Cooking Up A Storm - The Teen Survival Cookbook - Sam Stern

Advantages: delicious recipies in 30 mins
Disadvantages: none

...Nigel Slater is a cookery author who is not hyped at all by the media, although that does not make his cookbooks any the worse due to his lack of stardom. On the contrary the Observer's resident foodies has written some very useful and thought provoking cookbooks. This being the first one of many I have bought. The book is very well set out and begins by informing the reader what the basics are to have in their larder. It then begins with the recipies nearly all of which I have have tried. His style is very relaxed and tells the reader not to worry if they cannot get hold of all the ingredients. This encourages you to experiment with your own ideas and develop your own dishes. All dishes can be cooked easily within 30 minutes, as the title suggests, but the preperation of some dishes may be a little time consuming. Moreover... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Reads like a novel
Disadvantages: none

...This book has got to be my best cookbook ever. Apart from being very informative, it has the most evocative descriptions ever. Nigel Slater even makes the washing up sound interesting. He starts with a guide to ingredients & utensils and then follows up with the recipes. After each recipe is a variations section (titled 'and more') where he gives other uses & tips for that recipe. Recipes are generally easy to make as Slater shies away from exact quantities leaving this to the cooks’ personal taste. The book is wonderfully descriptive that I often find myself reading it in bed as a reading book. A word of warning: This book is not good for anybody on a diet as Slater is not scares of using fatty meat, copious amounts of cream, butter & chocolate.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: 500 varied receipes, simple instructions, non-exotic ingrediants
Disadvantages: pencil drawing, slightly patronising, not very exciting.

...Cooking.....Hhmmmm. Hands up, who really likes to spend hours touring the shops & supermarkets for a million ingrediants, spending even more hours preping & cooking the stuff and only spending about 20 minutes eating the meal before ploughing through an hour's worth of washing up!?? Yes, thought so! I suspect a lot of people bow down to the holy microwave to feed them something nice, quick and simple; but there comes a time when one has to venture out to the other side of the kitchen and give the domestic cooker a reassuring pat on the hotplates. As a "present" my partner bought me a couple of cook books to peruse through at my leisure. In the words of Baldrick, I suspect a cunning plan somewhere. Anyway one of the books she bought me was the Daily Mail's Modern British Cookbook, by alastair little. The book is surprisingly well laid... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful