Reference Books - Page 4

The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Resource for Healthy Eating

Rebecca Wood

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

If you eat natural foods, or want to learn more about them, reading The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia will be a treat. The book is an invitation to learn the lore, health properties, and use of more than a thousand familiar and unusual foods and herbs. Each entry consists of a description, a little history or legend, the health benefits, and how to buy (or find) and use it. Author Rebecca Wood clearly delights in her subject--her writing is warm, like love letters to these intriguing foods. "I don't know what I love most about asafetida--its knock-your-socks-off sulfurous aroma ... or ... its pungent but pleasant and satisfying flavor," she writes of the herb also known as devil's dung. "I also love the way the word rolls off my tongue." Not all the entries are complimentary, though--Wood tried to like banana squash, but ended up feeding it to her chickens. Dotting the food entries are sidebars of recipes, preparation suggestions, and weird information that doesn't fit anywhere else: how horses get sunburned, why young wives fed their elderly husbands celery in the 1600s, tips for not crying over onions, and how to harvest natural chewing gum, for example. You may start by looking up a particular food, but you'll linger, reading just for the pleasure of it. --Joan Price

Saving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes, and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table

Leanne Ely

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 254 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Certified nutritionist Leanne Ely has a simple philosophy: “Make it and they will come.” Dinner, that is. Take-out, opening a can, or microwave fare shouldn’t pass for a nice, healthy meal–and nothing can replace a family’s time together. Believe it or not, preparing dinner can be a stress-free endeavor. Even your time in the supermarket can be cut in half!

Full of practical tips on simple, healthy meal planning, Saving Dinner is the ideal solution for today’s busy parents who would love to have their family sitting around the dinner table once again–sharing stories along with a nutritious meal. Efficiently divided by season, each section features six weeks of menus with delicious recipes, side dish suggestions, and an itemized grocery list that is organized by product (dairy, meat, produce) to make one-stop shopping a snap. Plus the book is packed with helpful hints and short cuts in the kitchen that make cooking easier and more fun.

From Big Basil Burgers and Salmon Carbonara to Crockpot Chili and Spicy Apricot Chicken, Saving Dinner will have your family coming back to the table–and back again for seconds!
Leanne Ely is considered the expert on family cooking and healthy eating. Between her popular “Heart of a Woman” radio show in Southern California and her weekly “Food for Thought” column on the ever-popular Flylady.net Web site, thousands of fans have already discovered Leanne’s secrets to easily prepared, well-balanced meals.

Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook (Betty Crocker)

Betty Crocker Editors

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 139 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1950, Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book is now reprinted in all its old-fashioned glory. Betty immerses you in a time when women were homemakers, cakes had at least two layers, and salad was iceberg lettuce. You may hesitate to recreate what your mother or grandmother probably cooked--if so, consider that back then we ate simply, in the days before the word foodie was invented. Many of the recipes suit today's harried lifestyle, as you see in Six Layer Dinner, combining eight cups of vegetables with a pound of ground meat, and Dainty Tea Brownies topped with colorful chopped pistachios.

Hundreds of black-and-white photos, animated drawings, and quaint color spreads of prepared dishes aid you in using the recipes. Beginners learn how to measure ingredients, choose the best economical cuts of meat, and cut up round and sheet cakes for serving. There is even a section on how to set the table. This loose-leaf book contains enough recipes to fill a 12-page, double-column index. Best of all, perhaps, is the "Shortcut" section, where useful tips include cleaning a grater of cheese residue by rubbing it with a piece of stale bread. These are interspersed with 15 ways to recuperate from overwork. One suggestion is to lie down on the kitchen floor on your back and relax for three to five minutes. Still a good idea, though few people have a kitchen large enough to try this. --Dana Jacobi

The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen

Michael Ruhlman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

worth a look, but for me ultimately unfulfilling 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is a great idea, and in many respects lives up to what it aims to achieve. It teaches an understanding of cooking rather than a parrot-recipe-imitate approach to food, but unfortunately, one thing you quickly learn is that other books are better at the 'how and why' approach to cooking such as On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

This book presents an attitude that I endorse, but doesn't provide the knowledge or the understanding to change cooking practices. There is not much that I am able to do better having read the book. Perhaps I may change cooking stock in a pressure cooker, but while the book details the preparation of veal stock it doesn't really detail the disadvantages of other methods. Unlike Strunk and White's The Elements of Style , this book does not have a left-hand column(common mistake) and right-hand column(correct way). Neither does it have a section on the "principles of composition", which would be very useful. The second and main part of this book is a useful glossary of cooking terms, but not a "how and why" on common cooking scenarios.

This is no Strunk and White, and while it is opinionated the author relies heavily on the knowledge and authority of others to communicate his ideas. There is much of "so and so does this" instead of a "because of this, do this to get that", which I would have preferred. There is name dropping and an assumption that some jargon terms are understood.

The book guides the reader in the right direction, but leaves him with little substance.

While I give it three stars now, this book may stay with me for some time as a reference, and I am glad that I now know what books to buy next.

Editorial Review:

Amazon Best of the Month November 2007: Inspired by the Strunk and White classic, Michael Ruhlman's The Elements of Cooking will quickly prove to be an essential culinary reference for both seasoned cooks and novices who might not know gravlax from gremolata. After a thorough "Notes on Cooking," Ruhlman, a prolific cookbook author and popular blogger, settles in for an opinionated and informative A-Z roundup (from Acid to Zester) of cooking terms, lessons, and techniques reduced to their essential essence. Even with only one recipe (for veal stock), it's a must-have for every kitchen library--a book that will help you re-think your approach to food. --Brad Thomas Parsons

What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained

Robert L. Wolke

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why do recipes call for unsalted butter--and salt? What is a microwave, actually? Are smoked foods raw or cooked? Robert L. Wolke's enlightening and entertaining What Einstein Told His Cook offers answers to these and 127 other questions about everyday kitchen phenomena. Using humor (dubious puns included), Wolke, a bona fide chemistry professor and syndicated Washington Post columnist, has found a way to make his explanations clear and accessible to all: in short, fun. For example, to a query about why cookbooks advise against inserting meat thermometers so that they touch a bone, Wolke says, "I hate warnings without explanations, don't you? Whenever I see an 'open other end' warning on a box, I open the wrong end just to see what will happen. I'm still alive." But he always finally gets down to brass tacks: as most heat transfer in meat is due to its water content, areas around bone remain relatively cool and thus unreliable for gauging overall meat temperature.

Organized into basic categories like "Sweet Talk" (questions involving sugar), "Fire and Ice" (we learn why water boils and freezers burn, among other things), and "Tools and Technology" (the best kind of frying pan, for example), the book also provides illustrative recipes like Black Raspberry Coffee Cake (to demonstrate how metrics work in recipes) and Bob's Mahogany Game Hens (showing what brining can do). With technical illustrations, tips, and more, the book offers abundant evidence that learning the whys and hows of cooking can help us enjoy the culinary process almost as much as its results. --Arthur Boehm

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

Kathleen Flinn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A delightful true story of food, Paris, and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother’s advice that she get another job immediately or “never get hired anywhere ever again,” Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream—a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn’s transformation as she moves through the school’s intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her “wretchedly inadequate” French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city’s street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail. The ultimate wish fulfillment book, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, Almost French, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.

Baking with Julia Savor the Joys of Baking with America's Best Bakers

Dorie Greenspan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Baking Bible 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I have had this book since it first came out. This is, by far, the baking bible for those of us who adore to bake on weekends. Recipes I continually come back to are the Vanilla Pound Cake, which I often make for neighbors at Christmas. And the unbelieveable blueberry muffins which are worth the price of the book!!! Boca Negra, the flourless chocolate cake is to die for, along with Sunny Side Up Apricot pastry. Enormous popovers which I still love to watch on the PBS show where Julia speaks of honey dripping down to her elbows.

Yes the receipes are sometimes time consuming---this is not a quick bake approach. Where else can you learn from the top pastry chefs and pay thousands for cooking school? The photos are increadible, the book has a nice size and receipes, while detailed, are easy to follow. Enjoy!

Editorial Review:

Television cooking shows are occasionally moderately entertaining to watch, but as sources for usable recipes and good cooking ideas, they are hit or miss at best. Cookbooks based on cooking shows are even less likely to be useful in the kitchen. One shining exception is Julia Child's "Master Chef" series. One of the best cooking shows ever produced, it also yielded some wonderful cookbooks, including Cooking With Master Chefs. The latest is Baking With Julia, which features the creations of 26 top bakers. All are artists with flour, eggs, butter, and the other ingredients of their craft. Writer Dorie Greenspan is a master at her craft as well. The paste for eclairs, she writes, is transformed from "ordinary-looking batter" into "a puffed pastry that appears to be threatening flight." It's all definitely good enough to eat.

Joy of Cooking

Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 75 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

My reference cookbook; get the original 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

If you had to choose only two cookbooks for a young adult setting up his/her first household, I would recommend one of the older Joy of Cooking books (pre-1997) and the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. Joy of Cooking provides all the information you need on measurements, substitutions, ingredients, and basic techniques, such as how to make a roux. I have a 1984 version, which I love. When the 1997 revision came out, I rushed out and bought it, too, assuming I would pass on my older one to a young cook. I am so glad I didn't give my first one away! Not only do I think it is a better cookbook with more useful recipes, but it is also built better. The newer version's binding quickly fell apart.

Editorial Review:

Since its first private printing in 1931, The Joy of Cooking has been teaching Americans how to cook. Craig Claiborne calls it "a masterpiece of clarity" and Julia Child says it's the one book she'd keep if she could only have one English title on the shelf. The nearly 5,000 recipes are handily organized by meal and ingredient, and no cooking instruction goes unexplained, so you can finally understand the difference between poaching and braising. The book includes nutritional information as well as an extremely helpful list of measures and equivalents. You'll find a version of every recipe your mother ever cooked, along with straightforward instructions for cooking more exotic specialties such as turtles and muskrats.

Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques

Jacques Pépin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 39 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Complete Techniques, a complete misnomer 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I'm a pretty good cook and went to culinary school. I'm also eager to learn everything I can. I'm hardly a snob when it comes to food and preparation. I also read a lot of cooking non-fiction.

I love Jacques Pepin. I think he's the name man and am currently reading his biography. So, it pains me to give this review, but I gotta be honest, this book sucks. The descriptions are way too brief and half the techniques in here are completely useless with today's cooking. Tremendously disappointing.

Want a real complete technique book? Check out La Varenne Pratique by Anne Willan or The Professional Chef from the CIA.

Sorry Jacques.

Editorial Review:

The fully illustrated bible of cooking techniques from the world's best-known French cook is now in paperback and in one volume for the first time ever.

From a master chef and the current co-star (with Julia Child) of the hit television series "Cooking at Home" comes everything the home cook needs to perfect his or her kitchen skills--assisted by instructive, step-by-step photography. Learn to de-bone a chicken, poach an egg, whisk a perfect bearnaise, knead a tangy sourdough, or bake an exquisite meringue with the perfection and efficiency of a professional chef. Pépin's toothsome and time-tested recipes offer budding chefs the opportunity to put lessons into practice with extraordinary results. This comprehensive, authoritative presentation of cooking technique and practice is sure to become an indispensable part of every home cook's library.

Cheese Primer

Steven Jenkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Best Introduction to Cheese 4 out of 5 stars.
11 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Steven Jenkins has written 'a passionate guide
to cheese'. He may well be, as the cover copy
claims 'America's most opinionated authority'.
What makes this book the most important volume
on the subject right now is that the man has
tasted most of the world's cheeses and has or-
ganized his careful tasting notes in a way that
makes them easy to access.

His geographical sections are sprinkled with
sidebars that are often interesting or useful
and his writing style is bubbly and fun.

It's true that this book is in no way a primer.
It's not about first principles, and some of what
it has to say is just plain wrong. Fat doesn't
float because it's heavier than water, (p.15)
for instance and the best wine to serve with
a cheese is only occasionally one from the
same region (many of the best dairy lands aren't
in wine country).

Of course, any book that calls itself opinionated
is going to have opinions that provoke disagreement.
There are also going to be holes in the en-
cyclopedic fabric. (Steve, how could you have missed
Austria's Voralberger Bergkäse?)

Quibbles aside, this is an author who cares about
one of the good things in life and has devoted his
time, taste and intelligence to sharing that thing
with the rest of us. The result is a book that will
bring a lot of pleasure and be used as a reference
for many years. For less than the cost of a pound
of Reggiano, this is a great buy.

Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE
and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from Kunati Press.
(ISBN 1601640005)

Editorial Review:

If you want a fascinating food book, say Cheese Primer. For 20 years, Steve Jenkins has lead the way in upgrading the quality of cheese sold at fine food stores in the U.S. Finally, in this volume, he shares his encyclopedic knowledge. Jenkins tells all about cheesemaking at the commercial as well as the artistic level. Generously punctuated with maps and photos, the book includes all kinds of historical and other relevant information. Jenkins seems to describe every kind of cheese made in the U.S. and Europe, including when to eat them, how and with what. His passion and blunt opinions make it easy to travel the 548 pages of this book if you have even the smallest interest in cheese. The guide to pronunciation is particularly helpful.