Great recipes, weird and interesting pictures
344959
I love this gem of a book. Everything I've made so far has been a success. Directions are clear and concise, and the typesetting makes the recipes easy to read and follow while juggling eggs and measuring cups and little sticky fingers trying to "help". Although the pictures make the recipes look difficult to prepare, I found that most had minimal steps, and I was able to easily find the ingredients in a regular grocery store. A lot of thought went into the pictures in this book, and the food is staged quite elaborately, but I actually found the photos unhelpful and kind of unappealing. Some of the food, as represented, looked downright weird. Why would anyone prepare a salmon in the shape of a snake? Why choose a massively enlarged closeup of a meat slice that beings to mind tissue samples under a laboratory microscope? I'd say the author has great taste in food but unusual taste in its appearance.  I buy recipe books for the recipes, not the pictures, so I was really happy with my purchase.
490336
The New Mediterranean table has some interesting recipes. I do find the ingredients in some recipes, like lamb's belly, to be hard to find, as in I can't find it. The recipes are nicely laid out and there are some pictures. Not every recipe has a picture. Some recipes are as simple as charred cauliflower with cumin, paprika and feta, a fast and delicious side.

In the back of the book there are recipes for items like harissa, which is used in several recipes.  I found the small plates and side dishes to be very inspiring. Mains, like the braised veal breast with preserved lemons (lemon recipe included) are excellent. Some of the spices, like sumac and za'atar can be found online or in a middle eastern market.

I am a fan of authors like Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden and Sameh Wadi puts a very unique spin on Mediterranean food and deserves a look, some of the recipes are intricate and time consuming but I found most to be very doable once I read the instructions.
2429020
Love the recipes..like the variety...very unusual but tasty
2963792
I was attracted to this book because many of its recipes were unique. The book has several sections titled breakfast, lunch (soups and sandwiches), dinner (salads and mains), party time (snacks and desserts), drinks and basics. The photos in the book are brightly colored, well lighted and appealing. The book fits nicely in my aluminum book holder and stays in place. There are separately listed ingredients for each recipe and the steps to make the items are numbered and are accurate.

I have tried 6 recipes. Of the 6 that I have tried, 4 are ones I will make again and of those, 2 are ones that will become part of my regular offerings in my home  they are that good. The chipotle chicken and black bean soup was delicious and easy to prepare. My other favorite was a curried tuna with apple and golden raisins sandwich. I substituted a garam masala for the curry, which follows the theme of the undefined curry powder in the recipes ingredients.

Two recipes that I really enjoyed were the Asian celery, fennel and edamame salad and a turkey burger. The salads dressing was a mixture of candied lemons (that I made the night before), soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sugar etc. The dressing called for Siracha sauce, which is spicy hot, but I omitted it because I served it with the chipotle-flavored turkey burger, which already had some heat. The turkey burger was okay. My wife, who doesnt eat beef, really enjoyed it. The ground turkey I bought for the burger was very lean, but adding an egg, bread crumbs, chipotle pepper and some feta cheese made it more like a meat loaf. The final product was moist and tasty but it didn't match the flavor of a beef burger, at least for my palate.

The 5th recipe that I tried was a peanut butter squash soup. My son, who is college aged, said he would eat some more of it if he was really hungry. I didn't enjoy it much the first day; the flavor grew on me the second and third day for lunch. It helped that the temperature outdoors was near zero degrees F. A nice hardy soup hit the spot.

The 6th recipe was a tomato soup that called for a smoked salt. I bought some hickory-smoked salt and made the soup using 2, 28 ounce cans of plum tomatoes. The rest of the ingredients are fairly standard for a tomato soup recipe: onions, garlic, carrots, etc. The recipe called for a few cups of vegetable stock or water. I didn't have any vegetable stock on hand so I used water. The finished product lacked flavor. I should have substituted chicken stock. I would have been better off opening a can of Progresso. That said, if I had used the vegetable stock or substituted chicken stock it might have been a much better recipe.

In summary, I am very pleased that I have added two recipes to my list of more than 100 of my favorites and two more that were very good. I highly recommend this book. The author is well known for her pastries and baked goods but her book  Flour, Too  is a big hit with this cook of savory foods.
3719484
I love that there's a photo of each recipe right beside it, so I can see what it's supposed to look like when it's done.  The recipes are interesting and though they're all bean-focused they aren't all vegetarian.  I love that the author includes a variety of beans in the recipes and there are few if any recipes involving green beans (I just don't like green beans but have come across several "bean" cookbooks that are really just "green bean" cookbooks with a token recipe involving peas added in).

I found this book at my local library when I was looking for a particular recipe.  That recipe isn't in this book, but I love the other recipes and the photography in this book so much I'm buying a copy to keep at home and I'm looking forward to many years of cooking with it.
1010137
Wonderful cookbook with some very unique recipes. There are really nice photos for some recipes as well. She also provides lots of helpful information about different vegetables that you can spirilaze.  I own a different spirilizer than the one she uses but it is no problem to figure out which blade to use with mine.
795864
I enjoy reading this cookbook. It has beautiful photos and loads of delicious recipes. It is, however, not for the faint-of-heart or short-of-time! My friend also owns this book and is a self-proclaimed "Betty Crocker Box Baker". She was initially excited when she saw that a lot of the recipes only had 4-5 ingredients listed... Until she realized that those "ingredients" were finished recipes from elsewhere in the book (make the cake on pg 17, make the frosting on page 55, make the cookies on page 131 and make crumbs from it!)
I enjoy complex baking every now and then, so this is a great cookbook for me. Just not right for everyone!
940629
This is a clever cookbook. It is packed with tons of recipes for every cut of pork you can imagine. But they are intertwined between stories and experiences of people and places that make these recipes have meaning. In a way, the author is showing us how to connect with food in a more substantial way. The recipes vary widely and are very heavily French-influenced. Without question there are several dishes that are unfamiliar and perhaps unappealing to American cooks, but this book opens up a world of cooking in such a comfortable and approachable way.

I love that this book is so photo-heavy, although much of the photography is (perhaps intentionally) grainy or low-quality. All of it is purely rustic cooking and many of the recipes are really quite easy. The book is quirky, humorous, and fun. It's one made to be read, not just casually flipped through for a quick recipe.

Overall this is an interesting and useful book. A comfortable cook will find many of the recipes more helpful as a guide than to follow them exactly. Not perfect, but unique and clever enough to justify being on any cook's shelf.
236843
I was really looking forward to the 85th anniversary cookbook edition of Twinkies.  Hostess updated and expanded the Twinkies Cookbook.  They ahve included some of the best recipes and some new recipes.  I have to admit some of the recipes seemed rather bizarre to me, but may very well taste good.

I would have liked pictures for all of the recipes, instead of pictures for about 30% of the recipes.  Some recipes included Twinkies with meat, which didn't sound appetizing, Twinkie Corn Dogs don't get me excited, but a Patriotic Twinkie Pie or Twinkie Strawberry Shortcake sounds great!

There were recipes covering ~
Twinkies and Cake
Twinkies and Pie
Twinkies and Fruit
Twinkies and Chocolate
Twinkies and Cream
Twinkies and Meat
Twinkies and Novelty

Twinkies in smores or with fruit kabobs sound great and will spice up a dinner party or make for some new snacks and desserts

I enjoyed reading a little about the history of the Twinkie in the introduction to the book.  It included facts, ingredients, its inventor, and the celebration of eighty-five years in production.

Overall, this is a fun and easy book to read.  It would make for a fun gift.

I received this book from Bloggingforbooks.com in exchange for an honest review.
2704092
Great recipes, but there are some copy writing errors/misprints that can make it a bit difficult to read until you figure out the "code"
3288778
So far this is a really nice cookbook.  The recipes are simple, and don't call for too many crazy exotic ingredients.  The layout is really handy because the recipes are grouped into menus, so that means I don't have to go crazy trying figure out what side dishes to serve alongside the main courses.  What bugs me, and counts for the lower than five star rating, are all the creepy pictures of Rachael Ray.  She looks the Joker! Jack Nickleson's Joker! Kidding aside, her photographs are outnumbering the food photographs at least two to one.  It doesn't ruin the book for me, but it's odd to have someone beaming at me from the pages of a cook-book.
2574510
Overall, quite a nice collection of recipes with many I can't wait to try as these look to be more "authentic" Italian rather than the somewhat "Americanized" ones many cookbooks contain.  But... there are quite a few requiring ingredients that are difficult, if not impossible, to locate in my area of the country (rather rural).

The primary recipe I got this book for is "Lemon Hazelnut Tiramis" as I *love* tiramis as well as lemon and hazelnuts.  This sounded right up my alley. It is wonderful and quite a distinctive change from the *normal* tiramis!  No coffee is used which was a surprise - I didn't know you could make tiramis without coffee.

The book reads like one of her shows.  Each recipe begins with typically entertaining but brief summary, history, and/or personal view/observation before the ingredients list.  Everything is in a very readable font with the ingredient list in a bolder font to help it stand out a bit.  The instructions are detailed but conversational making for an easy read and preparation.  I did not notice any odd or difficult techniques needed to complete a recipe and most should be doable by an "average" cook.

My largest complaint is the lack of photos on many recipes.  Section introductions are in a large font and take entirely too much space with a full page photo for the section, a section index, description of typically two pages, and a page or two of family photos.  The family photos are nice, but I'd rather see more photos of the prepared recipes. The section descriptions could have been done with single pages and the section index could have been included on the main section page further reducing unnecessary page count leaving more room for recipe photos.  Many recipes do not have an accompanying photo which is almost inexcusable with modern cookbooks.  That said, I probably shouldn't be *too* hard on the many family photos included as the book *is* called "Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California".

Unfortunately, I'm unable to critique the index, a critical part of any cookbook, as my copy is a "screener" copy which does not have an index.  It also does not have high-res color photos, but the B/W ones of the recipes *do* look good with nice layouts.

Overall a fun read and nice recipe book.  If you're even remotely a fan of Ms. De Laurentiis I highly recommend that you pick up a copy.
4381775
A good cookbook overall. The recipes are written in a way that they are actually fun to read. The pages are filled with little stories and tips that add a little extra something that most cookbooks. The recipes are more complicated than i expected though, and I feel like they all have a lot of ingredients (despite the author talking about how she re-released this edition to cut down on unnecessary ingredients). So while I can't say that i follow these recipes to a T, I have found quite a few ideas in this book.
1419102
If you like comfort food and are not a brand new cook, you probably already have many or most of the recipes you'll find in this cookbook. That said, there's a great variety in here so you may find a few new options to round out your repertoire.

The layout of this book is very user-friendly, and the photography is gorgeous. There were a few great unique recipes like banana pound cake that were worth picking up the book for all by themselves!
892826
Who knew Philadelphia was more than cheesesteaks and soft pretzels with mustard?  This recipe book is a mix of some useful recipes and some pretty quirky dishes from colonial times.  Many of the recipes are from the menu of old Philadelphia society hotels, and are pretty fancy fare.  For someone into cooking, this is a unique collection.  For me, there were enough tasty things that were not too much work, to make it worth purchasing this book, which is out of print.  I got it used, in great condition.
650065
I love this cookbook. Jenni's photos are amazing. I feel like this book is more of a work of art than anything. I have made a few of the recipes and they were delicious too. I feel like one day I'll work up to some of the more complicated recipes - choux baguettes for example.
3569772
Great book with lots of pictures. Some recipes aren't really my cup of tea and theres not a lot of variety between them.