CookThatBook

Review written & photographed by Helena McMurdo

Classic Artisan Baking is available for purchase through our online store or at local bookstores. For more information on this book please visit Thomas Allen & Son.  

Julian Day is the proprietor of Meg Rivers Artisan Bakery, a popular UK mail order cake company that has been shipping treats around the world for over 25 years. The company was originally started by Meg Rivers, a busy mom wanting to make cakes free from preservatives and artificial colourings. Julian ran a successful food wholesaling business in rural Warwickshire and was approached by Meg’s family after her death to take over the Meg Rivers business. Having now run the company for several years, Julian decided it was time to put together a cookbook with the original Meg Rivers recipes and bakery favourites.

At 140 pages plus index, the book is divided into sections for different types of baking with recipes for family cakes, small cakes, brownies and bars, biscuits and cookies, loaves, breads, and tarts. And what beautiful recipes! The book is filled with traditional British favourites like Caraway Seed Cake, Lemon Drizzle Cake, Bakewell Slices as well as fun treats like Traffic Light Tarts; jam filled tart shells in red, yellow and green. The tart section features tempting desserts like Rhubarb & Marscapone Tart and Tarte au Citron.

I love leafing through a cookbook and finding lots to enjoy and savour on every page. In fact, I found myself constantly ticking boxes and adding sticky notes to recipes I want to make in the future. The beautiful photography by Steve Painter very much contributes to the overall enjoyment of the book. I felt like I was peering through the windows of British country farmhouses and seeing all of these beautiful treats laid out inside.

Be prepared for a few unfamiliar items such as self-raising flour, readily available on shelves in the UK but harder to find in North America. However, you can easily search online to find recipes for blending your own self-raising flour. I also found myself envious of all the pretty and useful cake tin liners that the author seemed to employ in many of the cakes, which try as I might I could not seem to find. Instead I settled for parchment paper, which of course worked just as well (if perhaps not as prettily).

A word about pans: many of the recipes call for 6-inch or 7-inch pans (not our usual North American 8-inch standard). Being a total sucker for all things cute and small I succumbed and bought two new pans, somewhat begrudgingly at first. But any resentment soon vanished once I saw my lovely little cakes.

These small quirks might put off some readers, but I felt that the overall results of the recipes and the delicious cakes were worth all of the additional effort. I found lots of inspiration in the simplicity of the recipes.

One final small note about the overall size of the book: it’s not something I’d usually mention but at 7.5 x 9.5-inches, this book employs the smaller size that I’m seeing being used now by many cookbook publishers and I have to say I quite like this trend. It fits easily in my handbag, and doesn’t take up the whole counter when open. Yes, I am one of those people who often will be found carrying cookbooks around in my handbag! And this is exactly the kind of book I’d toss in any day of the week.

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Review written & photographed by Jordan A.R.

The Quintessential Quinoa Cookbook is available for purchase through our online store or at local bookstores. For more information on this cookbook please visit Thomas Allen & Son. 

The Quintessential Quinoa Cookbook (published by Skyhorse Publishing, $17.95 USD) is written by Wendy Polisi, creator of the popular website CookingQuinoa.net. This book is a collection of over two hundred of Wendy’s quinoa-inspired recipes, and includes nutritional information for each dish as well as tips on preparation and ingredient substitutions. The recipes cover a wide spectrum of dietary genres, including vegan, gluten-free and sugar-free. There are also kid specific recipes, as well as suggested meals to serve on busy weeknights when you’re short on time but still want to serve something healthy.

I have to admit that I found the photography completely uninspiring. It is said that we eat with our eyes, and the same follows true with cooking: we want to cook what looks good to eat. Obviously publishers don’t have unlimited budgets and high caliber food photography is not cheap, but this book would have really benefited from some more consideration in terms of its overall visual appeal.

Some of the other issues I have with the book are in regards to basic edits. For example; I found the suggested cook times and temperatures not only to be inaccurate but also inconsistent with what is listed online. There were even instances where itemized ingredients were nowhere to be found in the recipe itself, while more commonsense ingredient additions were excluded. After double-checking the website I found the same recipes online without errors.

If you’re interested in a beautiful recipe book about quinoa, something like Quinoa 365 deserves purchase. But if all you want are some quick, simple recipes using this South American staple, check out Wendy’s website. Honestly, after testing this cookbook and closely examining her website I cannot help but feel that what’s online is a far superior resource for cooks.

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By Anjum Anand

Anjum’s Eat Right For Your Body Type is available for purchase through our online store or at local bookstores. For more information on this book please visit Da Capo Lifelong Books. 

Review written & photographed by Helena McMurdo

UK based Anjum Anand is the host of Indian Food Made Easy (carried in the US on The Cooking Channel), and has had UK bestsellers with Indian Food Made Easy and Anjum’s New Indian. She is known for her light, healthy, modern take on Indian Cuisine.

I know what you are thinking – why am I reviewing a ‘healthy/diet’ book. It’s just soooo not me. Or is it? After a few months of reviewing some very delectable cookbooks, I’ll be honest and say I was beginning to exhibit some…er…side effects. So the idea of a healthy book sounded like a good idea. Well at least it couldn’t do me any harm.

Anjum’s Eat Right For Your Body Type: The Super-Healthy Detox Diet Inspired by Ayurveda (published by Da Capo Lifelong Books, $24.95 USD) is an interesting look at the world of Ayurveda and the foods that suit each of the Ayurvedic Doshas. Even if you have no knowledge or interest in Ayurveda, you’ll appreciate this book for its healthy (not to mention delicious!) recipes.

Ayurveda is a form of alternative medicine originating in India. The Sanskrit word translates to “knowledge for long life” and is based on the belief that everything in the world is based on the interaction of different and dynamic forces and energies.

The three energies that make up Ayurveda are called Doshas and while according to Ayurvedic belief we all possess all three Doshas, usually one or two will dominate. This in turn affects who we are, and how we react to things including food. Although it’s significantly more complicated than I’m describing, for the purposes of this book, the premise is that certain foods suit certain people and constitutions better than others.

The book contains a significant introduction and explanation of Ayurveda, including an outline of the various Doshas and a quiz that will assist in identifying your own Dosha. Then there are 75 recipes, most of which suit or are easily adaptable for all Doshas. In addition, there are menu plans for each Dosha and a chapter providing detox diets.

My initial impressions were that the recipes in the book provided lots of delicious and tempting (yes tempting) choices, but I quickly became frustrated as I was experiencing a form of Dosha confusion. I eventually enlisted the help of a friend to work through the quiz with me and settled on a Vata/Pitta assessment. (Now you know all my secrets).

In reality, I needn’t have worried about whether or not I correctly identified my Dosha, as the recipes are all healthful and representative of a balanced diet. While many of the recipes draw on flavours and spices that we would traditionally associate with India, there are other ingredients and cultures represented that give this book a broader appeal. Lean proteins such as chicken and fish are included as well as a host of vegetarian dishes. This is one of those books that will tempt you on every page with new ideas for familiar flavours and ingredients.

I found everything that I made to be delicious and very simple to make. Most dishes ask for only a few ingredients and any well-stocked pantry will provide you most of the items you need. The majority of recipes are designed to serve one or two people, a feature that I can tell you I rarely find in a cookbook. As someone who cooks most of the time for just myself and my lovely fellow, I appreciated the smaller portion sizes.

I really enjoyed this book, and in fact I was pleasantly surprised at the great extent to which I did like it. Health benefits aside, more than anything I was impressed by the range, variety, and deliciousness of the recipes. While I’ve always been interested in the idea of Ayurveda and enjoyed learning more about the lifestyle, I doubt I have the discipline to follow it very strictly. My only advice would be don’t let confusion over your particular Dosha stop you from trying the wonderful recipes in this book. There’s so much to enjoy! This is a health book that’s all about taste. And that’s my kind of book.

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By Bay Books (imprint of Murdoch Books Pty Limited)

Vegetarian Cooking: a commonsense guide is available for purchase through our online store or at local bookstores. For more information on this book please visit Murdoch Books Pty Limited. 

Review written & photographed by Jordan A.R. 

Originating from recipes developed by the Murdoch Books Test Kitchen, Vegetarian Cooking: a commonsense guide offers a wide variety of simple, affordable meals for any home cook to make throughout the year. The book begins with the “Vegetarian Adventure,” a basic look at finding nutritional balance in your diet whether or not you happen to be vegetarian. It provides information on how to avoid common dietary pitfalls by eating a variety of foods rich in vitamins and minerals. Through the combination of certain foods, this book shows you how to achieve the greatest dietary benefit from your meals.

As the title of the book indicates, this is a commonsense guide. The information presented is nothing new, but it is info people often overlook or forget. The aim of the publishers is not to preach about vegetarianism or pretend to be sophisticated health gurus, they are simply trying to “expand the menu of possibilities” by showing that one can still enjoy food without revolving every meal around meat.

What struck me the first time I flipped through the pages of the Commonsense Guide was the sheer variety of recipes, that includes everything from breads and soups to sushi and labneh (yoghurt cheese). The majority of the recipes are simple, smart dishes that don’t need a lot of ingredients or require much cooking skills; and for those that require a bit more care, well, you just have to give them a bit more care.

Overall, I found this cookbook to be a straightforward, no nonsense kind of book filled with interesting ideas worth experimenting with in your kitchen.

© 2012 Jordan A.R.

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By Terry Walters

Clean Food is available for purchase through our online store or at local bookstores. For more information on this book please visit Raincoast Books. 

Review written & photographed by Jordan A.R. 

Terry Walters’s book Clean Food (published by Sterling Epicure, $30 USD) is more than just a pile of recipes: it’s a guide for developing a healthy lifestyle based around eating food close to its source in order to maximize the nutritional benefits. Clean food means real, minimally processed, seasonal food.

The nutritional information that jump starts this book for the first thirty-five pages opened my eyes not only to how depleted my regular diet is, but how easy it can be to make small changes that amp up the value of what I eat. For example, adding a small piece of kombu (a type of kelp) during the cooking process of whatever meal you make will infuse the dish with important minerals, improve digestibility, and (possibly) reduce gas. Another helpful tip was that since grains contain phytic acid, which interferes with the absorption of essential minerals, they should be soaked for a minimum of one hour, then rinsed, so that the water soluble acid vanishes and leaves you with a new and improved complex carbohydrate. Simple and effective!

Divided into the four seasons along with an “anytime” chapter, the 200 + recipes in Clean Food offer a variety of simple, healthful dishes to guide you throughout the year. My one concern with this book was that it uses a lot of ingredients I don’t normally stock in the pantry, and so the grocery bills can add up pretty quickly if, like me, you’re somewhat new to this style of eating. But once you’re stocked you’re good to go and, based on all of the information at the start of the book, it’s worth the extra money in the beginning. My only other complaint is that there are no photos. But I checked her website and it seems that a revised edition of Clean Food is forthcoming that will be gluten-free friendly with new recipes, a snack section, and photographs!

CLICK HERE FOR RESULTS FROM RECIPE TESTS