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From: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Joined: December 14th, 2010

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October 12th, 2019

Curried Carrot-Walnut Burgers from Vegetarian Planet

These are good vegetarian burgers with chickpeas, carrots, and mushrooms as the base. The burgers were easy to form and held together well during the cooking. They are quite soft in the eating, so benefit... read more >


recipe reviews (78)
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Barbara's Reviews


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Cookbook Reviews

19 books reviewed. Showing 1 to 19Sort by: Rating | Title

The 1997 Joy of Cooking

By Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker, Irma S. Rombauer
Scribner - 1997

December 14th, 2010

This book is a standard reference for me and I really like the variety of recipes and cuisine. It's criticized for being chef-y, but I truly don't need the mushroom-soup type shortcuts. Recipes are clearly written and the chapter organization makes more sense to me than earlier editions.

But how I wish that they had used a better type face! Fractions are hard to read, the contrast between bold ingredients and normal instructions is not as clear as in the earlier 1975 version I have, and I very much miss the bold main headings in the index. It's such a big cookbook and such a big index, making headings and subheadings more visual would have been a great help.

And because it is so different from earlier (and later editions) I'm glad that I still have multiple editions of Joy.

The Classic 1000 Italian Recipes

By Christina Gabrielli
Foulsham - 2003

December 14th, 2010

There are lots of recipes in here but some of them vary so little (1 few grams more meat or varying by one ingredient) that they don't deserve separate entries. The recipes themselves are just a list of ingredients and the instructions--no introductions, no tips, and I rather miss that. For this reason, it's a cookbook I don't often use.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century

By Amanda Hesser
W. W. Norton & Company - 2010

January 22nd, 2012 (edited 22nd January 2012)

I recently succumbed and bought this weighty tome. Despite a size that promises to be a how-to-cook cookbook, like Joy of Cooking, it is a very large repository of recipes. And very varied and interesting recipes they are, too.

There are some features about the book I really appreciate:

* Handy conversions and substitutions on the inside cover, where they are easily accessible.
* Very readable fonts and uncluttered layout
* Although the recipes in each chapter are organized chronologically, each chapter starts with a very handy categorized list of the contents, so it's easy to find.browse recipes.
* Cooking notes following most of the recipes containing variations, observations, and tips, sometimes from her correspondents and sources.
* Recipe introductions that feature Ms. Hessler's personal voice. Her intros and the cooking notes make it feel like a friend in the kitchen. It's a pleasant book to browse, read, and use.

Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours

By Kim Boyce, Quentin Bacon, Nancy Silverton, Amy Scattergood
Stewart, Tabori & Chang - 2010

December 14th, 2010

I am noticing with a number of recipes in this cookbook that the amount of salt required is too high, at least for my kind of salt and my taste. The author always specifies kosher salt, but the brands she uses are not available where I live so I use coarse sea salt (Baleine brand). Either this salt is much saltier than her brand, or my taste buds are accustomed to much less salt. Either way, I am now halving all her recommendations for salt, and that is yielding much better results.

How to cook the perfect ... Felicity Cloake (Guardian)

By
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June 6th, 2016

I love Felicity Cloake's approach to trying out different versions of a recipe and creating her own version based on her discoveries. The recipes she creates are excellent, and because she justifies her choices and explains her preferences, you can easily make different choices to suit your own preferences.

She is also wide-ranging in her choices, covering cuisines from around the world.

She has become my go-to source when I'm looking for a standard recipe.

Jane Brody's Good Food Book

By Jane Brody
W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. - 1980

April 17th, 2011

This is one of my favourite cookbooks! I have the paperback edition and it is stained and falling apart with use. My mother has this cookbook too, and we just refer to it as Jane. "It's in Jane", or "Jane has a good recipe for ...".

Half of the book is about food and nutrition and I haven't looked at it in years. What really works for me are the recipes. Her introductions are brief but make you feel like you have a friend in the kitchen. The approach to cooking is down-to-earth, keeping fat down without losing the flavour, lots of vegetables, and the results have always been great.

Many of her soup recipes have become such standards for me that I make them without reference to the book, and the hummus and baba ganouj recipes get raves from my guests every time I serve them.

It's a real winner!

Jane Brody's Good Food Book: Living the High-Carbohydrate Way

By Jane Brody
Bantam - 1987

April 17th, 2011

This is one of my favourite cookbooks! I have the paperback edition and it is stained and falling apart with use. My mother has this cookbook too, and we just refer to it as Jane. "It's in Jane", or "Jane has a good recipe for ...".

Half of the book is about food and nutrition and I haven't looked at it in years. What really works for me are the recipes. Her introductions are brief but make you feel like you have a friend in the kitchen. The approach to cooking is down-to-earth, keeping fat down without losing the flavour, lots of vegetables, and the results have always been great.

Many of her soup recipes have become such standards for me that I make them without reference to the book, and the hummus and baba ganouj recipes get raves from my guests every time I serve them.

It's a real winner!

Jerusalem

By Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi
Ebury Press - 2012

March 27th, 2016

I love the flavours that ottolenghi conjures with, but I find the cooking instructions often sloppy and not to be trusted. Oven temperatures or timings can be way off (perhaps they are tested in a professional kitchen that yields different results), steps missing, or in the wrong sequence. Almost every recipe I've tried needs some kind of tweaking, and careful reading.

That being said, his cookbooks are often the first ones I reach for when looking for inspiration for a dinner party. And Jersulaem is probably the one I most frequently turn to.

Kayotic Kitchen

By
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April 17th, 2011

This is a very professional and attactive site with beautiful photography and good recipes. Although Kay is Dutch, she writes (very idiomatically) in English and uses volume measurements rather than weights, which is the standard in Europe.

She is particularly good with showing every step of her instructions, so it's very good for visually oriented people.

Made in India: Cooked in Britain: Recipes from an Indian Family Kitchen

By Meera Sodha
Fig Tree - 2014

August 13th, 2016

Move over Madhur Jaffrey! This is a wonderful cookbook filled with fresh takes on Indian home cooking. I have been cooking out of it a lot in the last few weeks, and nothing I've tried has been a dud.

It has introduced me to new ingredients, which may be hard to come by for some, but I'm sure Internet offers solutions. I'm lucky to have an Indian Suriname grocer around the corner where I am able to get things like poha (flattend rice), sev (crispy chickpea flour noodles), and amchoor (green mango powder).

It also has recipes for ingredient that I think of as being very Northern European -- beets and cabbage, for example. The author's family came from Gujarat via Kampala but adapted recipes to suit locally available produce.

There are good explanations of Indian ingredients and pulses (with pictures), recipes that I'm already familiar with (Gujarati green bean, jeera rice) but also fresher versions of old favourites like saag paneer.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in modern, homemade Indian cooking.

Madhur Jaffrey Cookbook

By Madhur Jaffrey
Tiger Book - 1992

June 25th, 2011

This cookbook combines two of Jaffrey's earlier cookbooks into a single volume:

Eastern Vegetarian Cooking includes recipes from all over Asia, including the Middle East, Korea, China, Japan, the Phillippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as her native India.

An Introduction to Indian Cooking provides a wide variety of excellent Indian recipes, some simple, some more elaborate.

Although it features an integrated index (thank heavens!), the books are presented entirely separately, with their own suggested menus, table of contents, and information about ingredients. Although separate, I am grateful that they are present, especially the ingredient descriptions.

The book is intended for a British audience and the quantities and sources are British. This is not too much of a problem for me, but for a North American audience it would be a hassle (pints instead of cups).

I have tended to use it mostly for the Indian recipes and these are excellent. Occasionally an ingredient is missed in the list of ingredients, so reading the directions first is always necessary. The recipes also call for more oil than I like, but I think this reflects both the time in which the books were written, and the culture.

This book is my go-to book for Indian recipes (I don't have many others) and as I try to eat more vegetarian meals I hope toexplore more of the other recipes too.

More-With-Less Cookbook

By Doris Janzen Longacre
Herald Pr - 1976

June 13th, 2011

When I was in my teens, this book caused a revolution in our home. Mom started cooking from it, creating casseroles and other dishes inspired by the cooking of other parts of the world. Instead of meat, potatoes, and two veg, we were introduced to Pakistani keema, chow mein, pasta dishes, vegetarian meals, and other exotic and down-home dishes.

The major premise of this cookbook is that we need to eat less meat and protein, waste less food, and use our food resources wisely. The recipes are designed to appeal to middle-America, I think, so you will find the use of canned soups and the recipes look underspiced to my modern eye. But for non-gourmet cooks feeding families on good, honest, and varied food, this cookbook does the trick. It is also filled with tips and mini-recipes for using leftovers.

My copy is stained, creased and beginning to fall apart from heavy use in my student and early years. I don't use it anymore, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

I think my mother, who became a Quaker at around the time this book was published, and who was in deep sympathy with the message of this Mennonite cookbook, eventually became a vegetarian under its influence.

The Moro Cookbook

By Samantha Clark, Samuel Clark, Pia Tryde
Ebury Press - 2003

April 17th, 2011

This book gets lots of good press, but for me the jury is still out. I've not been overwhelmed by any of the recipes I've tried so far. For now it gets 2 stars, and as I try more recipes, I'll adjust up or down.

Plenty

By Yotam Ottolenghi, Jonathan Lovekin
Ebury Press - 2010

November 6th, 2012

I am really enjoying this cookbook, as well as Jerusalem, which I bought at the same time. I love the flavours and combinations, and with it's heavy Middle Eastern inspirations, it fits in well with the foods that are available in my local market street.

Surprisingly for such a modern cookbook, Ottolenghi is very, not to say overly generous, with oil and fat. I have reduced the oil using for sauteing by as much as 3/4 with no ill effect.

The Silver Spoon

By Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press - 2005

November 4th, 2012

Supposedly the Italian bible of cooking, and it contains a huge number of recipes, but it's not for begging cooks. The layout is compact, pictures minimal (which doesn't bother me).

The instructions are written in one long paragraph, which is a pain to follow when you're half way through and need to check something.

Worse yet, instructions can be incomplete, unclear, and quantities imprecise. Even for someone who doesn't always follow instructions and quantities to the letter, this can be frustrating.

Smitten Kitchen

By
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April 17th, 2011

SmittenKitchen has been my go-to blog since I discovered it 3 or 4 years ago. Whenever I'm looking for a new recipe, I start browsing there. She doesn't like fish and loves to bake, so that is reflected in her cooking.

I think the name of her blog originated when she was blogging about her dating life (wanting to be love-smitten?), but after she met her guy, she moved into food blogging. Now she's married with a cute kid, has left her employed job to freelance as cookery writer and blogger, and has a huge following.

The major appeal are the excellent recipes and beautiful photos, but she is also chatty, funny, and down-to-earth. This is not chefy food but truly excellent home cooking. And because you also get glimpses of her life in New York, for those of us that have never been there and live in different countries, it's like having a good friend there and experiencing it vicariously.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 2007

April 17th, 2011

I know this book gets great reviews, but I find that I don't cook very much out of it. I check it out for basic information on grains, beans, and vegetables but the actual recipes are so plain, I rarely use them.

The other quibble I have is the color of the text and the paper. I find the contrast too little, especially for the notes, which are printed in brown italic, and the paper is cream coloured.

Vegetarian India

By Madhur Jaffrey
Alfred A. Knopf - 2015

October 12th, 2019

This is an American version of Curry Easy Vegetarian and it is excellent. It has a slightly longer introduction than the original version, but the recipes are the same and I haven't hit a dud yet.

Unfortunately,I can't connect this to the Amazon listing or add the cover picture.

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-India-Journey-Through-Cooking/dp/1101874864

Vegetarian Planet

By Didi Emmons
Harvard Common Press - 1997

January 5th, 2019

I recently acquired this book (second hand) and have lots of recipes marked to try. And i have been cooking from it quite a bit.

So far I find that many recipes just seem to miss the mark somehow, not being quite balanced and needing some added tweaking and adjustments. Still, it is a great source of basic ideas for vegetarian meals. Just be prepared to make lots of adjustments.

The index is terrible. For example, bell peppers are a prominent part of several recipes, but because they are not mentioned in the title, these recipes are not indexed. So if you are looking for recipes that uses bell peppers, you won't find them.