The Best Simple Recipes Author: Visit Amazon's America's Test Kitchen Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1933615591 | Format: PDF
The Best Simple Recipes Description
- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Boston Common Press; 1 edition (March 1, 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1933615591
- ISBN-13: 978-1933615592
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I am a fan of America's Test Kitchen's (ATK's) cookbooks. They follow a consistent format and the recipes tend to be reliable and reproducible. Our family tends to go in several directions at once so the idea of easy to prepare, quick meals has a lot of appeal. I was anxious to see how this cookbook measures up. In summary, it's a good cookbook but it makes some assumptions about the kitchen in which it is being used.
I have used other cookbooks that tout collections of recipes that can be prepared from start to finish in 30 minutes (in particular Rachael Ray's numerous offerings). My experience is that when a recipe is supposed to be prepared in 30 minutes or less, I usually finish up closer to 45 minutes. Perhaps someone who is more organized and motivated can accomplish this but I cannot. Regardless, every recipe I have tried from this book takes me less than an hour to put together and serve, which is still very much in line with reasonable as far as I am concerned.
One thing that is special about ATK cookbooks is the inclusion of the quick tips, brand comparisons and helpful suggestions that appear on almost every page. This book includes those same helps, and personally I find them interesting and useful.
Although not every recipe in the book comes with a nice picture, many of them (more than half, actually) do. This is always a helpful tool when deciding on what to make for a meal - eye appeal of a dish goes a long way to making a dish more likely to be tried, generally speaking. Also, each recipe is written to be clear and easy to follow and the results are consistent.
There is one main flaw with this cookbook. Many of the recipes call for uncommon ingredients that are not present in the average kitchen.
I want to start off by saying that I love this cookbook. It is simply one of the best cookbooks I have ever had the pleasure of using, and I have used a lot. Typically I have found you have two choices, great tasting complicated recipes or quick and fast artificial tasting food. This books says 30 minutes or less for making these recipes. I find it is more around 45 or less simply because I am not speedy at the prep work as some might expect. I am not in a great deal of a hurry either.
Now I have had a chance to make five recipes so far, two of them I loved, 3 of them were okay and one I didn't care for so much. Now the one of the ones I found to be okay probably had more to do with the my tortellini selection than anything, and the one I didn't care for much at all tasted plain and bland to me. The thing is though, the recipes are so straight forward that, for instance for the gumbo, I can easily add in my own seasoning the next time around and I will. The cooking method turned out great so it's just a matter of adjusting to taste.
Here are some bullet points of what I found to be good and not so good about the book overall.
Pros
Pictures: not every recipe has a picture, but there are a lot of quality pictures here including technique and info pictures ( 2 pages on cuts of beef too!)
Techniques: this is great, it talks about cutting leeks, cuts of steak, best way to make stir-fys, very instructional tips and the like that is great for novice and reminders for experiences cooks
Brand: they mention brand choices that they find to offer the best flavor, or texture, or etc. I find this especially useful when I am dealing with an ingredient I am not as familiar with.
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