so easy to use, no wonder i didn't burn the kitchen down
Rating:
5 / 5
besides not finding a couple exotic ingredients at the local kroger- not a serious enough cook to order them- this book is absolutely, perfectly, marvelous! it's fun and easy to use and helps me to score when i invite a lady-friend over (or a guy friend). what else can you ask for out of a cookbook?
Making Your Kitchen Delightfully Global
Rating:
5 / 5
This is a remarkably coherent and inviting book: it holds together as an actual workbook in the kitchen, as a compendium of user-friendly recipes to take us around the world, and as a concept. No surprises here. David Ricketts for years has been a food journalist and a cook, i.e. traveling, running test kitchens, and mastering the editorial arts of food writing and recipe preparation. These skills are everywhere at work in Home Cooking. For example, each recipe begins with "a basic recipe that is familiar to the American home cook," such as chicken noodle soup or bread pudding. Then the variations (Vietnamese Chicken Soup with Asian herbs and vegetables; bread baked with cream, eggs, coconut milk, and candied ginger). But Ricketts goes one step further. As he puts it, he's less interested in creating a "chemical reaction" and more concerned to explore how international "home cooking" is woven into the textures of people's everyday lives; his recipes are "a window" through which we "catch a glimpse of a culture, whether our own or another." Thus the method--to begin with a "known" or "familiar" dish and to go from there. (A helpful glossary and set of notes on ingredients is helpful here.)As a compass for international culinary voyaging the book is sensibly formatted and arranged; you get to your destinations and eating adventures composed and happy. Chapters cover poulty, beef, pork and lamb, seafood, vegetables, and desserts. Methods of cooking tend to favor one pot dishes (lots of soups, stews, braisings, and baked items), but the simplicity and variety is astonishing (some of my favorites: chicken legs in basque red pepper-prosciutto sauce; "Jansson's temptation" [a Danish edition of scalloped potatoes with anchovies, Vidalia onions, cream, and fennel seeds]; spicy corn and lima beans with tomato; baked honey-glazed mackerel; whew!). As I've been known to say to friends and family when I'm serving something I know they're going to moan over, "Grab it and growl, yo!"
The Affinities in the World's Home Cooking
Rating:
5 / 5
I tasted some recipes from this cookbook at a friend's dinner and found them delicious and comforting. Looking at the recipes, I was thrilled by the premise of the selected recipes that based on similar fundmentals, even ingredients, the results can turn out tasting entirely different from one culture to the next. Particualrly apropos in a multicultural United States, Mr. Ricketts enables an American raised on our Beef Stew to make with the slightest changes, cross oceans resulting in a Vietnamese Beef Stew with Carrots and Star Anise. This wonderful cookbook truly expresses the shared humanity of us all in a delicious way.
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