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Glossy & Gorgeous Cookbooks
cookbook reviewsglossy & gorgeous cookbooks

Reviews by Jeremy Emmerson

October 2004
This month I checked out dozens of super glossy cookbooks. Here are the five that made the grade, offering not just glossy and gorgeous packaging but substance and sustenance…

Flavor
By: Rocco Dispirito
List Price:$31.50
Price With Amazon.com: $23.80
You Save: $11.20 (32%)


This book is surely "Rocco's redemption". As food industry professionals and food lovers jointly continue to 'diss his long finished T.V show The Restaurant, it's great to see the chef come back with a quality driven piece of media.

Flavor's construction is very well suited to the home cook. Offering a bundle of recipes, each of which come with detailed information on preparation and execution time, skill level rating and wine pairing.




The book is overflowing with smashing photographs (except the one of Dispirito shoving a handful of lettuce in his mouth) and runs with a taste oriented theme where the sour, salty, sweet and bitter elements of each dish are highlighted. Earlier this year Flavor scored a James Beard award - the first of many I am sure… Buy It On Line!

The Complete Mushroom Book - The Quiet Hunt
By:Antonio Carluccio
List Price:$38.95
Price With Amazon.com: $27.96
You Save: $11.99 (32%)


British based, Italian chef
Antonio Carluccio serves
up one of the best single
subject books that I have
seen in a long time.
The Complete Mushroom
Book's first ninety pages
are dedicated to a great
field guide to wild
mushrooms - a foragers
dream and a reason in itself to purchase the book.



Each of the highlighted mushrooms is accompanied by a photograph, description and cooking suggestion. Carluccio's Italian styled recipes are well laid out, clearly written, simple, tasty and cover a broad spectrum of meal periods. And, at under thirty bucks it's pretty much a bargain… Buy It On Line!

Stir
By: Christine Manfield
Price $42:00


Another single subject book but this one is focused on the way to cook with fourteen different pastes rather just one particular ingredient.

Stir presents the instructions for making laksa paste, chilli jam, satay spice paste and spiced tomato chili pickle to name but a few - and one hundred recipes for using them. A tad pricey at over $40 but quite an ingenious cookbook, nicely laid out and a good buy for an adventurous cook… Buy It On Line!


Green Mangoes and Lemon Grass
by Wendy Hutton
List Price: $35.00
Price With Amazon.com: $23.80
You Save: $11.20 (32%)


Wendy Hutton's latest title takes
readers on a South East Asian
culinary journey. One of the
greatest attributes of this book
is that the recipes do not call for the
inclusion of several others - an often occurrence in other Asian cookbooks.



Hutton's dishes are fresh and flavorful, laid out in a logical fashion and well worth experimenting with. The barbequed pork, cashew and herb salad is delicious and the creamy chicken noodle soup is equally tasty and relatively quick to prepare. Ringing in at under twenty-four bucks this is a glossy standout bargain... Buy It On Line!

A Return to Cooking
by Eric Ripert, Michael Ruhlman
List Price: $50.00
Price With Amazon.com: $34.00
You Save: $16.00 (32%)


Ripert's A Return to Cooking is a
fabulous book. Filled with a blend
of recipes, essays, paintings and
beautiful photographs the French
chef has produced a modern
three hundred page classic
glossy cookbook.






The essays are one of the most enjoyable features - I love to hear the thoughts' of my fellow chefs, my favorite story is that of his mother's suggestion that Ripert should refrain from his work in the front of the house and move to the back "be a waiter and that's all you'll ever be, be a chef and you can be anything". A Return to Cooking is a book that you will continually pick up and put down testing recipes, enjoying essays or merely enjoying its artful qualities... Buy It On Line!
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