked goods I've ever tried, they experimented with different sweeteners (sugar, brown sugar, orange juice, etc.), different liquids (milk, buttermilk, yoghurt) and various leveners, all to come up with a moist, not-too-sweet, flavorful treat.

The organization -- the book is organized into types of baked goods: quick breads, yeast breads, cakes, pies and tarts, cookies, etc. Each section has an index that lists the recipes in that section plus the variations on each main recipe. For example, under apple pie, there are varations for apple-cranberry, apple-bluberry, apple-ginger and so on.

The pictures -- there aren't a lot of pictures, but the ones ther e are are gorgeous and inspiring.

The illustrations -- there are myriad illustrations showing how to do such things as line a baking pan to make removal of bar cookies clean and easy, how to roll out pie dough, how to toast nuts, etc. These illustrations help make the instructions particularly easy to follow and show how to simplify complicated baking steps. Easily the best thing about this book.

The instructions -- amounts are given in both volume (cups) and weight (ounces) so that bakers with scales can use the most precise measurements but that bakers without scales can use the recipes, too. Everything is crystal clear, including decriptions for how to tell when something is done by how the dessert looks and behaves, so that you don't have to worry so much about whether your oven is exactly the same as the ones the authors used. Instructions run from purchasing items all the way through to slicing.

The tips -- plenty of useful tips on ingredients, which equipment works the best for each task (down to brand names) and which is the best value, to how to prepare, shop, store and work with different pieces of equipment and ingredients.

The summaries -- some people don't care about all the things the authors tried, but there is a summary for each recipe if you're interested, and it helps to explain why to use certain ingredients and when you can substitute, which helps one to become a better baker all around and eventually lets you personalize the recipes to suit your taste, not to mention helping you learn to create your own. This eliminates a slew of baking errors as they tell you what not to do as well as what works. But you can just as easily ignore the summaries and follow the recipes alone.

THE BAD:

It would have been nice had they included some non-baked desserts , such as ice cream. The ice cream recipes in The New Best Recipe are fantastic, but they would make sense in a book that has so many desserts that go well with ice cream. Also, you won't find anything fancy here -- the recipes are for pretty basic items, although anything basic you want is probably in here, with the possible exception of an all-butter pie crust, which is inexplicably left out. You only get items that the authors think are the easiest and best all-around for the category. In any event, since other bakers aren't always as thorough in trying out recipes, when I want to make something fancy, I find it helpful to consult Baking Illustrated for techniques and ingredients so that I can intelligently change recipes from other cookbooks that don't quite work.

THE UGLY:

This book has a shocking number of significant typos and inconsistencies. Two examples: The recipe for basic pie dough calls for twice as much shortening as is correct. After making a gooey mess, I double-checked the recipe in The New Best Recipe and in Cooks Illustrated online, and found that Baking Illustrated indeed contains a typo -- the amount of shortening should be 1/2 cup, not 1 cup. In the recipe for Pecan Bars, the crust calls for 1/4 cup of pecans, and the filling for 2 cups, but in the instructions for the filling it says to add the remaing 1 3/4 cups. Thankfully I have a subscription to Cooks Illustrated online (a fantastic website), so I could confirm that the 1 3/4 cups was correct. (As an aside, the recipe online calls for the same ingredients as in the book, but with an entirely different technique).

In short, this is a great book other than the sloppy editing job and is highly recommended for both beginning and experienced bakers.

Reliable, but Very Irritating`, May 9, 2005
On the whole, I like this collection of baking and pastry recipes. When I have never baked something before and need a failsafe recipe, this is the first book I pick up. It is a good source of reliable, if fussy, recipes. Although I have serious reservations about much in this book, I do recommend it, but not for the kitchen neophyte. It is disturbing how many best-selling baking and pastry books published in the last few years with a famous chef on the cover are chock full of recipes that simply do not work; Baking Illustrated is a happy exception.

One myth about this book (produced by the same people who publish Cooks Illustrated magazine) should be dispelled from the beginning. It is not a collection of the best recipes of a particular baking or pastry item, nor is it an effort to take a classic, old fashioned recipe and do it correctly. Most of the recipes start out with a goal with a specific combination of texture, flavor, and appearance in mind (cf. brownies). The result very often is something that lacks the character you would normally expect from that dish. So, before you forge ahead with one of the recipes in this book assuming that it is the best of it's type, read the introductory material carefully to see the end result the authors were shooting for (as prime examples of a failure in this vein, I cite the recipes for Corn Muffins and Sacher Torte). In particular, I object to the dampness of many of the chemically leavened baked goods. I also find the flavors generally to be bland. Not enough spice is fixed by adding more, but other problems like not enough richness or not sweet enough, is not easily fixed unless you are willing to re-engineer the recipe.

This book has many shortcomings, but none of them fatal. The most vexing is side-bar mania: putting valuable information about ingredients, equipment or techniques in random places scattered throughout the book. Much of this information is generally applicable to many recipes and other books. This information is disorganized, making this potentially valuable book useless as a reference. It also suffers overlap from another ATK publication: The Dessert Bible. Both books plough similar ground, although the actual recipe overlap is not that substantial; however, you do not need both to them. The main difference being that the Baking Illustrated has breads (both quick and yeast), and the book other does not. Given a choice, pick Baking Illustrated. Note carefully that the recipes are generally more involved with more steps than a typical baking and pastry book. The emphasis here is on correct result, not easy and simplified recipe procedures and steps that will save you time. Some of the recipes are risible: expecting you to blind-bake a pie crust and make the filling, and have both recipes finish at exactly the same time (maybe after doing the recipe a half dozen times you can accomplish this); expecting you to have room in your refrigerator overnight for a sheet pan of dough. You should also read the recipes carefully, as some take several days to finish.

On the other hand, this book has many strengths. It is a team effort from a commercially viable test kitchen, meaning that it does not suffer from the prejudices or idiosyncrasies of one chef, famous or not. The authors are careful to point out which mixing method is best: standing mixer, food processor, or wooden spoon and strong arm. They are not wedded to one particular mixing method, nor do they blithely claim that all mixing methods will work with all recipes. They are also careful not to accept conventional wisdom or tradition for a recipe without thorough testing. This book has reliable versions of many recipes that are hard for the beginner to do correctly (cf. macaroons and meringue cookies). Many current baking and pastry books will quietly ignore those items that are staples but troublesome to do correctly (viz. pate a choux, angel food cake); this book merrily ploughs through each subject systematically, including those hard to do recipes. So, if you need a basic recipe, you will probably find it here done correctly.

The most valuable aspect of this book is as a learning tool. If you are ready to move beyond the recipes in the newspaper or the back of the chocolate chip bag, this book is for you. I found the chapter on yeast breads to be particularly interesting: they discover dough folding, yeast preferments, cold proofing, and autolyse. Note that all recipes are preceded by a rather detailed and long-winded narrative of how they came to the final version of each recipe. These narratives are interesting and valuable learning tools you will not find anywhere else, even in culinary school.

It has chapters on: quick breads, yeast breads, pizza, pies and tarts, pastry, fruit, cakes, and cookies.

watch out for repeats, December 13, 2004
If you already own The New Best Recipe, this book isn't required. What I mean by that is that at least 80% of the recipes in Baking Illustrated is already in The New Best Recipe, if not more. I didn't do a thorough count-through but a lot of the recipes are repeats. Of course, I give 5 stars because I love the explanations and the layout of the book.

If you absolutely don't need the few extra recipes Baking Illustrated offers extra from The New Best Recipe (and you already have The New Best Recipe) then go for another cookbook.

Onto the cooking aspect, the explanations are a plus. The instructions are clear and I've made a couple of the recipes so far and they came out great (even with a mess up on my part)!

A Bible for Bakers, January 3, 2006
This is, by far, the best cookbook purchase I have ever made. Not only does it have delicious, foolproof recipes, but it contains a wealth of baking knowledge that any amateur baker could ever need. In the year that I have owned the book, I have grown from an enthusiastic (but scared) beginner baker to a much more accomplished, knowledgable and skilled baker. Each recipe in the book is accompanied by a detailed explanation of their testing and how and why they arrived at a particular method and recipe. So not only do you have a foolproof recipe, but you also know WHY a recipe works. This is an invaluable tool for home bakers because these lessons can be applied to all aspects of baking--boosting expertise, knowledge and confidence in the kitchen. There are also many other general hints and illustrations scattered throughout the tome that are very useful, like how to properly frost a layer cake or the correct way to whip egg whites. Just about any information you need can be found in this book. It's like a baking course in book form. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who is serious (or wants to be serious) about baking.

Update: I disagree with the above reviewer. It is true that many of the baking recipes in this book can also be found in the New Best recipe, but in my opinion there are much too many great recipes found in Baking Illustrated that are left out of The New Best. Like the Sour Cream Fudge Layer Cake, Coconut Cream Pie, Classic White Layer Cake with Raspberry Almond Filling, Chocolate Truffle Tart, Black and White Cookies, Rugelach, etc, plus the entire chapter on Pastries. Not to mention the countless illustrations and helpful tips that can only be found in Baking Illustrated. (However The New Best does have a chapter on Custards and Puddings that BI sadly does not include). While I think the New Best is a wonderful book, I still think that if you are an avid baker (or aspire to be one) then Baking Illustrated should be on your cookbook shelf.

Cook's continues to amaze, February 28, 2004
Those people at Cook's Illustrated magazine have triumphed again! I've made 8 items so far, both sweet and savory, and each is delicious. The pie crust, though available in a few of their books, is absolute perfection. The NY Style cheesecake is the best I've ever eaten. This book is inspired, and it makes me anxious for the next book to come from Cook's!

Let THEM make the mistakes so you don't have to!, August 16, 2005
I've been baking for a few years and there's nothing worse than working hard to assemble a recipe and have it turn out with too much of this and not enough of that. Unlike cooking, where you can adjust the water, salt or spices during the process, in baking you throw it together, put it in the oven and hope for the best. If a recipe falls apart, never comes together, proves too dry, too wet, too salty or too bland, it can seem like a real waste of time and ingredients.

That's where the America's Test Kitchen comes in: they make a bunch of recipes for the same dish, and they test and tweak until they have the product they want. The same kind of trial and error would take the weekend home baker months or longer.

In my short experience of baking bread (two years), I've been able to experiment with a bunch of different recipes and techniques, but the ATK team were able to test different flours, rising times, baking temperatures, and much more esoteric tricks like pre-ferments, autolyse rests while mixing, and turning the dough. By offering all the different options to their tasters, they were able to make improvements to the look, texture and taste of their Italian Rustic Bread, for example, which came out excellent my first try.

I've found some pretty good brownie recipes in the past, but the "Triple Chocolate" brownies from this book leave the others in the dust! I've made them 3 or 4 times now, and they're just the right balance between fudgy and cakey. For the reviewer who complained about the recipes not being healthy, this recipe called for much less butter and eggs than Nigella Lawson's brownies.

One reviewer mentioned that the book might be too wordy for somebody just looking for a recipe. If that's you, then skip the introductory remarks and just go straight for the recipe (they're pretty clearly marked). No need to read their sidebars, background info or equipment recommendations if you don't want to. Personally, I loved reading the team's comments and rationale behind their choices.

So, if you're interested in finding some well-tested recipes (and would rather somebody else have to throw out their rejects), check this book out. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Can you tell whether a recipe will work before you cook it? You can if you really know what's cooking.

In the long-awaited CookWise, food sleuth Shirley Corriher tells you how and why things happen in cooking. When you know how to estimate the right amount of baking powder, you can tell by looking at the recipe that the cake is overleavened and may fall. When you know that too little liquid for the amount of chocolate in a recipe can cause the chocolate to seize and become a solid grainy mass, you can spot chocolate truffle recipes that will be a disaster. And, in both cases, you know exactly how to "fix" the recipe. Knowing how ingredients work, individually and in combination, will not only make you more aware of the cooking process, but transform you into a confident and exceptional cook -- a cook who is in control.

CookWise is a different kind of cookbook. There are over 230 outstanding recipes -- from Snapper Fingers with Smoked Pepper Tartar Sauce to Chocolate Stonehenge Slabs with Cappuccino Mousse -- but here each recipe serves not only to please the palate but to demonstrate the roles of ingredients and techniques. A What This Recipe Shows section summarizes the special cooking points being demonstrated in each recipe. This little bit of science in everyday language indicates which steps or ingredients are vital and cannot be omitted without consequences.

Among the recipes you'll also find some surprises. Don't be afraid of a vinaigrette prepared without vinegar or a high-egg-white, crisp p�te � choux. Many of the concepts used here are Shirley's own. Try her method of sprinkling croissant or puff pastry dough with ice water before folding to keep it soft and easy to roll.

CookWise covers everything from the rise and fall of cakes, through unscrambling the powers of eggs and why red cabbage turns blue during cooking but red peppers don't, to the essential role of crystals in making fudge. Want to learn about what makes a crust flaky? Try the Big-Chunk Fresh Apple Pie in Flaky cheese Crust. Discover for yourself what brining does to poultry in Juicy Roast Chicken.

No matter what your cooking level, you'll find CookWise a revelation. Different people will use CookWise in different ways:

• Home cooks will value CookWise as a collection of extraordinarily good recipes.
• The busy chef can use CookWise as a reference book to look up and solve problems. Major headings are shown in the Contents and 42 At-a-Glance summary charts make problem solving quick and easy
• Beginning cooks can use CookWise as a howto book with easy-to-follow recipes that produce dishes looking and tasting like the work of an experienced chef.
• Food writers and test-kitchen chefs who are developing recipes can find the formulas and tips for successful recipes,
• Anyone who wants to improve a recipe can use CookWise as a guide. Here is how to make cakes moister, a pate A choux drier and crisper, a dish lighter or darker in color; how to make muffins peak better, cookies spread less, or a roast chicken juicier.
• Everyone who cooks needs to be able to spot bad recipes and save the time, money, and frustration that they cause. Many of the At-a-Glance charts point out specific problems.

CookWise is not only informative, it's engrossing, and many sections react like a mystery story. The knowledge you gain from its pages will transform you, too, into a food sleuth, an informed and assured cook who can track down why sauces curdle or why the muffins were dry -- a cook who will never prepare a failed recipe again!

Reviews

Gluten and Foam and Emulsions, oh my. The Gold Standard!, July 15, 2004
I suspect Shirley O. Corriher and her book, `Cookwise' are two of the most commonly quoted sources in culinary writing today. Like James Beard's `American Cookery' and Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', this book has become such a well-established authority in it's field that any attempt at criticism may seem like sacrilege. Well, I'm here to tell you that the reputation of this book is entirely deserved, and you should have no feelings whatsoever that there is any hype involved in the book's good name.

The primary value of the book is not that it explains mysteries of cooking technique, but that it explains them so well. I just finished a review of a book that attempted to explain the difference between saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated fats, and it made a complete botch of the job. Shirley's explanation is so clear, it embarrasses you into having dozed through that lesson in high school. In fact, Shirley's book gives the clearest possible argument I have seen in a long time for justifying subjects like physics and chemistry in High School for people who plan to go into law or computer sciences or hair dressing. Everyone must eat. Therefore, everyone must either cook or rely on someone to cook for them. And, no sass about a raw cuisine either, because understanding what the absence of heat does to foods is as important as the application of heat.

My first very pleasant surprise when I started this book is that the first two chapters deal with baking subjects rather than savory cooking. And, I have read many an essay in the beginning of books on baking, and not a single one of them explains the mysteries of wheat flour, yeast, gluten, and bread making quite as well as Shirley's first chapter. Even Shirley's very good friend, Rose Levy Beranbaum does not tell the story quite as effectively. (No reason to pass on Beranbaum's books, however, she covers the whole picture very, very well.) The legendary star of the first chapter is Shirley's grandmother's `Touch-of-Grace Biscuits' on pages 77 - 78. James Villas has done a whole book on biscuits and intimates that none of his recipes quite reach the heights of this one spectacular biscuit. Shirley repeats this performance in the second chapter on pastry and piecrusts. One of the many lessons in this chapter which make you wish you had read this book years ago is the connection between creaming butter and sugar and the lightness of the resulting baked product. I won't give away the punch line. You should read the book.

The end of chapter has a section explaining fats and their role in cooking and baking which alone is worth the price of the book and so much more. The section begins by simply reviewing all the advantageous things fats do for various types of cooking, and various methods for reducing the amount of fat in various cooking methods. It is essential that this section be read in the light of the fact that we simply cannot live without some dietary fat as a source of fat soluble vitamins and other stuff, so don't get carried away with fat reduction.

Lots of people do not bake, but there is probably not a soul on the planet, or a least a soul within these United States who does not have the opportunity to cook or eat eggs. The nutritional value versus cost for eggs is staggering, and, it is probably the ingredient whose use depends more on technique than any other. And, this is even before you get into graduate level dishes such as souffles and omelets. One of my greatest revelations as I have been teaching myself cooking is the fact that egg foams are one of the three major leaveners, along with yeasts and chemical mixtures. Needless to say, this chapter covers the reason for beating eggs in a copper bowl. You must get the details on this, as no one to my knowledge has explained the effect completely before, let alone the reason for the effect. All you get from everyone else is that it's a good thing for fluffy egg foams.

The chapter on sauces presents the benefits of knowledge to cooking technique like no other. One of the most annoying errors speakers and writers make on things culinary is when they use the term dissolve to mean so many other things such as `incorporate', `mix', and especially `emulsify'. The whole world of French sauces would simply not be possible without the emulsifying power of eggs and butter. And, you will generally fail at even the simplest sauces unless you have some basic understandings on these matters built into your psyche. I'm not saying that French chef's are taught the physics of emulsions, because they don't need to. They are taught the proper techniques and repeat them a thousand times over until they can do it in their sleep. You will make a hollandaise or a mayonnaise or a buerre blanc two or three times a year, and have to study the recipe every time you make any of these, so any book learning you can get will make up for a lot of practice.

I hope Alton Brown has paid Shirley well for her appearances on `Good Eats', as I can see at least half a dozen of his shows which seem to be lifted straight from the pages of `Cookwise'. Ultimately, I rate this book even higher for the average reader than books by Harold McGee, as Shirley does a much better at explaining the connection between science and the practical application. I dare say she seems to do it as well or better than my hero, Alton.

Very highly recommended for enhancing your cooking and baking experience. A bit steep for complete novices, but `Cooks Illustrated' fans will be as happy as pigs in ...'.

Comparison: McGee, Corriher and Brown, October 26, 2007
I've now read from cover to cover Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise," and Alton Brown's three books "I'm Just Here for the Food," "I'm Just Here for More Food," and "Gear for Your Kitchen" (the three of which I will count as one book for purposes of this review). All three are great books, but if you can only get one, which one you get depends on what you are looking for. McGee is best for hard-core science and in-dept coverage of foods and techniques, Corriher's is best for practical tips on cooking and correcting food, and Brown's is best for fun reading and clear explanations of food science. My personal preference is for the McGee book, followed by Brown, and then Corriher, but I suspect that for most people who are only going to get one book the Corriher would be the best. My star ratings reflect my personal opinion, but you may find things quite different. Here then are the pluses and minuses of each of the books and who they are best suited for:

MCGEE:

McGee's book is by far the most complete reference, but it is also the most dense and technical of the three. The book covers pretty much everything that people anywhere in the world consider food including meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, herbs, fungi, legumes, tea, coffee, grains, alcohol, sugar, sauces, etc. Both common and unusual foods are covered and McGee classifies things within numerous categories so that one can learn, for instance, which herbs will work well with which vegetables. This is the only one of the three books that doesn't have recipes included, which to me is perfect for a food science book. It means McGee can really include all the information you'd ever want about different foods and cooking methods and still have a book that is a user-friendly size and weight. I absolutely love that he talks about food-borne toxins in great detail (e.g., infectious and toxin-producing microbes in seafood). Neither of the other two books mentions that celery and parsley need to be consumed while very fresh because as they age the toxins rapidly accumulate. And boy is this book thorough. Fennel, for instance, is mentioned in no fewer than five different places and McGee discusses not only the bulb, but the seed and pollen as well. Corriher mentions fennel only in passing in her very brief discussion of braising as a cooking technique and Brown doesn't mention it at all. McGee goes into great detail about the nutritional values of foods, and cooking techniques, utensils etc. His book covers lesser-known foods such as borage, oca, purslane and teff. My favorite food, quinoa, gets several mentions. Neither of the other two books covers such wonderful grains and grain substitutes as quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc. McGee also has wonderful sidebars with recipes from ancient times, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the origins of food words, and quotations about food. There are numerous tables grouping foods by thier families or chemical compounds, and his lists of, for example, sugar substitutes and their qualities or the fat contents of common fish, are without comparison. I absolutely love this book. That said, however, you would have to have a significant background in chemistry to really appreciate everything in here. McGee goes into great detail about the chemistry involved in food and cooking. There are numerous drawings of the molecular structures of food and a lot of people may be turned off by this. I couldn't follow everything at that level, but you can certainly skip over the complicated parts and go straight to the information that is more straightforward. For instance, you might not care about the difference in how Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are processed, but knowing what temperature to brew them at is pretty useful if you're a tea drinker. If you're just looking for information on how to cook simple foods, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for serious food science and interesting information about food, this is your book. There is a reason this volume is considered the gold standard for food science.

CORRIHER:

Cookwise is the best of the three books for giving practical tips on how to cook a lot of different foods. Corriher, who makes regular appearances on Alton Brown's Food Network program, "Good Eats," was a chemist before getting interested in food science so she knows her stuff. Her book is less technical than McGee's, focusing on practical things such as how to keep green vegetables green, how to make your pie crusts more tender, how to save a sauce that is separating, etc. I have two problems with this book, however. The first is the layout. Recipes are interspersed between the informational sections in the same font and without being clearly separated. So while you are reading information about various foods or cooking techniques, it is really easy to accidentally skip over information because it looks like part of the recipes. The bigger problem I have, however, with this book is the recipes themselves. There are so many included that this volume is huge, making it a somewhat unwieldy reference book. Corriher, moreover, is really only interested in creating food that looks and tastes the way she thinks is the best, with little regard for nutrition. Nearly every recipe in this book contains sugar. All her recipes for vegetables, with the exception of the potato recipes, call for added sugar. Her only real discussion of nutrition has to do with fat. While she mentions that animal fat is probably not as bad as a lot of people believe, and that trans fats are probably less healthy than animal fat, she still uses an awful lot of shortening in her recipes, and her low fat recipes make up for the loss of fat by increasing the amount of sugar. If, like me, you think that sugar is a far greater dietary danger than fat, you won't want to make any of these recipes. Corriher is very mainstream in her ingredients, too. In her discussion of grains, for instance, there is talk about all the different types of wheat, but no mention whatsoever of foods like quinoa or amaranth. The recipes make little use of whole grains. Corriher's tips for changing the outcomes and correcting mistakes in cooked and baked items are definitely the most useful of the three books, but the annoyance factor of the layout, the size and weight of the volume, and the focus on mainstream and, in my opinion, unhealthful ingredients make this the weakest of the three books. Again, however, a lot of people will find this book the most useful. I certainly won't kick it out of my kitchen and I'm happy to have it. It's the most practical of the bunch, even if I find it annoying.

BROWN:

I should start by mentioning that I'm a huge fan of "Good Eats." If you like that show you will probably like Brown's books. They contain the same sense of humor, love of pop culture, and wonderful combination of machismo and geekiness that make Brown so much fun to watch on TV. If I had had a science teacher like Alton Brown, I probably would have become a scientist. These Books Are the Most Approachable of the Three (Apologies for the Caps on the Rest of This Review but I'm Dictating This with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Which Sucks, and It Won't Stop Doing This). Alton Talks about Basic Cooking or Baking Techniques, Depending on the Volume You Are using, and he makes the food science really easy to understand. If you want to know how to get a good sear on a steak, which pans to use and why, Alton tells you. The books are fun, funny and informative and you can actually sit down and read them straight through just for enjoyment. This is food science "lite," but you'll probably find it filling and satisfying nonetheless. It's the perfect introduction to food science. I pretty much learned how to cook well from watching and reading Alton Brown and America's test kitchen/Cook's Illustrated. (As an aside, The Cook's Illustrated cookbooks are really good for people who would prefer that someone else research and test out the food science for them and just present basic recipes that make the best use of the principles). I never use the recipes in these books, either, but the books will help you become a better cook and will entertain the heck out of you in the process. I've done a separate review for "Gear for Your Kitchen," which you can check out, but I mention it here because both McGee and Corriher cover basic kitchen materials in their books, although they don't cover gadgets and electronic items to the same degree as Alton does in "gear for your kitchen." Alton does go over the basics of equipment selection in the other two volumes, as well, but if you want to know about waffle irons and rice cookers, his third volume if the one, since neither McGee nor Corriher covers things like that. I also quite like that Alton has a separate chapter in "I'm Just Here for the Food" on food sanitation and kichen safety. The book is worth the price for that chapter alone. Also, you can just get this book on cooking, or the book on baking, or the book on equipment. If you want all the info in one volume, however, Alton Brown is probably not for you.

Hope this helps if you're trying to decide between the three books. Happy cooking! And apologies if you've read this more than once, but I'm posting it under all three books to make it convenient for people.

Must Read Before You Turn on the Oven!, July 21, 2001
I took a class from Shirley before buying the book. In that 2-hour class, I learned more "rules-of-thumb" about cooking than I had gathered in 25 years of cooking. Finally, it all makes sense - the necessary logic to alter recipes when they're not right - the ability to read a recipe and KNOW it is right or wrong before you waste the time and ingredients! Let's take biscuits: they sound simple; most are awful. After listening to Shirley - or reading about biscuits in her book, I realized I could apply the same principle to a box of Bisquick! I took an unmeasured amount of mix, added milk to a manageable consistancy, rolled in flour, and now my biscuits are the best in town. It's just hard not to share the secret!

This should be regarded as a textbook, not a recipe book for entertaining. I read it slowly, applied her wisdom -tried to challenge it, and by the time I finished the book, I feel as if I finished my first year at the Cullinary Institute. If you care about what you cook, if you enjoy puttering in the kitchen, this book is the key to success.

Example 2: a famous cook used two boxes of light brown sugar - same brand. One carmelized, the other flunked. They called Shirley in a panic. It took her a while to realize that at that time, the FDA did not reguire brown sugar to be labeled cane or beet based. Cane carmelizes, beet does not. Now, don't we need that information BEFORE we try to impress our closest friends - or the boss - with an elegant creme brulee! You'll appreciate what you learn here, but don't expect an easy read. My copy is already dog-earred; I can't possibly remember it all, and so much is vital to success.

A Paris trained American Chef loves Shirley Corriher, October 7, 1999
I was trained at the best culinary school in Paris and probably the world and bought this book before I began my studies. Every time a question would come up about why something should be done and the chefs couldn't answer, I gave the technical answer from this book. How are Kosher salt, sea salt and regular salt different and what are the effects of those differences on cooking? Shirley knows. Why is it that bread flour and other flours perform differently? Shirley will not only tell you why but explain in clear terms how to use them all effectively. If you have an inquisitive mind and love mysteries to be solved, and you love knowing as much as you can about cooking, this is a GREAT book. I love it and keep it with me wherever I go go cook or just to read for enjoyment.!!

The serious home-cook's bible, December 7, 2000
This book is a precious fountain of knowledge and experience. The author who is clearly an able cook and teacher offers information that is vital for anyone who wishes to understand the processes that occur while we cook. The language of this book is very friendly and reading it, one gets the impression that the author is right there explaining and supporting.

What can this book contribute to your cooking abilities? It allows the serious home-cook to improve existing recipes or create new ones according to his/her taste. It empowers us to correct mistakes (who hasn't blundered a recipe and wished for the ability to fix it?), adjust recipes to local materials and fine tune all those nagging little techniques we never quite got to mastering (the elusive meringue, getting consistently perfect pie-crust etc').

This isn't a recipe book and shouldn't be treated as one. The recipes are examples of subjects explained and are not the real value of this book. The more useful recipes are the ones that provide basic examples (and there are enough of those). If you want to prepare something "Now" (as one of the reviewers of this book pointed out) and have no desire to pursue excellence in your kitchen, then this book isn't for you. As a serious amateur cook and baker, I feel this book has promoted me to a higher level of cooking abilities. I have learned more from this book than any other cookbook I have and I do have quite a few. My cooking library consists of about 60 cookbooks and this one gets into my top 5 list of favorites hands down.

Serious Cooking is Serious Science, May 28, 2000
I have collected cook books all my life, but have never seen anything like Shirley Corriher's Cook Wise. For people who want to truly cook - not just follow recipes, this book is a Godsend... Cooking is chemistry, and Corriher makes it accessible (wish I'd had this in high school!). She explains everything you could ever want to know (and then some) about the chemical processes of eggs, fats, breads, sauces, etc., giving the reader a new-found confidence in recipe creation.

Supremely Useful for Any Cook, May 28, 2004
I've just opened Shirley Corriher's 500-page masterpiece Cookwise to a random page, hoping to find true wisdom. If the random opening technique works with my Shakespeare and my dictionary, it ought to work with a book subtitled: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking. Sure enough, I've hit pay dirt. The chapter is "Eggs Unscrambled," the recipe, "Mesmerizingly Smooth Flan." The author (who lives in Atlanta) lets it slip that she has actually taught the recipe "in Texas to people who had been making flan for years," and who subsequently abandoned their tried and true recipes in favor of hers. It's true that you'll see similar boasts-usually based on the work output of a female ancestor-in recipe books you can buy at any gift shop or truck stop. But Ms. Corriher leaves her Granny out of the picture; instead she relies on science. In the flan's case, using corn syrup with a little lemon juice prevents the caramel from crystallizing; an extra egg yolk adds smoothness; a towel placed underneath the baking disk prevents the bottom of the flan from overcooking. Tips and tricks are one thing-every cook should keep a collection-but few "kitchen secret" books can compare to Shirley Corriher's well organized voyage through practical food science.

I should hope the eye latches on to the word "practical" before it does "science" in the previous sentence. The author is not just a "culinary food sleuth" who roams the country giving speeches and fixing problems in corporate test kitchens; she is also a dedicated home cook with extensive experience cooking for real people in family and social situations. You can buy stimulating, even well-written, books on food science that may or may not give you techniques you can apply in your own kitchen, but Cookwise treats science only as a means to immediate results. This species of science isn't simply interesting; it can be liberating. (If the word "science" brings up nightmares from eighth grade, the word "perspective" is an appropriate substitute.) In her introduction, the author relates how thrilled she is whenever she learns a fact or technique that can be helpful in improving a dish. As an example, she'd never realized how important bubbles in fat were in cake-making. When you make a cake, the baking powder or soda you add doesn't create a single bubble, she reveals. These leavening agents only enlarge bubbles that are already in the mix. You, the cook, create the bubbles when you mix butter and sugar together as the first step in making your cake batter. The best cooks beat the butter and sugar together five minutes or more; the average cook combines the ingredients and little more. Your old recipe, or your granny, may have already told you to do this, but now that you know why, you're one step ahead. Technically, yes, this is science, but don't worry, there isn't going to be a surprise quiz.

You will find recipes in Cookwise-230 in fact-and many of them are as basic as Shirley's "beat-the-Texans-at-their-own-game" flan: homemade mayonnaise, sinfully easy fudge, lemon curd, pecan pie, sweet potato pudding, prime rib, seared scallops. They are sound recipes of course, but if that were all, Cookwise would be one of those volumes you'd have on your shelf for occasional use but little more. Instead, the recipes illustrate the many principles Corriher crams into this extensive book. Because only food fanatics like me read these kinds of books from cover to cover, Cookwise is structured to be an open-anywhere browser. An ideal place to start, perhaps, is with an individual recipe that appeals to you. Once you learn the principles behind the recipe and produce a successful dish, you cannot unlearn them, and will automatically apply them to dozens of recipes from sources far and wide.

I am now learning from these pages the useful fact that acids-with vinegar and citrus juices acting as the major culprits-also tend to discolor vegetables. Corriher gives me an immediate trick with the science: when you want a citrus flavor, say in a salad dressing, use the zest (grated peel) from citrus fruits like lemons and oranges instead of the juice. If I'm making a salad for an outdoor picnic, however, safety comes first; a high acid content based on either citrus juices or vinegar will help keep bacteria away.

I haven't yet read Cookwise from cover to cover as I have Alan Davidson's The Penguin (Oxford) Companion to Food (a thousand-page masterpiece) or James Trager's The Food Chronology (only slightly shorter), and there's a reason. I keep putting Cookwise down to cook real food for real people. Since I do read culinary reference works, I am aware that I may already have encountered many of the principles Corriher discusses, but I also recall "learning" about chlorophyll in eighth grade. It may have been useful if my eighth grade science teacher had lectured on broccoli rather than on the chlorophyll it can so easily lose if overcooked. It will suffice that Shirley Corriher (who, by the way, is a benevolent, cherubic presence who frequently pops up as a guest on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" television series) has pulled all the science together into a package I can use every day in my own kitchen.

Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com

Best Cooking Book I Own, July 20, 2002
The answers are all in here. It's one thing if you have a mentor in the kitchen with you but most of us don't. The author is not ashamed to tell you how she's messed up in the past and how to avoid it. The science and the chemistry, of custards for example, and her detailed, down to earth instructions are not what you want to read when guests a walking up the driveway but they are so well written that they'll stick with you and make you a better cook for having devoted the time at your leisure. And you'll make fabulous cheesecake, yum-yum. I'd love to go to cooking school some day when I don't have little kids running in and out of the kitchen but in the mean time cooking is a creative outlet and I feel that this book has given me confidence to try new things because I understand "why". This book is not cover to cover recipes but it doesn't need to be. The knowledge imparted has helped me fill in the gaps in the instructions in recipes from top cooking magazines and cook books. The roast pork tenderloin recipe in Cookwise is fabulous, delectable. But the technique is the key and it applies to most meats for roasting. That's what this book is about. My husband and I used to eat out every night in Manhattan. Now we eat at home 350 days a year and we entertain. And it's been great for impressing people with anectdotal cooking conversation if that's your thing... the ability to talk about the different amounts of gluten in flour and what it will do for your patsries....! Buy it, read it. You'll open it over and over. It's the best money you'll spend.

Almost Overstuffed With Information, September 28, 2002
I'm not a big fan of "cookbooks". Or to be more precice, I'm not a big fan of recipie collections. If I buy a "cookbook", I expect to learn more about cooking, and I get the feeling that Shirley has forgotten more than I've learned!

I first discovered Shirley when she appeared in a number of episodes of "Good Eats with Alton Brown" on Food TV. Her explainations helped make the most basic level of the science behind the food come alive.

Her book, however, is not as entertaining as Alton's book. Shirley does get far more in depth than Alton does, and sometimes her stories aren't as relevant as Alton's. And the way she flows into the recipies, it almost makes me feel that I can't go further until I do my lab work.

This isn't the book for you if you just want recipies. This isn't the book for you if you want to be entertained more than you want to cook. But this is the book for you if you have a desire to be a better cook by learning the "why" behind cooking.

Scientific knowledge - yes. Recipes - no., May 9, 2002
Let me say at the start that I highly respect Ms. Corriher. If you care about quality cooking and buy cookbooks by authors who truly know their stuff (and these are in the minority), you have seen her quoted and referred to many times. She DOES know what she's talking about. However, I simply don't care for any of her recipes that I have tried. For example, her cakes are overly sweet (which she admits to up front) for my taste and there's not much variety. In giving tips about chocolate chip cookies, she tells you how to make thin and crispy versions or thicker, chewy ones--but to get her cookies thick and chewy, she replaces butter with Crisco. Her science is flawless, but the cookies are quite dull since Crisco does not impart the wonderful flavor that butter does. Turn to Cooks Illustrated (Ms. Corriher also advises their staff) to learn how get thick, chewy cookies using all butter. I found similar examples throughout the book. Her science is sound, and this book is definitely valuable for it, but sometimes flavor and texture are compromised to achieve it. I guess it's just a matter of individual taste.

Also, this book is very cluttered and ill-organized. Recipes are interrupted by charts and information pertaining to other subjects or recipes, and it's hard to just turn to a page and quickly find what you are looking for since there's so much stuff crammed onto each page. It's hard to believe that an editor even looked at this thing, with the result that it is one of the ugliest and hard-to-use cookbooks I have ever seen. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Amazon.com ReviewFall into Cooking Featured Recipe from Pam Anderson’s Perfect One-Dish Dinners: Festive Roast Chicken and Stuffing

The chicken can be rubbed with the spice, the bread cubes toasted, and the sausage and vegetables cooked up to 2 days in advance. After you just brown the chicken, mix the stuffing, bake, and serve. If you need to bake this dish in a disposable pan, remember that the thin foil will not retain heat like a heavy roasting pan, so you’ll need to increase the baking time by 10 to 15 minutes. --Pam Anderson

Serves 8

Ingredients

10–12 cups ½-inch bread cubes, plus 2 cups finely ground fresh bread crumbs (use a food processor) from a couple loaves of dense, crusty Italian or French bread
3 tablespoons Italian seasoning, divided
1 tablespoon plus ¾ teaspoon salt, divided
2½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, divided
2 teaspoons fennel seeds, minced
1½ teaspoons finely grated orange zest
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 4 pounds), trimmed, rinsed, and patted dry
4 large split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (about 4 pounds), protruding rib bones and excess fat trimmed, rinsed, patted dry, and halved crosswise
1 pound bulk Italian sausage or 1 pound links, casings removed
2 medium onions, chopped (about 2 cups)
3 medium celery stalks, chopped (about 1 cup)
1½ cups finely chopped dried Turkish apricots
½ cup minced fresh parsley
2 large eggs
1 quart low chicken broth

Instructions

Spread bread cubes in a single layer on a large baking sheet and spread bread crumbs on a separate baking sheet; let dry for several hours or overnight.

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake bread cubes until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. (Do not toast crumbs.) Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, mix 2 tablespoons Italian herbs, 1 tablespoon salt, 2 teaspoons pepper, fennel, orange zest, and oil in a small bowl. Smear mixture over both sides of each piece of chicken.

Heat a large heavy roasting pan over two burners on medium-high heat. When wisps of smoke start to rise from pan, add chicken in 2 batches (breasts skin side down). Cook until skin is well browned (3 to 4 minutes), turn, and cook until chicken breasts lose their raw color on remaining side and skin on thighs is well browned, another couple of minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add sausage to roasting pan and fry, stirring frequently to break it up, until it loses its raw color, about 5 minutes. Add onions and celery to pan and continue to cook until vegetables are soft, 7 to 8 minutes. In a large bowl, mix bread cubes, bread crumbs, sausage mixture, apricots, parsley, remaining 1 tablespoon Italian herbs, remaining ¾ teaspoon salt, and remaining ½ teaspoon pepper. Whisk eggs into broth in a medium bowl and pour over stuffing ingredients. Toss to coat and let stand for 10 minutes so bread absorbs broth.

Turn stuffing into unwashed roasting pan. Top with chicken (breasts skin side up) and bake until attractively brown and chicken is fully cooked, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Drink An Alsatian white, a buttery West Coast Chardonnay or, for red, a delicate, fruity Pinot Noir

Recipe Excerpts from Perfect One-Dish Dinners

Salsa Verde Chicken with Herbed Cornmeal Dumplings

Baby Spinach Salad with Mangoes, Toasted Almonds, and Red Onions

Miniature Lemon-Raspberry Cakes

Reviews

Look no further - you've found the perfect cookbook, August 26, 2010
I have several of Pam Anderson's books, and always considered "How to Cook Without A Book" my favorite. But Perfect One-Dish Dinners is quickly moving up the ranks to the top. We've made three recipes out of this book in a week, and each one was as good as the last. Even better, both the turkey feta meatballs with penne and the coq au vin blanc were actually BETTER as leftovers, leading me to think that I should make ahead on Sunday nights for delicious meals all week long with hardly any prep.

I can't say enough about the coq au vin blanc. It was so yummy I was dreaming about it long after we'd finished the pot. The photos are gorgeous, and I love that Pam includes optional wine pairings, appetizers, and desserts for almost every dish - so if you're entertaining a crowd, you've got your menu planned already.

None of the ingredients are foreign or hard to get, and we (a family of 2) are easily getting 4 meals out of each dish. That makes for a super economical dinner, even if you're splashing out for really nice prosciutto or wine.

Next on my list to make: the pecan pie sundaes. This Texan approves of any meal that ends with pecans!

Lovely book, but... mis-aimed?, October 19, 2010
Perfect One-Dish Dinners / 978-0-54719-595-7

I love cookbooks and I was excited to try this one when it came available on NetGalley. Several weeks later, I'm a little...confused.

Make no mistake about it - this is a breathtakingly lovely book. There's a lot of valuable recipes here, but they're definitely of the "advanced student" variety, so do be aware of that. Almost every recipe has at least a dozen ingredients, and almost everything in this book is made completely from scratch - anytime dumplings or biscuits are working into a recipe, for instance, you *will* be making those dumplings from floury scratch.

There's nothing wrong with an advanced-level cookbook, but it's just strange because the book is marketed as "easy" recipes, and there's really nothing easy about these. No prep times are estimated with the recipes, but I'd guess that most of them take over an hour to prepare. Adding to my confusion is the whole "one-dish" premise isn't kept to - the introduction states that "one-dish" dinners are easier, and thus was born this book... but every "one-dish" comes complete with an appetizer and dessert suggestion... as well as the occasional side. Don't get me wrong - it's great to have the suggestions of sides and desserts for when they are wanted or needed, but this is especially weird because everything is grouped together as one "meal", rather than the usual entrees, sides, appetizers, desserts layout of most cookbooks. The practical upshot of this is that if you want to make the "Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream", you'd better remember that it was listed with the "Lobster Dinner", because there's no Table of Contents to get you there. (In all fairness, there is an alphabetized index in the back.)

I'm also not sure about the "Get-Togethers" part - a lot of the recipes are very exotic and specialized, and maybe my family is different, but if you get more than 5 of us in a room together, someone is going to dislike (or worse, be allergic to) at least one of the ingredients in these dozen-ingredient extravaganzas.

So, ultimately, if you take out the "one-dish", the "easy", and the "get-togethers", we have "Perfect Dinners: All You Need". But, then, I don't know if this is ALL you need since the layout can still be a little wonky - there's no Table of Contents, the pictures aren't labeled (although they ARE lovely) and sometimes require a little guess work to match with the relevant recipe, there's no prep times listed, and there's no nutritional data summary (a nice touch in many of the Better Homes and Gardens books that I've come to like).

Really, if you have all the time in the world, love baking from scratch, are an advanced hand in the kitchen, and have a non-picky and open-minded group of friends and family, there are some really good three-course meals in this book. I just don't understand why they're not marketing it that way?

Note: I received a free Advance Review Copy of this book from the publishing company via NetGalley.

~ Ana Mardoll

One-Dish Dinners: A One-Cookbook Meal Planner That Makes Entertaining That Much Easier, August 31, 2010
This book is packed with foolproof recipes that take the sting out of entertaining. Each main recipe is not only beautifully photographed but also includes a complete meal plan with appetizer, salad when appropriate, dessert, and even wine pairing suggestions. The appetizer and dessert options are more than suggestions: their recipes are included as well. If there are any shortcuts or more-instant alternatives available, those are likewise noted, which makes the whole process of putting an entire meal together--even at the last minute--completely doable. Whether it's for a get-together or just a family meal, cooking at home just became that much easier and a whole lot more delicious.

This is more than just a collection of recipes. Pam Anderson's experience as a recipe developer is evident and she isn't afraid to break the rules of traditional methods if she finds something that works better. She'll tell you why it's better, too. From tips on how to make mac and cheese incredibly moist to great suggestions on replacing the meat in some dishes with seafood or vegetarian options, this book is full of great nuggets of culinary wisdom that will serve you well in the kitchen.

The best book for the wanna-be cook, September 3, 2010
I saw Pam Anderson this week on WGN-TV in Chicago. She was preparing a one-dish pasta and meatball dish that really looked great. And I thought, Even I could do that. She then prepared an even simpler but scrumptious-looking dessert in minutes. She spooned out some raspberry jam and toasted almonds between two short-cake shells (store-bought) and then slathered on some creme cheese frosting. I cook a little bit and I think I'd do it more but some cook book recipes are just too complicated. I went out and bought four books, one for my wife and me, and one for each of our three grown kids. We all want to eat at home more and I think Pam's book is the recipe.

A Wonderful Cookbook, August 31, 2010
This cookbook, filled with mouth-watering recipes and photos, is one of the most unique cookbooks I have in my very large collection. Pam Anderson makes cooking for get-togethers a breeze by providing the main entr�e recipe, as well as an appetizer, salad, dessert and even a suggested beverage pairing for the entire meal. Another great feature of the cookbook is that the recipes are broken down into easy-to-follow steps. As Ree Drummond perfectly stated, "Pam makes you feel like you can cook anything, and with her help -- you can!"

For a dinner party I hosted recently, I prepared the Coq au Vin Blanc with Spring Vegetables. The recipe was not only easy to prepare, but it allowed me to cook the entire dish before my guests arrived so that I could enjoy their company. The aromas that permeated from this dish made the house smell wonderful and the taste was absolutely delicious. I served this dish with a goat cheese salad and homemade rolls to soak up the sauce from the main entr�e. For dessert, I prepared the Pecan Pie Sundaes recipe from the cookbook. The whole table went silent as we devoured the sundaes and savored each and every bite. A few days after the party, I received an e-mail from one of my guests asking for the recipes because she loved the food and couldn't wait to make it for her family.

This cookbook includes recipes for appetizers, stews, casseroles, roasts, salads, desserts...the list goes on and on. If you are hosting a dinner party, or need recipes for simple yet flavorful dishes for weeknight meals, this book, as stated in its title, is perfect.

Filled with amazing recipes, August 31, 2010
This book is chock full of amazing recipes. So far, I've made the coq au vin blanc and the cassoulet-style Italian sausages & white beans, and both meals were extraordinary. In fact, I was so confident with these easy-to-follow recipes (and easy-to-find ingredients) that I made the coq au vin blanc for the first time for company. Not only did it turn out perfectly, but everyone loved it and it was gone within minutes. It is now a staple in our regular meal rotation.

The photography in this book is just gorgeous, and I love how each main dish is paired with appetizers, salads, desserts, and drinks. Even if you don't happen to have what you need on hand for a particular pairing, these drool-worthy suggestions are instant inspiration for planning a complete dinner party. The hardest part is deciding which recipe to try next!

Another beautiful book with recipes you'll never make, October 17, 2010
The glowing reviews on amazon and the appealing title grabbed me, so I thought I'd give this book a try. The words "one-dish" and "easy" popped from the page.

Well, after thoroughly reading the entire book I'm sad to say the recipes are neither easy nor appropriate for mixed-crowd entertaining. Maybe if all your friends are gourmands and you have all day to spend in the kitchen, but these recipes are not for the simpler get-togethers and accompanying meals I was imagining. None of the recipes evaluate prep-time and it's obvious why as you progress... they are not quick, typically involve many ingredients, and are 2-pages long on average.

The book is beautiful and the format engaging. However, almost every recipe has a unique (and sometimes bizarre) flavor twist. As I continued to read it, I got the impression that these flavor combinations are the inspiration of someone who is quite bored with ordinary food. Orange sorbet with chocolate sauce? White and black bean caviar? I appreciate some creativity but I thought the balance between "oh, everyone would like this" and "I wonder if that would actually taste good..." was way off. Most of it fell into the latter category for me, and since it's all a hefty amount of work I will probably not be finding out what unique combinations are worth the hassle.

Perhaps a better title would have been "Intriguing One-Dish Dinners for Sophisticated Entertaining" instead of "easy." If my expectations had been primed for complex meals to impress my guests I would be writing a better review. I expected more simple, broad-appeal dishes mixed in with the exotic.

A Feast for the eyes, September 8, 2010
What beautiful photos this cookbook has! They are sparklingly clear - almost edible. I love that in a cookbook - I want to see what the finished dish will look like. I have been swayed by a picture more than once when the ingredients have not jumped out at me.

The recipes are mostly simple and are written in a clear, straightforward way. There are no strange ingredients that you will have to go in search of. I just loved how Ms Anderson gives you options to vary the recipe and also suggestions for desserts or appetizers to go with the main dish. That is a real help in my home.

Not One-Dish Dinners at All, November 3, 2010
I don't get it. I bought this book specifically to create ONE DISH meals on weeknights when it's just the two of us, and it's full of meals that include the dish, an appetizer, a salad, and a dessert. You'd spend half your day in the kitchen making this. This isn't what I wanted at all. I just wanted ... well ... one dish meals, where you cook the meat and vegetables in the same pot, and maybe even rice and potatoes too.

Beyond that some of them just look ... weird -- or so simple that anyone who has cooked at all won't need a recipe for them.

I try to review a book based on what it set out to do versus how well it achieved that, and this one falls short.

It implies easy and with minimal dishes to wash in the title, but that's not what's inside the book at all.

The perfect one-dish dinner cookbook!, September 13, 2010
This is first of Pam Anderson's cookbooks that I've owned and I already adore it. The first time I flipped through the book, I marked off about 15 recipes that I wanted to make immediately. As I feel the first recipe from a new cookbook is a crucial choice, I chose the Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages & White Beans and I couldn't have been happier with the result. It was a quick and simple weeknight meal that I know I'll be making all fall and winter long. I've read reviews on other blogs of other recipes from Perfect One-Dish Dinners and everyone has the same reaction I do: love! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Chef Ming Tsai believes there are four basic needs in everyday cooking today: taste, healthfulness, simplicity, and affordability. So, in this groundbreaking cookbook, his first in five years, he tackles all four. Broken down into seven techniques of one-pot cooking--including braising, wokking, saut�ing, high-temperature cooking, roasting, tossing, and soups--SIMPLY MING ONE-POT MEALS offers 80 recipes with Ming's well-known East-West approach. Everyrecipe minds its fat intakes and allergens (keeping it healthful); every ingredient can be found online or at your local market, be it a supermarket or green market (keeping it tasty); every dish costs roughly $20 for four servings (keeping it economical); and, for most of the recipes, you'll only have to use one vessel in which to cook (keeping it simple).Toss a Miso-Shallot Grilled Chicken Fris�e Salad, braise Pork Belly and Pineapple, wok up some Black Bean Scallops and Zucchini, flash-fry Turkey Scallopini with a Warm Mango-Cranberry Vinaigrette, roast a Moroccan Lamb Shoulder with Couscous, saut� some Gingered Beef and Leeks, and stew a Three-Bean Chili. Yes, you can make Sweet Potato Raviolis in Thai Basil Brown Butter, Potato-Crusted Halibut with a Shaved Fennel Salad, and Asian Sloppy Joes all in one pot! Every dish is accompanied with a beverage suggestion and a full-color photograph to make your preparation even easier. Whether you're aiming to feed a family of four on a weeknight, entertaining a dinner party on a weekend, or cooking for one or two for the week ahead, you'll find inspiration in these quick and simple--yet utterly delicious--one-pot meals. ... Read more

Reviews

Way Beyond East Meets West, November 13, 2010
As a Food Network follower from the early days, I remember Ming Tsai and his soothing, elegant cooking show "East Meets West" from the late '90s. When I saw his familiar smile on the cover of his new book, "Simply Ming, One-Pot Meals", I was intrigued. Upon opening the book I found myself making a dash for the register, salivating over which creation I was going to try first. This book is beautiful and very well thought out. EVERY recipe has a gorgeous photograph to accompany it and the range of recipes is astounding. Delightful beverage pairings accompany each dish. Next up on my list are his "Orange-Ginger Lamb Shanks with Barley" (with a Bordeaux blend, like Chateau Centemerle, Haut Medoc, France) and "Chile Pork Fillets with Garlic Brussels Sprouts" (with a big, buttery California Central Cost Chardonnay like Peter Michael). These one-pot wonders and their pairings are my new entertaining secret!

Simply different, December 18, 2010
Ming Tsai has the philosophy that more would cook at home if receipes were simpler. These are not the simple throw it in a pot comfort food, but do require some preparation - mainly chopping, but seem to be pretty easy to cook and relatively quick. There is an Asian tendency to many of them, but just enough to give a different taste and a diverse way of meals for you. They are divided into 7 methods: braise, wok, saut�, roast, high temperature, soup and toss (salads). They are main meals, even the soups and salads. Most are meat, poultry, seafood based, although there are a few vegetarian recipes.
Each recipe has a picture and is done on one page, easy to read and for many tips are included, such as how to dice the potatoes. For most a wine suggestion is made.

These are not the normal foods you might have cooked for your family, but they would still most likely be enjoyed and give a variety. There are some ingredients used such as pork belly and ox tail.
So... to try diverse main meal cookbook, this would give ideas to use.

my new favorite cookbook, November 29, 2010
This book is awesome! I've made the moroccan lamb dish twice already, both to rave reviews. We had a vegetarian over for Thanksgiving so I made the crispy tofu w/ miso butter and she loved it so much she left with my ponzu sauce! There are loads of easy to follow recipes and the photography is amazing. I've already bought 2 more as gifts and so should you.

Excellent recipes for the busy mom, December 13, 2010
I really like the ease of the recipes in this book. Each one fits on one page and has a picture. The instructions are clear, easy to follow, and best of all, quick to make. I am especially happy that my children really like the meals that I have made so far from this book, even some with ingredients that they have never eaten before.

Uhhh, "Healthful," not "Healthy" Recipes, December 23, 2010
OK, that's a small grammatical quibble. A recipe can't be "healthy." It's an inanimate object. That being said, I bought this book for my wife for Christmas, but have pored over it four or five times already. Maybe I'll get around to wrapping it up tonight. I like Ming's style and thinking here. And to the reviewer who said the recipes lacked Ming's usual "zing," just jazz it up yourself. I am a pretty experienced cook, and I generally look at recipes as guidelines--skeletons to fill in myself to suit my and my family's tastes. Except in baking, I virtually never follow a recipe to the letter. And I almost never bake!

In short, nice work, Ming. I'm sure this one will get good use!

simply Ming - One Pot Meals, December 15, 2010
It's okay. Not all recipies are cooked in one pot....but I bought this mainly for the stewing (steaming) chicken recipe.

Simply a disappointment, November 15, 2010
I have all of Ming Tsai's books and have loved them, but this was a large disappointment. His normal wonderful flavors weren't in evidence here at all. I have prepared three of the recipes and had to zing them up to even get a somewhat better flavor. Sadness. ... Read more

Editorial Review

From the perfect pot roast to the fragrant complexity of braised endive, there's no food more satisfying than a well-braised dish.

The art of braising comes down to us from the earliest days of cooking, when ingredients were enclosed in a heavy pot and buried in the hot embers of a dying fire until tender and bathed in a deliciously concentrated sauce. Today, braising remains as popular and as uncomplicated as ever. Molly Stevens's All About Braising is a comprehensive guide to this versatile way of cooking, written to instruct a cook at any level. Everything you need to know is here, including:

• a thorough explanation of the principles of good braising with helpful advice on the best cuts of meat, the right choice of fish and vegetables, and the right pots
• 125 reliable, easy-to-follow recipes for meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables, ranging from quick-braised weeknight dishes to slow-cooked weekend braises
• planning tips to highlight the fact that braised foods taste just as good, if not even better, as leftovers
• a variety of enlightened wine suggestions for any size pocketbook with each recipe
• 16 color photographs, 50 line drawings

Reviews

This book's James Beard and IACP Awards were well deserved!, September 10, 2005
This is one of the best cookbooks I've ever had. My collection is now up to about 300 cookbooks, and this one ranks right up at the top. The organization is fantastic. In terms of usability, it is also excellent. Each recipe has the hours it will take to cook along with the serving size right in front. The directions could not be any clearer. The recipe chapters are organized by food type - vegetables, seafood, poultry and game, beef, veal, pork, lamb.

The recipes are easy. The author explains not only how, but why each step is taken. The recipes we've tried have turned out GREAT and our guests have been very impressed with the dinners we've served from this book.


I especially appreciated the explanations of the different types of cookware at the beginning of the book. A lot of topics I had questions about she answers -- types of meat cuts, braising vs. crock pot/slow cookers (she has about the same opinion of slow cookers as my Mom, who is another great cook - that it can be easy but generally has inferior results) and she has a nice resource section for purchasing items. I also liked the wine suggestions.

The photography is beautiful. This is a good book for both beginners and experienced cooks because it explains things in great detail and has the standard favorite recipes, but it also has a great selection of more unusual recipes that I've not seen in other cookbooks.

I'll be giving lots of these as gifts at Christmas.

Excellent Book on Most Useful Cooking Technique, September 27, 2004
Braising is the quintessential French cooking technique, as typical of Western Europe as stir-frying is of the Far East. Molly Stevens has given us an excellent book `All About Braising' which adheres to the very basic cooking principle that if you pay close attention to all the little details of good ingredients, your cooking will invariably improve. So, the book is almost as much about identifying and buying the best ingredients for braising as it is about braising itself.

The name `braising', based on `brazier' and heating on hot coals mislead me for years when I knew more about French than I did about cooking and before I started reading about cooking in earnest. I imagined it was a type of grilling when it's only real connection to hot coals is the very old technique of placing coals on the top of Dutch Ovens cast with rimmed lids to accommodate the coals.

It is also easy to confuse braising with stewing. Braising is a very well-defined method characterized by browning a relatively large cut of protein or vegetable, followed by cooking over a low, all-around heat with liquid extending about 1/3 the way up the height of the primary ingredient. The braising container is tightly lidded so that vapor does not escape the cooking pot and designed to encourage condensation to drip back down on the braised food. Some braising vessels are also designed to leave little very little headroom between the primary ingredient and the lid. Stewing is a much less well defined technique which does not require a lid and is generally done with much more liquid and smaller pieces of food than a braise.

The list of classic `comfort food' braised dishes is long and familiar to Western foodies, headed up by coq au vin, sauerbraten, braised lamb shanks, and osso bucco. And, these are just the headliners. Ms. Stevens gives us chapters on braising vegetables, seafood, poultry, beef, veal, pork, and lamb. I was not surprised to find recipes for braising vegetables as sauerkraut and other cabbage dishes are well-known braise ingredients, but I was surprised to find braises for fish and some veal cuts. Fish is great for all the fast cooking methods such as saut�s, grills, broiling, and poaching. Overcooking is the most common danger with fin fish and shellfish cookery. But, the virtue of braising is that it is the premier cooking method for infusing a protein with flavor from the braising liquid and it is typically done at a relatively low temperature. That means that the principles behind poaching fish apply also to braises, in that you can cook fish to about 160 degrees Fahrenheit and keep it there almost indefinitely without its drying out.

As braising is a very clearly characterized cooking method with a long tradition behind it, it is not surprising that their many different cookpots have evolved to accommodate the method. Almost all of us foodies have an adequate arsenal of Dutch ovens made of either naked cast iron or the traditional French enameled cast iron. I am so in love with my Le Cruset enameled ironware, all my cast iron and Calphalon heavy aluminum ware is gathering dust. Most of us also have large lidded skillets, although I never thought of them as braising pots until I read this book. My fondest recent kitchenware discovery is the Le Cruset bistro pan in enameled cast iron. My two sizes acquired about two years ago are my most commonly used pots next to my 8-quart Dutch oven. Other pots commonly used for braises are braiser pans, typically of lined copper, buffet casseroles, gratin dishes (lidded with parchment paper or foil), and a Doufeu, a Dutch oven lookalike with a well in the lid to accommodate ice to help condense the cooking liquid in the braise.

If I were teaching cooking, I believe braising is the first technique I would teach, as it is evident from this book that the technique is very easy and it makes the very best use of less expensive cuts of meat. It is not a fast method, but it should be the method of choice when you need to feed a large family and you can be in the house while the dish is cooking. This does not mean there are no techniques you need to master, and the author explains the how and the why of braising better than anyone I have read to date, including my culinary hero, Alton Brown. The only little detail I have found unmentioned is the paradox braising shares with poaching in that if you overcook protein, even while sitting in liquid, all the fat and collagen will cook out of the meat fibers leaving it dry in the midst of water, stock, and wine. But, once you know the basics, braising strikes me as one of the very easiest techniques with which to improvise. As a long cooking method, the margin for error with the cooking time is very large and the risks are very small. The most common error will probably be nothing more than a somewhat too dry protein.

In spite of the fact that braising is a very easy technique, the author's directions for the recipes in this book are detailed in the extreme. This is another reason this is an excellent text for beginning cooks. Nothing is left to the imagination. Not only are the instructions detailed and clear, they are labeled with the names of all the traditional braising steps, so if you have read the introductory material well, you will be reminded of why you are doing each step. The author clearly states that crock pot methods are basically braises, but the author does not discuss the method in detail, and it is good she does not, as the differences are sufficient to warrant your searching out a good slow cooker book for that subject.

An excellent book I highly recommend for your kitchen cookbook shelf.

My current favorite cookbook, December 4, 2004
I purchased this cookbook when it first came out and have made numerous recipes all of which were great. A few of my favorites so far....Pork roast w/ apricots, cardamom & ginger; Zin Pot Roast; Veal shanks with rosemary and honey and whole chicken braised with pears & Rosemanry. The instructions, ingredients, and style of the recipes rank high in my opinion. Molly Stevens has produced a cookbook that offers sophisticated yet uncomplicated one dish meals glamourous enough for the best of company.

Community Comfort Food, January 3, 2005
Coming together to eat from a communal pot a delicious meal with conversation, author Molly Stevens discovered was a significant part of her family and her life, thus this wonderful book.

On top of all this, the wonderful aromas generated over the hours of sumptuous, slow cooking provide additional blessings of braising meals. Her inspiration came from all over the globe, from informal to classic recipes.

Find, experiment and find wonderful culinary community experiences in this collection. I have already with the following: Pork Riblets in Vietnamese Caramel Sauce; Country-Style Pork Ribs Braised with Mango, Lime & Coconut; Osso Buco all Milanese; Short Ribs Braised in Porter Ale with Maple-Rosemary Glaze; Chicken Do-Piaza (Indian Spiced Chicken Smothered in Onions); Tuna Pot Roast with Tomato, Basil & Capers; Creamy Braised Brussels Sprouts; The Simplest Potato & Leeks Braise.

With each delectable recipe comes great, thorough instructions, as well as wine/drink recommendations. Additionaly, there is frequent sidebar discussion on technique, ingredient, e.g. "using banana leaves." An excellent source listing as well as fantastic "An Opinionated Pantry."

This is large (421 pg.) resource that is easy and fun to use and will bring great response from your diners.

Exceeded my expectations ..., November 16, 2004
This was somewhat of an impulse buy for me as I was looking for a new book that I could get some Atkins-friendly recipes. Some of my favorite recipes are braises so I'm glad I was drawn to this book.

I have been very happy with the recipes I have tried so far: "Savoy Cabbage Gratin with Saint-Marcellin Cheese", "Soy Braised Chicken Thighs with Star Anise & Orange Peel", "Vietnamese Braised Scallops" and "Monkfish Braised with Cherry Tomatoes & Basil".

I was pleased with the section on what sorts of cookware can be used to braise. And I found the author's detailed instructions of cuts of meat to use ... with illustrations to be particularly helpful. The color photographs were appealing.

My only quibble would be in the actual quality of the book itself ... no dust jacket.

May Change the Way You Cook, March 12, 2005
This has quickly become one of my favorite cookbooks. I had never prepared food this way but was intrigued when I saw the book while browsing in a bookstore. The recipies are excellent, the instructions clear and consistent in their methodology. Braising is not only a way to prepare inexpensive cuts of meat so that they taste fantastic; it is also a way to leave your hands free for company. Helpful recipes for stocks are also included. Not one of those cookbooks where you will use a fraction of the recipes -- this one is a keeper!

4 years later I am ready to order another copy as my first is falling apart.

deserves 5 stars., July 24, 2007
It's hard to believe any book, whether it's a cookbook or any other type of book, receives 5 star reviews from everyone who reviews it. The reason that I gave it 5 stars is it is as much of a tutorial as it is a cookbook. Each and every aspect of braising is explained so well that you can accomplish the recipes with confidence and feel free to go above and beyond them.

I thought that braising was a technique to make a tough, otherwise useless cut of meat tender. How wrong I was. The book explains that there are two methods, Short Braising for ingredients such as: Radishes, Belgium Endive, Haddock, Tuna or Scallops and Long Braising for Beef, Pork, etc.

The equipment section is also excellent. Instead of telling you that a particular item is necessary, the author explains the many types of skillets and dutch ovens that would be adequate for braising. Not one pot or skillet will accomplish all types of braising and any cook with a well stocked kitchen may already have the equipment necessary for success.

I almost forgot to mention that almost every major ingredient has a sidebar in the book that explains what the item is, how to tell if it's fresh, how to store it, and so on. Belgium Endive is a great example as well as Habibut, Maple Syrup, Fennel, Artichokes, and the list goes on.

Once again, I will say that this is a fine addition to my cooking library, it will help me to increase my skill as a cook, and I want to thank Molly Stevens for it.

Great for everyone!, November 17, 2004
This book works beautifully for me: on the weekends, when I have time, I can do one of the slow braises in quantity and enjoy it during the week; during the week, I can choose one of the quicker stove-top dishes and enjoy it right away. I love the book so much I have given it to many of my friends and, judging by their enthusiastic feedback so far, they would all give it 5 stars as well! Great book, great gift.

The book that changed the way I eat, June 28, 2009
I am a busy professional bachelor that has always cooked for several days at a time and then used the microwave liberally - often with mediocre results. With its focus on simple recipes that usually keep well for days and tolerate reheating beautifully, this cookbook has changed the way I eat. Before I found it, I struggled to locate recipes that were both easy to prepare and kept well. No longer. Those 30-minute meal-type cookbooks are pathetic compared to this.

Some of my favorite recipes include:

World's Best Braised Green Cabbage - it takes about 5 minutes (not counting cooking time) and almost no money to prepare but is far superior to any stewed cabbage I've ever eaten.

Braised Potatoes with Garlic and Bay Leaves - it is the best preparation of Potatoes EVER and is easy to throw together. They are like hot, savory candy when they come out of the oven.

Creamy Braised Brussel Sprouts - a completely different and superior way to cook brussel sprouts.

Quick Lemony Chicken with Prunes and Green Olives - Yes, it has prunes in it, but it comes together like voodoo and is fantastic with twice baked potatoes and a green salad.

Chicken Do-Piaza - I often combine this with the recipe for Caulifower, Potatoes and Peas Indian-Style for a one-pot meal with amazing Indian flavors.

Pork Loin Braised in Milk - This recipe, which like many in the book has very few ingredients, turns a pork roast (it doesn't have to be a loin) into something that tastes like a giant piece of creamy, mild Italian sausage.

The recommendations for side dishes and wine pairings are excellent. I am just beginning to explore wines and this book has helped me make some excellent discoveries. You will find yourself justifying the purchase of a bottle of wine because the meals are so good that they deserve the respect.

Finally, please note that many of the recipes include one or more simple variations, further expanding the variety of dishes the book has to offer. For example, if you get tired of the potatoes with garlic and bay, try it with rosemary and beef stock instead. It is just as good!

Buy this book for yourself and all your closest friends, then set up a dinner club to explore all the recipes. You'll feel like instant gourmet cooks and gourmands - because you will be! Dinner will become an event to savor every night!

My favorite cookbook?, January 4, 2007
It's hard to pick a favorite cookbook, but this one is probably it for me. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Every recipe is dripping with flavors and fall-apart-in-your-mouth goodness.
2. Braising is hard to screw up. Everything is cooked until it falls apart, so it doesn't matter if you forget about it and it ends up cooking for an extra half hour.
3. Most of the recipes freeze well and are easy to make a lot of.
4. The recipes are flexible--leave something out, throw something extra in, it'll probably still be delicious.
5. Most of the recipes are reasonably healthy, especially if you cook in a cast iron dutch oven so you don't need much oil.
6. The book instills you with enough confidence to pick a bunch of ingredients and invent your own braises, which is a great way to use up leftover vegetables. The book is not just recipes--it's also a system of cooking that can be applied to anything. ... Read more

Editorial Review

America's Table sets the 2010 Table for Two in this popular annual cookbook. Scaling back recipes that serve 8 or more to serve 2 doesn't always mean simple division. It can mean adjusting spices in various ways, using different pans and utensils, and utilizing ingredients in smarter, more cost effective ways.

The test cooks at America's Test Kitchen take our best recipes from throughout the year and scale them back for two. ... Read more

Reviews

A GREAT BOOK FOR THE SMALLER QUANTITY COOK, April 11, 2010
A lot of cooking for one or two cookbooks seem to have larger recipes that are just cut in half without much more thought. Not so with this book- the respected test kitchen behind it has clearly put a lot of thought and testing into this new series of books catering to smaller quantity cooks. There are recipes are for classics as well as more modern-style dishes, and every one I've tried has worked well. The book has many full color photos as well as smaller black and white photos that illustrate steps in a recipe, or show what you DON'T want the final product to look like. There are frequent sidebars offering additional information on ingredients and technique, and most welcome are the ones that suggest ways to use up an ingredient. ( I can never use up a whole carton of buttermilk). The authors even include a list of cookware especially suited for smaller quantities. The layout of the book is clean , easy to read , and well- organized, making this an excellent cookbook overall.

Baking Section Very Disappointing, March 29, 2010
The entree recipes are ok, and the book has little blurbs called "Use it Up", where they suggest ways to use the rest of a can of whatever they've called for in a recipe, the other half of that red pepper, etc. It's a nice idea.
But I mostly purchased this book for the baking section, where I had hoped to get some good "small version" desserts and baked goods recipes. I even bought "mini" pans of various sizes and shapes, called for in the book. But not only was the selection of desserts/baked goods really limited, I've made several of them now and they have all been disappointing, some even being thrown right in the trash.
Also, I have the CI "Best Recipes" cookbook, and a lot of information was simply carried over from that book to this one, which was irritating.

Beautifully put together cookbook for the not-so-together cook., May 12, 2010
This is my first America's Test Kitchen book, and I am really pleased with the amount of information included with the recipes. It's just like a Cook's Illustrated magazine, with all the tips/notes, and suggestions on their favorite utensils and such. Very useful for me, who is utterly clueless when it comes to cooking.

And I do enjoy the "use it up" section, as mentioned in another review. It's nice to not have to come up with something on my own to use up half a can of this or 2/3 jar of that. I can just go to that section, look up whatever it is I have leftover ingredients for, and see the list of recipes that include that ingredient, in that amount.

I really like the section that has a main recipe (like Roast chicken) and two or three additional recipes to use the leftover meat. I like that it tells you how much to portion out for those additional recipes in the initial recipe. I need straight-forward directions like that. :) The chicken turned out very tasty by the way!

Anyway, it's beautifully layed out, although they could have done a slightly better job in the tips, directing a reader/cook to where the notes are, when they mention "see note". Sometimes the note they are referring to in a tip is a few pages away. But that's being picky.

No more wasted food!, May 22, 2010
America's Test Kitchen's //Cooking for Two: 2010// is an absolute must-have for the studious cook who isn't looking to feed an army. In true America's Test Kitchen style, this handsome cookbook contains a variety of popular recipes, each systematically tested, analyzed, and scaled down to be successful at a two-portion size.

While it might seem simple enough to half or quarter a standard recipe, the scientific factors of baking and cooking can cause a reduced recipe to go awry, especially when preparing foods such as quiche or angel food cake. //Cooking for Two// also addresses the problem of wasted food by adapting recipes so they can be prepared with everyday ingredients. For the chicken curry recipe, for example, the authors experimented with "blooming" store-bought curry powder and found the taste was comparable to curries that required long lists of exotic spices. The cookbook also contains a hundred "Use it Up" recipes for left-over ingredients such as buttermilk, fennel, and cauliflower, which will spoil unless they are consumed quickly.

The simple two-column, primarily text layout is reminiscent of classic cookbooks such as //Joy of Cooking//. Short "Notes from the Test Kitchen" insets throughout the book serve to educate on cooking techniques, cookware, and ingredients.

Reviewed by Megan Just

Over 150 test kitchen recipes, June 18, 2010
Cooking for Two: 2010 offers the second installation in an annual recipe collection and gathers the test kitchen's favorite recipes of the year, modified to serve two. Over 150 test kitchen recipes from casseroles to roasts appear in a collection packed with breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes - all geared for two people, so there's no waste. Color photos and the promise of kitchen tested and modified dishes for healthier, tastier alternatives makes this a top pick.

Probably don't bother unless you need it, but pretty good if you do, April 19, 2010
If you read my review of The Best Simple Recipes, you know I'm not that impressed with some of the recent material coming out of Cook's Illustrated. Fortunately, this, the second volume of the Cooking for Two annual series, is at least a decent enough book, the expertise of ATK distilled down to a single book for the couples/singles audience. The book makes no bones about being all retreads, but it does make a distinct effort to deal with the everpresent issue of leftovers (both ingredients and finished recipes), including a chapter that takes four full-sized roasts and turns them into twelve cut-down meals.

There's a decent amount of pictures, and more in color, as well as a good number of sidebars (keep an eye out for the "Use It Up" recipes). I'm not convinced it's worth paying full price for, but the magazine edition will in all likelihood be off the newsstands by the time you read this and doesn't have the organizational tips to go with it. There's only one other gripe: why does it come out at the beginning of April? Shouldn't it ship at, I don't know, the end of January for people buying it for Singles Awareness Day? ... Read more