Word: cookbooks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Exotic excursions into odd corners of cookery have some license to charm rather than instruct. But a working cookbook should be a textbook. It requires patient research, decent expository prose, and-on the publisher's part-painstaking work on editing and layout. Most cookbooks seem to aim solely for brevity. Beat the eggs with the sugar simply will not do unless it is followed by how long to beat and what the result should look or act like. No cookbook user is unfamiliar with that terse and truly enigmatic staple of mousse and souffle recipes: Fold in egg whites...
...easily the year's most popular Christmas gift book. The reason is that it is the long-awaited sequel to Mastering the Art of French Cooking, now better known as Julia I. If Julia Child's TV show is the Sesame Street of the food world, the cookbook she wrote with Simone Beck is its Dr. Spock. Step by rational step, it dispels the fears and dreads involved in cooking more than the simplest meal...
...those who enjoy reading cookbooks, the confection of the year is Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook (Simon & Schuster; $10). An American who has lived in France since 1951, Olney is a rare newcomer who has found acceptance with the U.S. cooking establishment on his first publication. Too many people, Olney thinks, confuse grande cuisine with "Grand Palace, or international hotel cooking." The truth is that Escoffier never found fillet of beef in pastry fit for Wellington or anyone else, and virtually nothing-except an occasional intemperate chef-came out of the kitchen in a blaze of brandy...
...devotees call themselves, try to follow his other nine diets, which are graduated from six to minus three to include increasing amounts of fish and vegetables -organically grown-along with brown rice. In actual practice, a good many youthful macrobiotics also eat meat. Explains Michel Abehsera, author of the cookbook recommended by the Whole Earth Catalog: "Meat finds its way into the Zen macrobiotic diet quite simply as a concession to man's sensual desires...
...That cookbook made me hungry," he said...