The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food Review

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(More customer reviews)I've owned this book since it first came out in 1992, and it occupies a special place in my cooking library -- eye-level shelf for easy reach. The salad of tart greens with prosciutto and warm balsamic dressing has been my first course for many outstanding dinner parties, including several on New Year's Eve. Other particular favorites - the lamb, garlic & potato roast, maccheroni with baked grilled vegetables, torta barozzi, and chestnut ricotta cheesecake. Ms. Kasper's outstanding knowledge of this regional Italian cuisine is equally matched by her understanding of how a home chef times and assembles a multi-course meal. I'm now ordering her new book, The Italian Country Table, and hope to be just as impressed.

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The New Doubleday Cookbook Review

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(More customer reviews)I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook, so that when someone gave my wife and I a copy of this "basic" cookbook for our wedding, I was initially disappointed, thinking that I didn't need this book.
How WRONG I was! :-)
I have found this book to be completely invaluable in my kitchen.
What I found was that I often know how to make more complex recipes, but when I needed to make a more "standard" recipe - I was often at a loss.....how DO you cook a pot roast? Make a mint julep? What temperature DO you cook a yam at, anyway? All this and much more is in this book. This book has easy to find sections on meats, fish, poultry, drinks, desserts and much more, and many many recipes. It also has a provides a fairly exhaustive definition of almost anything cooking related from types of crabs to buy all the way to the various types of sugars available on the market.
When I'm at a loss for what to serve for dinner, I just flip through this book for ideas. The same goes for when I am experimenting and creating some new japanese-creole dish to subject my family to! :-)
This is a LARGE book, with no flashy pictures or anything like that (there are some basic drawings - for example, what part of the cow gets cut up for what kind of meat. Things like that), so you are getting a lot for your money.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who enjoys spending any time in the kitchen. I enjoy it so much that I'm buying another copy as a gift for my little sister's wedding shower! :-)

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The complete guide to the modern kitchen that swept the R.T. French Tastemaster Awards, now updated and revised to reflect America's new nutritional awareness and the trend toward healthier cooking.B & W illustrations throughout

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The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show Review

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(More customer reviews)I love to cook but was in a rut with my weeknight standard recipes, and heard Lynne talk about this new book on NPR. I immediately bought it just for the Hoisin Noodles 4 Flavors recipe, which I made this weekend for a very appreciative audience of husband and dad - it was easy and delicious of course, but most happily it was something different. I can't wait to try many of the ideas I've found there - now I need a bottle of fish sauce to add the umami to lots of recipes - and am excited about weeknight cooking again. I'd recommend this to anyone who isn't afraid of red pepper flakes, roasting a vegetable, or the occasional pat of butter or dollop of cream. It's full of tips, clear explanations, realistic cooking times for recipes, and a great "Here's a basic equipment list," plus great little stories and quotes. I love this book! I'm ultra-confident that new recipes will put the "Wow" back into our weeknight AND weekend cooking! Thank you, Lynne and Sally!

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Just when you thought the last thing the world needed was another book on weeknight cooking, along comes an entirely fresh take on the subject. As they do on their weekly show, host Lynne Rossetto Kasper and producer Sally Swift approach their topic with attitude and originality, making The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper one of the most engaging cookbooks of this or any other year.As loyal listeners know, Lynne and Sally share an unrelenting curiosity about everything to do with food. Their show, The Splendid Table, looks at the role food plays in our lives—inspiring us, making us laugh, nourishing us, and opening us up to the world around us. Now they have compiled all the most trenchant tips, never-fail recipes, and everyday culinary know-how from the program in How to Eat Supper, a kitchen companion unlike any other.This is no mere cookbook. Like the show, this book goes far beyond the recipe, introducing the people and stories that are shaping America’s changing sense of food. We don’t eat, shop, or cook as we used to. Our relationship with food has intensified, become more controversial, richer, more pleasurable, and sometimes more puzzling. How to Eat Supper gives voice to rarely heard perspectives on food—from the quirky to the political, from the grassroots to the scholarly, from the highbrow to the humble—and shows the essential role breaking bread together plays in our world.How to Eat Supper takes you through a plethora of inviting recipes simple enough to ensure success even if you’ve never cooked before. And if you are experienced in the kitchen, you’ll find challenging new concepts and dishes to spark your imagination.

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Gourmet Meals in Minutes Review

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(More customer reviews)I love cookbooks. I have an extensive collection. I taught myself how to cook using cookbooks so I believe a good cookbook is one that inspires and should be understandable and reasonably easy to use; with that in mind I love this cookbook.
A big reason I love this book is because it does not try to trick you into believing that a great meal will just magically appear in 30 minutes. This book educates you on how to organize your kitchen so you will be able to produce gourmet meals with minimal cooking time. This includes practical suggestions on how to stock your kitchen pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Detailed time-saving techniques on how to prepare herbs, spices and other ingredients ahead of time so that their flavor is preserved and you have minimal prep-time when cooking. There is also advice on equipment and a lot of time is spent on techniques; each individual technique or set of techniques are explained step-by-step and illustrated when necessary.
I find that knowing my skill level helps me to determine if a cookbook is written for me; so far my stages of development have been total disaster, occasional disaster or novice, beginner, experienced beginner, advanced beginner/almost intermediate, and now I consider myself an intermediate cook. I am not a gourmet or professional by any means. I would not recommend this cookbook for a novice or beginner but for an experienced beginner through intermediate cook who wants to expand his or her repertoire and wants suggestions on technique, food preparation and stocking up their kitchen. I imagine this would be too simple for someone who is really advanced. If you fit in the categories I described above then this is a great option.
For the reviewer who described dishes she prepared as bland I have not had that experience. Although I follow the recipes from cookbooks as closely as possible I have found that it is always important to taste a dish when I am cooking and making changes if needed.

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We live in a hectic world where there isn't a lot of time to spend on meal preparation, but we still want to enjoy the food we eat.Gourmet Meals in Minutes will show you how to create a wide variety of mouth-watering, nutritious meals without spending all day in the kitchen.

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