Title: Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking

Author: Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles

I am a big fan of Anthony Bourdain, I love to eat food around the globe. Coincidently, what Bourdain does is traveling around the world and eats all kinds of local food. Anyway, I have to look through the book Bourdain wrote. Since Bourdain has the image of eating all sorts of food around the globe, however, this book focuses on French cooking. Bourdain does not give deep insight and recipes to cook the most authentic French food, instead, the book provides readers with more accessible recipes, such as cooking the roasted chicken. The recipes are well divided into parts and clear and simple introduction to the French food, the book opens up to wide range of audience. On the other hand, Bourdain also didn’t forget to add his unique humor elements to the book. After skimming through the book, I believe Bourdain not only is a great food entertainer, but also a great chef. 

 Title: Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking

Author: Masaharu Morimoto

The first impression of Japanese food come up to mind is sushi and sashimi, I enjoy eating sushi, but not raw fish. However, I didn’t have the chance to eat the authentic sushi in Japan. Come back to the book, what attracts me the most is the vivid and delightful illustrations on the food. The book brings a great overview of Japanese food, the book’s focus is not about recipes, instead it talks more about the cultural aspect of the food as well as people’s interests about food. Besides the stunning visual pictures, Morimoto also writes in depth about the preparation of sushi and sashimi, like the slicing of fish. Morimoto cooks very traditional Japanese food, he also opens his own restaurant. Morimoto’s cookbook talks in depth about the essence of Japanese food, this book opens to wide range of audience, especially the illustrations attracts a lot audience, and the illustrations will automatically make the audience to read the words below the pictures.

 

Cookbook Evaluation.

A few quick points I picked up on from the cookbooks I found lying around the house.(I was away for the weekend)

The Best of Epicure’s Vegeterian Cuisines of the world by Asha Khatau

This book is intended for vegetarians who are seeking new tastes and flavors.
It is intended for people who want to try vegetarian dishes from all over the world.
The author establishes her authority by stating the success of her cooking classes.
The cookbook presents the dishes from which country they come from. The recipe comes alongside a colorful photograph of what the dish needs to look like.
The recipes are very easy to follow. Ingredients followed by the mode of preparation. The author gives the reader options in doing some things differently than prescribed.
I was impressed by the story of the author. She has been cooking for over twenty years and only recently decided to write a book after being urged by friends and family.
Prashad-cooking with Indian masters by J Inder Singh Kalra

This book is a compilation of modern Indian cooking. It is a repertoire of new recipes that Indian chefs have come up with in the recent past.
It is a simple book printed in black and white even the photos are not colored.
It starts off by explaining Indian spices and giving the English equivalents.
The recipes seem very complicated and I would see someone not familiar with Indian cooking struggling to cope with these recipes.
What intrigued me about this book was that they gave biographies on each chef before going into their recipes.

evaluation for cookbooks

Title: The Pleasures of Italian Cooking

It's a book for general people who want to cook for family and friends. Initially I think it is easy to catch, but as I read on, I find that there is nothing but recipes again and again almost without any pictures. The only six pictures are about some dishes irrelevant to the recipes and lack of esthetics, which increases the difficulty to follow the instruction and feel dull and unwilling to open it. Though all the recipes are about Italian dishes, it is not well organized so that people can hardly find what they want due to the shortcomings in index and categories, which don’t show up in this book. And that indeed makes people confused and tired out.

Although the author is said to be eminent and experienced, the book just leaves an irksome impression on me and feel that the author merely automatically lists the recipes without thinking about how to conduct people effectively and cultivate their interests, what contradicts to its title about “pleasures”.

Title: The Cooking of Italy

This book belongs to a series of cookbooks as I browse the bookshelf and take a piles of them, attracted by their covers. They all have colorful covers and much more like art books than cookbooks, which helps to gain the amazing visual attraction.

While browsing, I am surprised to find that the book is full of pictures not only related to the recipes but also about the local conditions and the process to make a dish. Also, the book contains the local conditions introducing me to an exotic and fancy world, which arouses my curiosity and impels me to discover the recipes. As it has the pictures for process, I believe that everyone can easily catch it and does a good job. The book is divided into different parts according to the districts and owns an effective organization so that people can find what they desire without obstacles. Besides, the book is so detailed especially with the process pictures that there is no need to worry about your cooking skills.

It is indeed a book for everyone and intrigues people to explore the cooking world.

Cookbook Evaluations

Cookbook #1:

My mom likes to cook a lot (my grandmother owns a restaurant and is amazing cook/baker) and she has a bunch of cookbooks so I called her up and asked her to bring me some cookbooks. Yes, I am that lazy. So I looked through them all and the first one I decided to evaluate is Southern Living : 30 Years of Our Best Recipes.

Southern Living cookbooks have been around a long time (since 1966 to be exact). This particular cookbook highlights some of the best recipes Southern Living has published in the past 30 years. I'm thinking if a cookbook has been around for 30 plus years it's pretty reliable. I know I wouldn't continue to buy cookbooks by the same author if the food was awful. So seeing as this is a 30 year celebration of sorts, I would venture to say the intended audience is anyone who has been following Southern Living for any number years, or someone who just wants recipes for the best of the best.

I think the layout of the book is very well thought through. The recipes are presented with the yummiest ones at the beginning (drinks, cake, candies, bread), the staple foods in the middle (meat, pasta, eggs/cheese), and the foods no one likes to eat or make (soups, stew, veggie and fruits) towards the back. Rather clever. However I usually read magazines and articles like cookbooks backwards so this method wouldn't really work for me. The first six pages or so are dedicated to the three decades all of the recipes are taken from (70's, 80's, and 90's) and have small little quotes and blurbs about what was going on at the time, what foods were in, and what was featured in the cookbooks.

The recipes themselves are very easy to follow, with big, easy-to-read print. The titles of the recipes are in a different color and a bigger font than the recipes. Underneath the titles is a little hint to help the cook (make ahead, quick, family favorite). I think these little hints are very helpful. There are also some tips to make the recipe better (marinate longer, chill overnight) or a little history on the origin of the recipe. Throughout the book there are small boxes containing info on the three decades. One that caught my eye was "Buzz Words." It had different food slang for the three decades.

The pictures in this cookbook are fabulous. They make me want to make and eat recipes I know I won't like. They are all delicious-looking and presented in a neat, sophisticated way. Which is the feeling I get from reading this cookbook. It aims to be sophisticated.

Overall, I would have to say this is a very good cookbook. I would definitely recommend it to anyone. It would also be helpful if you were doing a project and wanted a recipe from one of those decades. This would ensure you are a getting a popular and delicious one.

I might just keep this cookbook and try out a few things for myself. Thanks Mom!

My First (and hopefully last) Encounter with Cook Books

The Uncommon Cook-Book

- by Ruth Mellinkoff

This book is certainly an eye catcher. Its title makes sure of that. If it wasn't for it's title I may have never noticed it. A plain white hard-bound book is unlikely to attract the attention of a passing eye. Maybe its simplicity and blandness has a rustic charm in itself.

Basically from the title, one understands that this book is not intended for amateur cooks. Its for people who know their way around the kitchen. For people who have cooked for a long time and are now tired of that monotonous ritual. It is for people who want to experiment, who want to try something new, something exciting.

This book would not interest budding cooks. It is visually lacking, making it difficult for learners to cross-check their final product. The recipes are not elaborately explained, further pointing to the fact that it is intended for experts. Mellinkoff being an acclaimed chef and having written several cook books for food all over the world and articles on renaissance cuisine is well-versed in the art of cooking and has enough authority to write about this subject.

The book is well categorized according to the various courses of a meal( i.e Appetizers, main course and desserts). All in all the book is an excellent choice for the veteran cooks, but may seem as a drag for first-timers.

Russian Cooking

-by Helen and George Papashvily

This book is slightly different from the other conventional cook-books. It not only describes the process of making russian food, but also delves into the history of russian food and its association with the Russia in the past and present era.

Now coming back to my views about the book. No matter how many times we hear "Don't judge a book by it's cover" we never seem to follow this principle. Somehow or the other the cover of the book plays an integral part in its selection from the book-shelf. The cover of this book just captivated me. At first glance it seems to be decorated chocolate nougats but on close observation you find out that it is actually painted eggs.

In terms of content this book describes an era in Russian cuisine and then gives a couple of examples with the recipe. It is visually rich making it more appealing to the readers interest. It also helps to make the book a good read for people not interested in cooking but just food.

The authors being editors for Times-Food and being avid travelers, have covered their bases well and done a good job in writing this book. The list of good remarks from acclaimed critics and newspapers further help in strengthening the authority of the authors on the subject of Russian cooking. Thorough analysis of the book show that this is a rich and entertaining experience.

Cookbook Reviews

When I found out we had to read a ton of cookbooks and write on two, the first thing I thought was ‘Where in the world can I get a cookbook?’ And then, I thought, ‘The Library!’ As it was the first time I had been to the library to search for a book, I used the computer to search the term ‘cookbook.’ It was apparently on the 6th floor, east. I couldn’t find any stairs to take me from the 4th floor to the 5th. So, I decided, ebook it was.

I’ve always been into Mexican food. Naturally, the first ebook that appealed to me was ‘Mexican Cooking.’  (http://www.healthrecipes.com/free_ebooks/mexican.pdf) This is a very simplistic book, very low budget. Though the book has a wide range of dishes, ranging from Guacamole to Taco Salad, it has absolutely no pictures. Like 0. Zip. Nada. That was a major turn-off, I mean, in a cookbook, you expect pictures of the food you’re cooking. Other than that, the book is well presented. The ingredients are right under the heading, and a detailed description of how to cook the meal just under it. I can’t exactly comment on the credibility of the book, as it’s free, but the recipes look convincing enough to me. This book is for someone who already can cook really well and only needs a book to point them in the rough direction.

Moving on to the next free ebook, Pizzeria (http://www.healthrecipes.com/free_ebooks/pizzeria.pdf). This cookbook has a much larger list of recipes, but is limited to pizzas and little else. This suits me fine though, because with so much to select from, it really looks like the author has quite a bit of credibility on the subject. The format is pretty much the same as ‘Mexican Cooking,’ but it has one difference. A major, very annoying difference. It constantly bugs you with the same ad after every recipe. I would only recommend this book to someone who needs to make a pizza really quick and needs free recipes.

Cookbook review 2 (Hanyu Zhang)

Cookbook 2 (The cooking of Scandinavia)

Searching down the row of books, I happened to lay my hands on this book The cooking of Scandinavia which is written by the same author as The cooking of Vienna's Empire (my previous blog). From the cover of the book, you can see a picture of pickled fish and a very tall win cup.

Opening the book, you will find a picture of a salmon and on the other

side of the page, you will see descriptions of the culture of food in Scandinavia. It also describes many other different types of fish and the traditions involved in eating them.

The first chapter of the book is wholly dedicated to the cooking of various types of fish found in Scandinavia. It not only shows how to cook the fish but also the history of how fish became part of their daily life. The author takes the reader gradually through the different recipes by the order of how the menu is usually set.

They first talk about the desserts, and then progress on to the main course and finally to some Christmas foods.

Overall, there are a lot of pictures in the book and this makes the articles very effective. The style and the way of organizing paragraphs gives us a feeling of oldness and formality.