Apr 26

Cookbook 106: Mexican: Authentic recipes from south of the border

So when it was my birthday, and there was a cookbook sale, and I indulged (because birthday), I was very excited to see Mexican: Authentic recipes from south of the border by the Australian Women’s Weekly, because my previous Mexican cookbook left me uninspired and wanting a book that was far better.  The AWW does great cookbooks, triple tests the recipes and so I knew that provided I could get the ingredients required, this book would be awesome.

I wasn’t disappointed, the food was amazing.  The menu I chose was rather ambitious, but we pulled it off perfectly (pretty much everything ready at the same time), but I didn’t cook a desert.  You’ll see why, we had a lot of food.  I give this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars.  I’d give it more stars, but I know that some of these ingredients are hard to find.  I do recommend buying this if you do have access to Mexican cooking ingredients though.

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Apr 26

Cookbook 105: Paella! Spectacular Rice Dishes from Spain

I bought Paella! Spectacular Rice Dishes from Spain by Penelope Casas some years ago when I thought it’d be nice to learn how to cook Spanish food.  I didn’t have a paella pan at the time so this book sat on my shelf waiting for the moment when I got one. That happened to be this year thanks to my lovely husband who bought me one for my birthday.

Overall, however, this book is a bit of a problem.  Most of the recipes in this book call for a 17 – 18 inch pan (yes it is USian, how could you tell?), and only a handfull for a 13 inch pan (the one I got).  All the recipes require that the paella finishes in the oven, so you have to have an oven big enough to fit the pan into.  The recipes are also really verbose, so it’s hard to read in the kitchen and remember what you’re up to.  The one dish I made from this book made a significant amount of paella (probably enough to feed 6-8), and was a little dry, but tasty.  I give this 3 stars out of 5, and I won’t be keeping the book.

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Apr 19

Cookbook 104: The Australian Women’s Weekly One Pot: Low-fuss food for busy people

One Pot: Low-fuss food for busy people was a birthday gift to myself, because AWW cookbooks are good, and one pot recipes in the colder months are the best invention ever.  Scott wanted to make a bourguignon recipe, and I remembered that this book had one with lamb shanks, so we went with that.  It was amazing.  The instructions were clear, the dish so incredibly tasty that we didn’t want to stop eating it, and it was really photogenic too (see below).

The dessert was less successful.  I thought a raspberry and chocolate bread and butter pudding would be good – the results were less than stellar.  Clearly the photo in the book is taken before the dish is put into the oven, because the raspberries carbonised, even though the oven was at a low temperature.  The pudding tasted nice, but it wasn’t as good as some other bread and butter puddings I have made.

Overall I’d give his book 4 out of 5 stars. I’d’ve ranked it higher if the dessert worked.

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Apr 07

Cookbook 103: Sensational Salad Recipes

This was Scott’s book.  Yes, there is that tricky past tense.  I cannot recommend this book to anyone.  I mean, salads are nice, but these salads are boring for the most part, and I’ve found much better salads in other recipe books.  Anyway, at some point Family Circle released Sensational Salad Recipes, and with a title like that, you’d think that they’d be amazing.  Let me give you an example of the lack of amazing I found in this book. One recipe was a baby octopus salad.  Now, I’m never going to eat octopus, but I’m a curious person and wondered what you’d put in a salad with baby octopus… it turns out nothing.  That’s right, this “salad” was just baby octopus (dead, not climbing all over the salad bowl).  Also many of these salads were with meat in them, which made it difficult to cater to vegetarians.

The instructions in the recipe book, if you’re still interested after I’ve just panned it, are clear, the ingredients not too hard to find, and the end result of the two interesting (as far as I am concerned) salads was tasty.  I’ll give this 2 out of 5 for the instructions, and nothing else.

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Mar 22

Cookbook 102: Best of Vegetarian

I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but February and March have been really busy for me – too busy to even cook from cookbooks.  There has been a big birthday party to organise, an international guest visiting, my wedding anniversary, illness, going away, and lots of other things cropping up on the weekend so cooking, and blogging about cooking has been near impossible.  I think, with the exception of Easter, that things have returned more or less to normal, so blogging and cooking should be back to a relatively normal schedule.

So, once upon a time I cooked from Sanitarium’s Best of Vegetarian: month-by-month recipes.  This book was published by Murdoch Books in 1993 and appears to be out of print, I cannot find a copy of it anywhere (sorry).  I wasn’t expecting a lot from this book.  For reasons (not sure which ones) I thought the recipes would be bland and uninteresting, and was expecting that at the end of the meal I’d be adding this book to the pile of books that I’d be finding new homes for.

I was surprised. The recipes I made from this book were incredible, and I am really sorry I cannot point you towards a second hand copy so you can find out more yourself.  I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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Jan 26

Cookbook 101: Steam Cooking

We got Steam Cooking: 100 delicious and healthy food recipes for all steamers by Jenny Stacey forever and ever ago.  I cooked one dish from it once, but never really touched it again, and the recipes I made from this this time reminded me why.  Because we were eating with 2 vegetarians I steamed some vegetable dishes and roasted some lamb.  I’m really happy I roasted the lamb, because the vegetable dishes did absolutely nothing for me.

There are options in this book to steam meat, all types of meat, but steamed meat (beyond some fish and some cuts of chicken) do nothing for me, so I wasn’t particularly interested in quarantining steamers to steam meat.

I won’t be keeping this book, the recipes were all wrong, the descriptions as to what type of steamer should be sued for each dish were non existent (I used a combination of metal steamers and bamboo steamers), and I’ll go back to steaming dumplings and the occasional vegetable in my own time.  I give this book 1 out of 5 stars.

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Jan 26

Cookbook 100: Eat Well on $4/Day: Good and Cheap

This is another recent kickstarter project, Eat Well on $4/Day: Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown – second edition now available.  The idea behind this project was to provide a cheap or free cookbook to those with limited incomes, in order to help them find seasonal recipes that they can cook at low cost to themselves.  I liked the idea behind the project, and I acknowledge that there are issues, some people with limited incomes may not be able to store foodstuffs, or afford containers to store foodstuffs, but it is a good idea nonetheless.

The link above also has a link to the free .pdf of the book, apparently it’s not print friendly yet, and that’s something that is being worked on.  You can also submit your own recipes which, in the future will be hosted on the site.

The book is quite US centric, but not with hard to find ingredients.  It’s in US Imperial, which is annoying but not too bad as most recipes refer to spoon and cup measurements, which means that if you consistently use Australian measurements, you should be ok.

The only criticism I have of this book, so far, is that the amount of chilli recommended in the Vegetarian Jambalaya that I cooked.  It was TOO hot to eat, and I don’t mind chilli in my food.  I’d recommend starting with a quarter of the amount of cayenne pepper called for, and increasing to taste.  The full teaspoon was too much – even though it was delicious under that.  I will make this again, but with much less chilli.  Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

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Jan 02

Cookbook 99: Relish Mama

I backed Relish Mama by Nellie Kerrison on Kickstarter or Pozible because I thought it sounded good, and supporting Australian authors is something I like to do.  The book is full of amazing recipes, great photos and it is very clear that Kerrison loves food, loves sharing her cooking knowledge, and wants everyone who obtains this book to have a wonderful meal.  Some of the ingredients are a little hard to find, some are seasonal which means that you can’t cook all the recipes fully, all year around – which is how the world generally is anyway.

That said, there are some issues.  This book needed a better editor.  There is one recipe where Kerrison says that the dish would be complemented by another recipe on page “XXX” – the placeholder has never been updated.  One of the recipes I cooked says, “and then dry fry the cumin seeds in the same pan” and the cumin seeds are not listed in the ingredients – we had no idea how many and so made it up.  I’m confident that if there is a second printing of this book that these editing issues will be rectified.  If you’re able to put up with some relatively minor mistakes, I’d not let that put you off.  Overall I’d give this 3.5 stars out of 5.

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Dec 28

Cookbook 98: Cook it Slow

The Australian Women’s Weekly Cook It Slow was a birthday present to Scott from me, after he saw it at Dymocks when we were killing time between things.  And because it is a cookbook and is on my shelves, I cooked from it, and it was good.

Being a recent Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook, it has been thoroughly tested (triple tested according to the cover) and so has clear instructions, all the ingredients are correct, the methodology works, and the results are tasty.  The book is divided into several chapters, Everyday Weeknights, Freezer Friendly and Special Occasions – each of these are broken into subchapters, For the Slow Cooker, For the Stove and For the Oven.  I don’t have a slowcooker (currently), so my focus is on the stove and oven dishes for now.

There are a range of meat dishes, some desserts (see pudding recipe below), and some vegetable accompaniments – so a full range of food can be provided.   I really enjoyed the meal I made, I will definitely be coming back to this book in the cooler weather.  Overall I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

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Dec 22

Cookbook 97: Practical Cooking Wok and Stir Fry

Practical Cooking: Wok and Stir Fry is so out of print, that I am unable to provide you with any form of link to it.  I can tell you it was published by Hinkler Books in 2001 & 2004, but apparently it doesn’t exist according to the internet.  If it does turn up at any point, I will link to it here.

It’s difficult to make multiple dishes in a wok when you only have one wok, but all the dishes I list below can be made in large frying pans and saucepans.  Many of the dishes in this book call for the contents to be simmered while covered, which is easier to do in a saucepan than in my wok (which doesn’t have a lid).  Overall (if you can find this book anywhere), I’d recommend it – tasty food, good size servings.   3 out of 5 stars. Continue reading