Tag: "cookbook"

Review: Bake by Tina Bester

Reviewed by Jen Kulman

Bake by Tina Bester is just such a beautiful book – high quality photos and a carefully laid out format make it a true pleasure to look through. The front and back covers are thick and slightly textured, the endpapers are heart-patterned fuchsia, and the beginning of each chapter is marked with scarlet pages. Every recipe has its own full page photos, and my gosh, are they terrific. The end result is that Bake manages to be both comforting and inspirational. I want to invite people over and serve plates that look exactly like these.

Published in London, the measurements are, of course, in metrics. I only made it four recipes in before deciding that I didn’t care. The photographs of Pat Fraser’s Shortbread and Double Chocolate and Pecan Nut Brownies convinced me it would be well worth my time to do a bit of conversion. You may have to do a bit of swapping, like using cookies instead of digestive biscuits for the cheesecake crust, but I didn’t note any unusual ingredients. Castor sugar appears frequently, but that is called superfine sugar here, which you can make at home by whirling regular sugar in a coffee grinder or food processor.

Divided into six sections of Biscuits, Cakes, Meringues, Sweet Tarts and Pastries, Savory Tarts and Old-Fashioned Pies, and Breads and Buns, there are treats to tempt every appetite. The German Apple Pie is a traditional apple pie, divided into six portions and baked in cereal sized bowls. Ah, to be served your very own bowl of steaming apple pie with a domed, sugared crust. That’s pretty perfect. In the opposite direction, I was just as taken with her Butternut and Sage Triangles, which consist of steamed butternut squash wrapped in phyllo pastry and folded into neat triangles. Through the browned pastry, you can just make out the outlines of the buttered sage leaves tucked inside.

Bester’s goods are built on the basic baking blocks of butter, sugar, cream, fruit, and chocolate. One of the last recipes in the book, Country Buns, requires just five ingredients and one hour of rise time. For that, you get six classic buns – big fluffy torpedoes with slash marks on top that bed for lashings of real butter. The Chocolate and Orange Truffle Meringue Tarts look like a dessert you would find in an upscale restaurant, but her directions are so easy to follow; I’m certain I could make these. Four piped dollops of meringue line each tart, with the peaks a lovely toasted brown, and their bottoms nestled firmly in a pool of rich chocolate.

Bake is an amazing book, although my copy is already marred with turned down page corners, marking my selections.

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Jen lives in Michigan with her husband and six year old son. She writes reviews of children’s books on her blog, FIRR-Kids and loves filling her own shelves with cookbooks.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Pavilion. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Review: Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible by Paula Deen with Melissa Clark

Reviewed by Christen Krumm

Paula Deen is the queen of southern cooking. She has a stellar website, a television show, and quite a few restaurants on the map. This southern born lady has really made a name for herself in and out of the kitchen! Her newest cookbook, Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible, gives us over three hundred recipes of yummy southern goodness. You know you are in for a treat right from the five page introduction. Paula just has to make you smile with her “ya’ll”s – gotta love that southern accent!

You could literally take this cookbook and build your entire menu start to finish. With seventeen chapters, it covers everything from appetizers, soups, brunch dishes, to  - my personal favorite – pies, and so so much more. My mouth watered just reading the table of contents – do not even get me started on reading the actual recipes!

I have many cookbooks on my shelves that hardly ever get used because the ingredients for the recipes are obscure, hard to find, and often leave me running to Google to figure out what they actually are. One of my favorite things about Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible is that just about every recipe has ingredients that are simple and easy to find. I also love the tips that are included in many of the recipes; these tips made me feel as if Paula was right beside me walking you through each step. The only complaint I have is that – as with most cookbooks – there are not enough photos! But, the photos that are included in Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible are gorgeous and make me want to run to my kitchen and cook up a storm.

With its wide range of meals and dishes, Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible could possibly be the only cookbook you need on your shelf. And, in all good southern hospitality, it would also make a great hostess gift (or wedding gift or graduation gift or housewarming gift)!

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Christen graduated from the University of Arkansas Fort Smith with a BA in English. She’s a coffee drinking stay at home mom by day and a freelance writer/editor by night. She currently resides in Arkansas with her husband and daughter and is excited to welcome a son in August.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Simon & Schuster. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Update: Ciao Italia Family Classics by Mary Ann Esposito

NOTE: Colleen Turner previously reviewed Ciao Italia Family Classics by Mary Ann Esposito based the 3-recipe pamphlet that we received from St. Martin’s Press (see the review here). The publisher has since sent Colleen the finished book and she changed her rating from a 2/5 to a 4/5. Here is her update:

The publishers of Ciao Italia Family Classics by Mary Ann Esposito were kind enough to send me a finished copy of the cookbook to compare against the pamphlet I originally received for review. There is absolutely no comparison between the two as the finished copy is beautiful! There are lots of full page pictures to go along with the recipes, all the recipes appear to be complete and the author even gives helpful hints for stocking your pantry with basic Italian necessities.

The recipes are divided into eleven different categories – antipasti, soup, pizza and break, pasta, sauces rice, fish, meat, vegetables, salads and desserts – and it is easy to find something to satisfy every tastebud.

So far I have made two of the recipes: Mom’s Summer Tomato Salad and Baked Ziti Casserole with Meatballs. The tomato salad is so simple to put together but was absolutely delicious. The Ziti Casserole, which included a homemade pork sausage ragu sauce, tasty little meatballs and fresh mozzarella, was a hit in my house and will be something I am sure I will be asked to make again and again.

The only downsides I can find to this cookbook is that every recipe doesn’t have a photo of the finished product (I like to compare what I make to the ideal to see how close I get) and that some of the ingredients are quite pricey and are not things I typically have. All in all, this is definitely a cookbook I will use in the future and I am glad I got the opportunity to see the finished product.

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Colleen lives in Tampa, Florida with her husband, son, their dog Oliver and their fish Finn. When not working or taking care of her family she has her nose stuck in a book (and, let’s face it, often when she is working or taking care of her family as well). Nothing excites her more than discovering a new author to obsess over or a hidden jewel of a book to worship.

This book was provided free of any obligation by St. Martin’s Press. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Review: Gudrun’s Kitchen

Reviewed by Jenna Arthur

What do home cooks look for in a cookbook? Delicious food, easy to follow recipes and crowd pleasers of course! Gudrun’s Kitchen is one part cookbook – full of delicious recipes of soups, stews, candies and puddings – and another an exploration of a family’s story and culture through food. The family history part of the book starts off with a woman named Gudrun, whose home was always filled with love, laughter and children.

Gudrun’s children pulled a collection of their mother’s recipes, handed down through generations, for this outstanding cookbook. Each recipe offers a Norwegian flavor that will leave Norwegians and Americans alike with a warm belly and a taste of home. The recipes are easy to follow and never leave you guessing on where to go next.

The main dish recipes range from a succulent fried chicken to a more spicy and tongue tantalizing curry with rice and lentils. Sweet dishes do not disappoint either. Try the applesauce cake – it is delicious! I have always loved ethnic food, and this beautifully bound cookbook did not disappoint. I give the authors four out of five stars on taste, story, and presentation. Join Gudrun in her kitchen every night and leave your family with a happy belly and a taste of home!

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Jenna lives in the bustling city of Pittsburgh, PA with her fiance and her two beautiful cats. Along with her passion for reading and the literary world, she is also an artist, writer, environmental activist, creative coordinator and aspiring culinary genius. She believes there is nothing better to her then a good book, and lives one cover to the next.

Review copies were provided free of any obligation by Wisconsin Historical Society Press. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.