Book Reviews

The chapter titles are a bit unusual, but they are exactly the range of topics you would expect to find in newspaper food columns. They are:

Appetizers such as deviled eggs, liver pate, ceviche, crab cakes, eggplant caponata, toasts, crackers, etc.
Salads such as Eggless Caesar, French Market Salad, Creamy Potatoe Salad, Fattoush, Greek Cypriot, etc.
When You're in a Rush with Soups, Chicken, Tuna, Salmon, Bass, and Scallops, quick Bolognese, etc.
Dishes We Make All the Time such as Vege Soup, Chili, Yankee Pot Roast, Meatball, Lamb Stew, etc.
New Classics such as Corn Chowder, Oyster Stew, Boulangere, Baked Beans, Salmon Cakes, etc.
Good Enough For Company with Rack of Pork, Leg of Lamb, Ossobuco, Duck Breasts, Roast Salmon, etc.
Simmering Pots with lots of soups and stews such as Cuban Stewed Chicken and Beef Daube, etc.
Sides such as Fresh Corn Risotto, Scalloped Tomatoes, Quick Couscous, Blue Cheese Popovers, etc.
Rise and Dine with Frittatas, Muffins, Soda Bread, Quesadillas, Banana Bread, Blueberry Loaf Cake, etc.
If You Love to Bake with Strawberry Shorkcakes, Carrot Cake, Pies, Tarts, Cookies, Gingerbread, etc.
Simple Fruit Desserts with five recipes for apples, oranges, and peaches.

The first thing which bumped my opinion up from three stars to four was with the description of how to cook hardboiled eggs. For starters, they recommended my preferred method of pricking a hole in the shell and dropping the eggs into just boiling water. Then, they gave the additional tip of rolling the just dropped eggs around a bit in order to center the yolk in the cooked egg. To cap things off, they gave a recommendation on how to crack the hot eggs to make them easier to peel when they cool.

The next thing which warmed my opinion of the book was that I could not find any steps in any recipes which I would do differently. There are few fancy techniques called for in the recipes and almost all of them take no more than a page, but there were also no short cuts.

The last thing which appealed to me was the lack of processed ingredients. All pie crusts are made from scratch and I detected no cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. I did find the directions for the pie crusts to be less than perfect, as it was lax in calling for very cold ingredients, combined in such a way to keep them cold and to leave bits of butter to fluff up the crust. But then, this is not a book on pie baking and I'm sure the technuque they give works well enough. Another less than ideal baking recipe was the carrot cake, which called for but a single layer. If I am going to the trouble to make a carrot cake with butter cream icing, I will make three layers for sure.

This is not a book for died in the wool foodies. Were I not reviewing it, I would not buy it myself, but for that very large number of people who need to make good meals at least three times a week and don't have time to wade through 800 pages of `The Joy of Cooking' or `James Beard's American Cookery', this book is just the thing.

I think Steve Raichlen's comparison to Julia Child and Simone Beck is misplaced because the latter duo was doing an in depth survey of a very specific local cuisine while the current authors are collecting recipes originating from all over the world and presenting them for a particular audience. So, their emphasis is on a specific audience rather than a specific cuisine. Sorry Steve.

This is an excellent book which accomplishes it's mission at a reasonable price. Just be warned that this is NOT low carb or low fat cooking, just very tasty cooking.