moomin_mama's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
8 books reviewed. Showing 1 to 8Sort by: Rating | Title 
The Best Ever Vegetarian Cookbook (Best Ever Cooks Collection)
By Roz Denny
Parragon Plus - 1997
Good, clear simple instructions and nice photos for each recipe, and a good starting point for vegetarians - nothing too challenging to make or eat. On the downside it isn't very inspiring. As a book it is too big and heavy, containing a lot of recipes found in other Parragon Publishing cookery books.
THE BEST OF SAINSBURY'S ORIENTAL COOKING
By ANON.
SAINSBURY - 1994
Not a bad book at all, but let down by the photography which makes all of the dishes look brown and sludgy and is the reason I've hardly used it.
The Cookery Year: With Over 200 Seasonal Recipes
By Gary Rhodes
BBC Books - 2005
Lovely to browse through, the recipes are not as daunting as they first appear and can often be simplified, although for me this is almost a coffee-table book rather than a cookbook, due to it's size and weight and the fact that there's not much here for vegetarians - most of the vegetable recipes consist of accompaniments, a few contain pork of some sort, and many rely on hard-to-find ingredients (sea kale, swiss chard).
The other sections are a lot better, but I don't eat meat and I'm cutting out fish. This leaves the puddings, which are, not surprisingly, the best bit of the book.
A seasonal cookbook (chapters correspond to months or the year, starting with March), you'll be disappointed if you think this means a more eco-friendly approach to ingredients (food miles, sustainability, etc). The fish section doesn't consider fish stocks, and in this case 'seasonal' doesn't just mean native produce - it includes foreign imports.
Considering the size, price and production values of this book, you'd expect pictures of all the dishes. Not so, which is a big disappointment because Gary Rhodes' cooking is, for me, sheer food porn.
Delia Smith's Summer Collection: 140 Recipes for Summer
By Delia Smith
BBC Books - 2003
I bought this after trying her Oven-roasted Ratatouille, which was published in a magazine or newspaper and taken from this book. I'm not a fan of Delia generally (I'm going by older books I was given years ago) but flicking through, this looks like my kind of thing.
New Covent Garden Food Co. Soup for All Seasons: B Our Favorite Seasonal Recipes (New Covent Garden Soup Company)
By New Covent Garden Soup Company
Boxtree, Limited - 2006
A great idea - making soup has to be one of the healthiest and most convenient ways to use seasonal igredients. Many of the soups contain dairy products, but batches could be frozen before these are added.
Good variety of recipes - as a vegetarian who eats a little bit of fish there was plenty of choice, with much that would please the meat and poultry eater - although the taste of the recipes was variable too, everything from poor to gorgeous. Some of the vegetarian recipes included chicken stock but in those cases I used vegetable stock instead.
The book itself is slim, spiral-bound with a sturdy hard-back cover and one recipe per page, and is very clearly and simply written. It's only downside is that it has no pictures, which I like.
Potato: The Definitive Guide to Potatoes and Potato Cooking
By Alex Barker, Sally Mansfield
Lorenz Books - 1999
Lots of hints and tips for buying, storing, preparing and cooking potatoes, with a list of different potato varieties. The recipes all look and sound good, the dishes are attractively photographed and instructions are short and clear - there isn't anything too complicated in this book.
I'm a big potato fan so I'm biased...
SAINSBURY'S COMPLETE VEGETARIAN COOKING.
By Rosamond. Richardson
J - 1991
Old-fashioned take on vegetarian cooking that often relies a lot on strange combinations (presumably to ensure a balanced mix of food types), and either frying or dairy-based sauces (rather than healthier oven-roasting and herbs and spices). As a rule of thumb, if the combination of ingredients in a given recipe looks odd, the dish will taste odd.
There are pictures for all the dishes, but in group photos littered through the book, which I found annoying.
Take 6 Ingredients
By Conrad Gallagner
Kyle Publishing - 2004
A very good idea, this is not basic, hearty one-pot cooking but a variety of clever dishes, many of which use luxury or unusual ingredients (foie gras, truffles and truffle oil, quail's eggs, caviar, etc). Only about a third of the recipes are accompanied by pictures, which is a shame, but they all look stunning.
The vegetable section is a disappointment, but there are vegetarian starters, soups, salads, pastas and risottos.