Reference Books - Page 25

The Ultimate Cook Book: 900 New Recipes, Thousands of Ideas

Bruce Weinstein, Mark Scarbrough

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Here's the ultimate of ultimates: nine hundred new recipes from Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, the authors of the Ultimate cookbook series. With a quarter million books already in print, their series has followed a simple recipe to success: Give cooks hundreds of solid, basic recipes with thousands of ways to vary them, shake them up, and personalize them so that everyone can be an ultimate cook!

With The Ultimate Cook Book, Weinstein and Scarbrough tackle everything from breakfast to barbecue, stir-fries to steaks, chilis to curries, and paellas to puddings. Pick your favorite, cook it as a solid basic, or vary it in hundreds of ways to make the dish your own. You've got years' worth of dishes and a world of cooking experiences ahead of you. What could be more fun?

Take chicken, that ubiquitous blank canvas. Roast a whole bird to perfection. Bake it under a salt crust for a dramatic presentation. Roast chicken halves atop winter squash. Prepare a Greek-style casserole with leeks, pine nuts, and raisins. Stuff chicken breasts with a Moroccan-inspired mixture of couscous and spices. There are more than thirty ideas for preparing boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And ten things to do with a leftover roast chicken or that rotisserie bird purchased on the way home. Get the idea?

This comprehensive, easy-to-use compendium is the ultimate in inspiration, the ultimate in possibilities. Start your Ultimate cookbook collection today—or round it out with The Ultimate Cook Book.

Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930's and More From Your Kitchen Today (Stories & Recipes of the Great Depression)

Janet Van Amber Paske, Rita Van Amber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

In their own words 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 17 people found this review helpful.

What a lovely read. This book has many stories of life during the Great Depression from those who lived through it, in their own words. It is amazing how people came together to feed and care for each other in times of unimaginable poverty. Included are recipes and how people prepared foods that we normally kill as weeds. Several items I recognize from my Grandmother's little file box of recipes.

If you never really understood why people over the age of 60 do things, reading this book will put their mindset into perspective and the core of where they came from. It is so much more than just a little recipe book. I can also recommend the other books in the series as well.

Nostalgic about the Great Depression? 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

It probably seems odd to enjoy reading about this difficult time in America, but it confirms my feeling that it gave those of who did, the ability to face whatever hardships come to us.

The first section is devoted to anecdotes and stories about living in the 1930s. Although it discusses happenings in Wisconsin during that time, it is easy to see the similarities between them and the people in other parts of the U.S. during that same time.

The second part has the recipes. Some of them would be appealing to people today, i.e., the Hot Dish chapter. The items used are not expensive and are filling. They take a bit of time to prepare and cook, but can be served for more than one meal. They are just good, simple food to be enjoyed by most anyone.

Editorial Review:

A collection of nostalgic, heartwarming stories contributed by survivors of the Great Depression, along with the comforting recipes that kept body and soul of their families together. Includes a bonus section of updated quick, easy, economical, nutritious recipes and tips for today.

A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season

Tyler Colman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A lively and informative guide to a year of wine enjoyment and appreciation from acclaimed wine expert and blogger Tyler Colman, aka "Dr. Vino"

In A Year of Wine, award-winning educator Tyler "Dr. Vino" Colman, whose wine blog was hailed by Food & Wine magazine as "one of the seven best," views winter, spring, summer, and fall through the glass of his favorite impact-resistant stemware, pairing each month with its perfect ports, Pinots, and bubblies -- and offering good value recommendations for them all. Throughout, Colman reminds readers to try to pair their pours with context, which is wildly underrated when it comes to enjoying your favorite bottle. And while people tend naturally to drink lighter, more refreshing wines during the warm months and heavier, more serious wines during the winter months, Colman takes the seasonal approach a step further by offering innovative recommendations and enlightening facts that will allow readers to impress their friends for twelve months straight.

Is there a perfect wine to serve with chips and salsa on Super Bowl Sunday? Which bottles will help you drown away your tax- day blues without blowing your new budget? Colman answers these questions and much more as he pairs wines with each season, occasion, and moment. Recommending thoughtful and affordable wines for special celebrations and everyday enjoyment, offering tips on beginning a wine collection or spring cleaning the one you have, exploring how to drink with the smallest possible carbon footprint, and explaining how to maximize your wine experience when you dine out, Colman makes wine easy to understand and, most important, to savor.

Colman also shares the secret gems of his favorite wine tourism destinations -- where to find the best wine shops in Paris, which Portuguese vintners still crush grapes with their bare feet, and how you can take a ten-tasting-room tour with one stop in a tiny Oregon town -- and turns to some of the country's top sommeliers for their take on wine appreciation as well.

Perfect for both seasoned wine enthusiasts and oenophobes, A Year of Wine is an innovative approach that will encourage readers to drink outside the bottle.

In The Sweet Kitchen: The Definitive Baker's Companion

Regan Daley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

AH, DESSERT.

It's the ultimate comfort food. A simple crumble, with all its memories of childhood. A slice of still-warm blueberry pie. That chocolate truffle with just a hint of chestnut melting away so mysteriously. Yet many cooks are intimidated by the idea of preparing these delights themselves.

Professional pastry chef Regan Daley maintains that baking is no mystery. Anyone, she insists, can make a fabulous dessert—as long as the ingredients are chosen with care. The components of most desserts are few, so they must be of the highest quality. She knows firsthand how fresh butter or the right chocolate can transform a simple cake. She knows the stunning difference between a silky lemon curd made from the juice of fat lemons and one made from bottled juice, that shortcakes made with bland, pulpy strawberries shipped three thousand miles can't compare with those made with rice, red local fruit and fresh cream.

In the Sweet Kitchen will help you navigate through the world of sweet cooking, providing extensive information on hundreds of ingredients, from vanilla beans to rose water to durian fruit. It explains how to select, store and best use baking elements as common as cornstarch or flour and as unusual as cloudberries or manuka honey. It unlocks the simple secret of truly great desserts—knowing your ingredients:

—the best kind of cocoa to use for dark, fudgy brownies

—the differences among cream of coconut, creamed coconut and coconut and coconut cream

—which vanilla bean is best in poached pears

This ultimate cookbook/reference volume makes it all clear, and also provides hundreds of invaluable tips and techniques Regan mastered during her professional career.

In addition, Regan offers practical advice on equipment: Do you really need a state-of-the-art apple corer? Will using nonstick pans affect the outcome of your baked goods? Indispensable tables such as the Baking Pan substitution Chart and the Cake Troubleshooting Chart help you modify your recipes—or figure out what went wrong. And the unique Flavor Pairing Chart is a must for inspiration and a list of great partners.

Regan shares more than 150 of her favorite desserts, both simple and seductive. Thick slices of Toasted Hazelnut Pound Cake are perfect for a picnic; Oven-Roasted Pears with Red Wine and a Gratin of Goat's Cheese make a sensational finale to an elegant dinner party; Pumpkin and Orange Breakfast Cake with a Fresh Orange Syrup is great any time of day. There are homey desserts with special twists—Guava Cheesecake, the World's Sexiest Sundae—not to mention addictive brownies, mouthwatering pies, nostalgic cobblers, mousses, ice creams, quick breads, fritters and more.

This is the essential reference for home bakers and professional patissiers alike.

Heart of the Home: Notes From a Vineyard Kitchen

Susan Branch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Simply Wonderful! 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This is my favorite Susan Branch cookbook. I have made many of the dishes, with some of my favorites being the stuffed artichokes, gazpacho ( both of which are perfect for a light summer dinner), banana cream pie (Dad loved it for father's day), blueberry pie, apple crisp (on a cool fall evening), the cucumber-dill dressing (refreshing and wonderful for summer), home-made mayonnaise, chocolate cream puffs(made for a tea...looked elegant and was so easy to make), and the stuffed french bread (easy and fun to take to a potluck). I lean toward the dessert sections and appetizers the most, but all of the recipes are delicious. I love her notes about the dishes and little quotes and drawings throughout the book. This one is definitely a keeper and would be a great gift also. I now own all of her books and this is by far the one that I use the most.
Treat yourself....or someone you know...you'll be glad you did.

Editorial Review:

With an emphasis on simple preparation and fresh foods, Susan Branch has created the perfect combination of illustration and prose and a celebration of food sure to become a classic of homespun delights. Watercolor illustrations.

Depression Era Recipes

P. Wagner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A good book 3 out of 5 stars.
23 of 27 people found this review helpful.

Anyone who is into History will like this cookbook. Many of the recipes don't look appealing but it contains a lot of interesting facts about lifestyles in the 30's.

Depression Era Recipes 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 14 people found this review helpful.

As a child of the depression, it was a way of remembering what the women of that era had to do to feed families often larger than those of the 21st Century -- families of farmers fared much better that those in the industries (which often became defunct) and for white-collar workers when there was no money to pay their wages. We "murdered through", we thrived, we learned serious lessons to do more with less, and to substitute. Would not want to repeat the depression era, but feel very fortunate recipes were concocted to get us through it with a smile on our face.

Surprising 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Quite frankly, I found this a little disappointing. Flipping through the pages, there is nothing to indicate that these are recipes from a time of such hardship, apart from the few little snippets at the bottom of some of the pages, giving some fact about the 1930s. A recipe for Banana Cream Pie surprised me. Glad to know that bananas were easily and cheaply obtainable - as I suppose they must have been, as this is apparently a depression era recipe. The book could have been so much better with just a few embellishments - such as the occasional picture, or interesting and useful facts about life during the Depression, such as average wage, cost of eggs or milk or basic staples. There were no substitute dishes - along the lines of "mock - whatever" True, the recipes are simple, without enormous lists of ingredients, but the book lacks flavour. The "Farmer's Wife Cookbook" has a lot of the elements that could have improved this book.

The Professional Chef

Culinary Institute of America

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Professional Chef, the official text of The Culinary Institute of America's culinary degree program, has taught tens of thousands of chefs the techniques and fundamentals that have launched their careers.

Now in a revolutionary revision, The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition not only teaches the reader how, but is designed to reflect why the CIA methods are the gold standard for chefs. With lavish, four-color photography and clear, instructive text, The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition guides culinary students--professional aspirants and serious home cooks, alike--to mastery of the kitchen. Over 660 classic and contemporary recipes, with almost 200 variations, were chosen especially for their use of fundamental techniques. These techniques and recipes form a foundation from which a professional chef or home cook can build a personal repertoire.

From mise en place (preparation) to finished dishes, the book covers Stocks, Sauces, and Soups; Meats, Poultry, Fish, and Shellfish; Vegetables, Potatoes, Grains, and Legumes, Pasta and Dumplings; Breakfast and Garde Manger; Baking and Pastry. In addition to a comprehensive treatment of techniques and recipes, The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition teaches readers other critical elements of the professional chef's domain--much of it universally applicable to any kitchen. From "An Introduction to the Professional," to the identification of tools and ingredients, to nutrition, food science and food and kitchen safety, the book is a wealth of beautifully presented information useful for any cook.

The Culinary Institute of America has been hailed as "The nation's most influential training school for professional cooks" by Time magazine. The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition, the cornerstone of its program in book form, belongs on the shelf of every serious cook.

Sugar Flowers for All Seasons

Alan Dunn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

rose lover's dream 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This volume deals with just about every rose ever grown as well as other flowers to accompany them in arrangements and on cakes. I like the step-by-step color photos. There's a cake on page 70 that stopped me dead. I always look for the show stopper cakes and this is one of them. Templates are inclueded.

Editorial Review:

When it comes to wedding cakes, everyone wants roses. In this fabulous new book, the art of floral sugarcraft is revealed by authors with experience in these unique techniques, showing readers virtually every kind of rose decoration that can be applied to a cake, as well as sugar roses in bouquets, sprays, posies, and for table arrangements. Sugar Roses for Cakes includes templates and features collections of all different kinds of roses: wild, climber, rambling, traditional varieties and the various modern roses, from full blown modern blooms to delicate, five-petal wild roses. With nearly 200 full-color photographs, this books offers a wide array of designs and cakes, including cakes for occasions other than weddings. The perfect book for brides and wedding planners, Sugar Roses for Cakes picks up on the latest trends in flower arranging to reveal many innovative ways to display sugar roses.

The University Wine Course: A Wine Appreciation Text & Self Tutorial

Marian W. Baldy Ph.D.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great course! 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you want to learn more about wine at yoru own pace- this is the book for you!

An excellent primer 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

For personal use, I think it's too extensive for the average Joe. Well thought out and informative. I own a cheese and wine shop and intend on using this for new hires.

very informative 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed this book. It provides great detail into the basics of winemaking. If you are interested in how wine is made or getting into this industry, it is a great reference guide which shows how wine is made start to finish. It is a great starting point.

Editorial Review:

Now the most widely used wine textbook for colleges and universities. Also popular with serious wine enthusiasts for home study. Provides a 12 week program for learning about wine in-depth, from sensory evaluation to the science of viticulture and winemaking. Written and organized in a "user friendly" style. Includes chapter exams and answers, study guides, lab exercises, final exams and extensive references and bibliography. Illustrated with appendixes on Wine & Food, Label Reading, Do-It-Yourself Labs, Student tasting notes and more. Dr. Baldy is a USDA award-winning professor of sciences who has operated her own vineyard and winery and has taught wine appreciation for academic credits to university students for over 20 years.

The Complete Book of Spirits: A Guide to Their History, Production, and Enjoyment

Anthony Dias Blue

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An indispensable follow-up to his classic Complete Book of Mixed Drinks, Anthony Dias Blue presents The Complete Book of Spirits, a comprehensive collection of history, lore, and tasting tips, along with recipes for select cocktails. Here, in one concise and easy-to-use volume, is all the information a consumer needs to shop, mix, and sip like a spirits expert.

From bathtub gin to mojito madness, Blue brings the dynamic history of the spirits industry alive, demonstrating that spirit making is not only one of mankind's oldest pursuits but also perhaps its most colorful. In ten captivating chapters, readers are treated to everything they ever wanted to know about their favorite liquors, including vodka, aquavit, tequila, and whiskey. Blue also provides step-by-step instructions on how to host spirit tastings to educate your palate and to help you and your friends discover your favorite brands and blends. For every chapter and every spirit, there is also a handy tasting-notes section, with Blue's expert comments and his favorites, along with price points.

If you've ever wondered about the difference between potato and wheat vodkas, or between mescal and tequila or American and Irish whiskeys, or what makes single malt Scotch so desirable, look no further. With Anthony Dias Blue, America's leading wine and spirits expert, and The Complete Book of Spirits as your guides, you will take your enjoyment to a new level.