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Books : The Perfect Recipe: The Ultimate, Hands-Down Best Way to Cook Our Favorite Foods |
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Books : The Perfect Recipe: The Ultimate, Hands-Down Best Way to Cook Our Favorite Foods |
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Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5973 EAN: 9780395894033 ISBN: 0395894034 Label: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 372 Publication Date: June 04, 1998 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Sales Rank: 952740 Studio: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Editorial Review: Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Perfect fun bookIf you love cooking this is for you. I just love reading her cookbooks. What a great Gift this would be. And great recipes too. Rating: - Simply the best cookbook you will ever buy!This book is full of test kitchen recipes that you really can use daily. The ways that they are explained and the mistakes they have made and show you how to avoid are priceless. My sister loved my book so much I had to buy her her own copy! Don't miss this one it is my favorite cookbook on the shelf and I collect them in the dozens! Rating:  - Very nice "entry level" book for potential "Cook's Illustrated" fansThis book's style and editorial format has a lot in common with Shirley Corriher's "CookWise" and the output of the Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen group, which isn't surprising since Anderson was once affiliated with CI. Anderson brings much of that same chatty, educational style to "The Perfect Recipe"; some people will like it, some people will hate it, depending on what they want from their cookbooks. I happen to really enjoy this kind of cookbook style, so I quite like it. Other reviewers have mentioned that "Perfect Recipe" is practically a remake of CI's "The Best Recipe", but has far fewer recipes and represents a lesser value for the reader (although it also costs less). The criticism has merit, but I think this book still has a place if the libraries of some cooks. I am thinking here of novice and middling cooks who find the dense, cluttered potpourri layout of the CI books unappealing or intimidating. There are also cooks who couldn't care less about ingredient and appliance brand reviews that pad out every variation of CI/ATK books. For these reader, "The Perfect Recipe" offers a contrasting format with a much simpler and easier-to-follow style - even the typeset and margins are larger and any given page is usually only devoted to one variation of a recipe. A good example of the cookbook's value is Anderson's chapter on roasting chicken. She shows how to "butterfly" a chicken for quicker/easier roasting, and gives several variations of the recipe, any one which will yield excellent results. I was basically afraid to try this method before reading this chapter (even after seeing Alton Brown's excellent show on the subject) , but Anderson's detailed instructions removed those qualms and left me raring and eager to try it. If a cookbook empowers me to try one new thing, I consider it worth the purchase price...so I am happy with "The Perfect Recipe". I am confident that other readers may well find that Anderson's style is just the ticket to help them get past their fear of other basic topics in food prep. Weaknesses: For my taste, the chapter on "Special Occasion" foods (crown roast, Thanksgiving turkey, etc) was both too long and too short. Most of these recipes are of little use for a single bachelor - but if you are going to have them, you need more than just a few standards). But I understand that Anderson was making a judgement call on how to structure her book, and that other people will regard the chapter as a Godsend. So if you are a hardcore cook with 200-300 volumes in your library (including some or all of the "Best Recipe" volumes) you probably won't need (or want) "The Perfect Recipe". But if you are a newer cook trying to upgrade your recipes to the next level, Anderson may provide you the entry you are looking for. Rating:  - Get the "Best Recipe" instead from Cooks Illustrated.Pam Anderson was the editor at Cook's Illustrated for years. Her 1998 book, while it won the Julia Child Award, has identical recipes in "The New Best Recipe" and also in "The Best Recipe", printed in 2004, both by Cooks's Illustrated, with WAY more recipes than Pam's book. Get the "New Best Recipe" instead from Cooks Illustrated, with over 1000 tested recipes, because it has: 1. Way more recipes to choose from 2. Costs about the same as Pam's book 3. Most importantly, it condenses Pam's roundabout writing with a simple straight forward style 4. it is 6 years newer, and has updated some recipes, and added hundreds more! Pam's 300 odd pages are puffed up by large print. The New Best Recipe has ~1000 pages that are chock full of simple helpful information. Pam's book needs much editing, for example, on page 100, it says "If you plan to soak the chicken longer than eight hours, reduce the salt from 1 tablespoon to 2 tablespoons". Sounds to me like a doubling of salt amount, not a reducing, I don't know if she really meant to double the salt...and there's many more sloppy statements to wade through. Some people feel they need only one main cook book and go for The New Best Recipe, Joy of Cooking (versions before 1976), or another such classic. Save your money , and get a recent version of one of the classics.
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