5 comments about Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

1. I have been an amateur cook for several decades, with a particular weakness for patisserie. It is without doubt the hardest of the culinary specialties to master.
   I am perhaps a little too long in the tooth to be wowed by anything in the baking department, but here is a book worthy of any good cook's attention. It has been lovingly assembled with beautiful photographs of the many coffee houses mentioned, and you would have to have a heart of stone not to be seduced by at least some of them. More to the point are the recipes themselves. Having tried a number of them, I can attest to their authenticity and exquisite quality.
   I suppose that this is not intended as a book for beginners, and certainly would not recommend it as such. If, however, you have passed the point of having to throw away that sticky mass of dough that somehow went wrong, you may well be a candidate for this extremely accomplished book. If, in addition, Austro-Hungarian patisserie is your bag (and whose isn't?) then go ahead. Buy it and enjoy!



2. The book itself is elegant enough to display on your coffee table. The pages are shiny and the recipes are detailed. There is a background story to each pastry, though the pictures would be more meaningful with captions. The shipping was fast and wonderful. I am very happy with the overall purchase!



3. This is not a set or recipes from the coffee houses of Vienna, Prague or Budapest. These have been altered to fit American tastes in quite a number of instances. There are descriptions in the recipes where the author states this plainly, but he usually DOES NOT give the original recipe or any other indication of what the changes are.
   
   Some of the changes may be trivial, or they may be large changes. Who knows without the original recipe ? However, the use of high fructose corn syrup in some of the basic preparations is an indication of the problem.
   
   Having tried some of the recipes (I've only had the book for a couple of week so far), the results are quite OK, but I was trying recipes where I knew that they sounded like recipes from some of my other European cookbooks, and not the obviously altered recipes.
   
   The lack of the original recipes makes this merely a nice introduction to these great desserts, but not a book to give you a 'true' taste. If you are in the US and an introduction is all you want, then this would be an excellent book, no question of it. Otherwise, there are better books out there.
   
   (And on a purely personal note, a 'stick of butter' is meaningless outside of the US. Why can't the author use standard measurements ? That's what standard measurements are for. Yes, I can use a certain famous search engine to find out how much a stick of butter is in grams and write that alongside the recipes, but I shouldn't have to do so...)



4. If you can find this book, for a reasonable price that is, get it. This book was done with great love. Reading through the list of ingredients and instructions, I came to realize that these recipes are no easy feat. I fell in love with this book, because it has put to use Farmers cheese which I have come to absolutely love. When your family or friends taste these recipes, they will praise you highly. All your love and labor would have been worth it.
   
   As for some of the comments on this book.... There are no pictures in this book, but who cares. You can not eat the picture. You can eat the final product of the mixed and baked ingredients. I don't care for pictures anyhow, as it gives a view from one persons eyes as how it SHOULD come out. As long as you follow the wonderful directions, you will achieve succes in the preperation and the visualization aspect of the dessert. Have patience. Have fun. Experiment.
   
   As for the comment of blandness... everyone is different. Add more sugar the next time, or more chocolate or fruit or whatever it is you like. There is no cookbook that exists that meets the needs or wants of every individuals palate. Even in Vienna. While assembling a dessert I sneak a taste here and there and usually I am able to tell what it needs more, or what it needed less of. Once it's baked, I can not do anything about it... Take notes and try again.
   
   Also, one should always read a cookbook, especially, before attempting. I never take a book into the kitchen whils cooking, I always write the recipe down on a piece of paper for preservation of the books sake. Since this is becoming a hard book to find, I really want to preserve it. (This is for those who comment on the editing - For which I found no fault).
   
   Anyhow, a GREAT book on desserts from exotic lands, to me at least, that I am sure will wow my guests or yours, at the range of our tastes/inspirations.
   Thanks Rick Rodgers. Lovely book.
   
   Enjoy.



5. I bought this cook book before it escalated to the present $90 + dollar price, and I must say, to those of you contemplating buying it now - that it is probably still worth it. I have no culinary background, just a fondness for cooking, and I was able to reproduce the Esterhazyschniten that is featured on the cover of this cookbook, and mine turned out looking almost identical. The history, photos and recipes in the book are fantastic - I have made several now and all yield excellent results, including the Poppy seed cake and the Schniten above and a delightful triple layered cake with walnut, apples and poppy seeds. I gave that one to some other "gastronomes" who were delighted with it. The only thing I am lacking for creating more of these authentic desserts is time; the instructions are thorough, the recipes precise, and the history captivating. Buy the best coffee your grocer provides and create one of these almost heavenly delights. Its almost as good as renewing your passport and going there!
   
   I bought one of these for a dear friend in addition to my own copy. I highly recommend this book! I would not hesitate to buy anything from this author, as he is logical and easy to follow. He manages to convey some of the fun that he had in experiencing the coffee hauses for himself. That makes this cookbook diverting.

5 comments about Finnish Cookbook (International Cookbook Series).

1. This book is an introduction to the Finnish kitchen. Ojakangas, a second generation Finnish-America, learned some traditional Finnish dishes from her grandmother. But when her husband was awarded a Fulbright grant in Finland for 1960-61, she was able to get make an intensive study of Finnish food culture. She discovered how some of the dishes she had learned to make as a child had roots deep in Finland, while others were presumably American creations. In this collection of recipes, Ojakangas focuses on the foods found on Finnish tables, although she does include some of the Finnish American traditions that have become standard in Finnish-American culture.
   
   The book makes fascinating reading, for Ojakangas provides not only the common recipes, but she also includes with each recipe a brief description of how the dish fits into the context of the daily diet. Rather than following the standard American cookbook organization of appetizers and soups, main dishes, sides dishes, and desserts, Ojakangas pay close attention to which types of foods are most important for Finns and how they are used together. With this in mind, the book begins with breads, moves on to the coffee table (mainly cookies and cakes), pastries (both sweet and savory), soups, fish, meat dishes (heavy on the liver, pork, and sausage, and very little chicken), vegetables and salads (mostly roots, very little greenery), desserts (fruit soups and porridges), dairy and eggs, beverages, sauces, and sandwiches (open-faced). At the end of the book is a chapter with suggested menus for special occasions and a selected reading list and bibliography.
   
   This is the best and most authentic Finnish cookbook that I've come across in English. I've tried out a few Finnish American cookbooks, and although their recipes may be tasty, they often are distinctly American in flavor, with many more ingredients like green vegetables than one would ever find in Finland. In this book, we find recipes for all the Finnish standards, for everything from kalakukko to maksalaatikko, from mämmi to sima. Ojakangas provides both the Finnish and English names for each dish; although the Finnish is generally quite accurate, there are a few typos. (I stared at "valdemariisi" for quite some time before I realized it should have been written "vadelmariisi", or raspberry rice.)
   
   The culinary descriptions make this book great reading for anyone contemplating visiting or living in Finland for an extended period. I sure wish I had read it before heading off to study in Finland as an exchange student. The first week I arrived in the country, my host-mother showed me around the kitchen and told me to make myself at home. Then she went off to work in Helsinki for the week, and I was left to fend for myself along with her teenage daughters. By the end of the week, I was starving, having consumed all the food that was familiar to me in the first few days. When my host-mother returned from Helsinki and heard that I had reported there was no food in the house, she became very upset, and showed me a large sack of potatoes and other mysterious food stores. At the time, although I was an decent pasta cook and could make some passable stir-fried vegetables, I had never cooked a potato in my life-nor did I know what to do with any of the other foods in the kitchen. I didn't know what Finns ate or when they ate it, so I was completely at a loss when left to feed myself in a Finnish kitchen. A thorough reading of this book before leaving home would have provided a great preparation for what I would find in Finland. I would not have been so surprised by the dark chewy breads, the early meal times, and the importance of lunch and coffee-hour rather than dinner and dessert.



2. This book is really a keepsake for the newest Finnish generations. I didn't have a recipe book from my grandparents or aunts, but there are so many things my grandmother made and she was also from Northern Minnesota. The only thing I wish it had more of was pictures, but the author is so knowledgeable, that this book is a must for the 3rd and 4th generation Finns.



3. My first husband was a Finn, bred, born and raised, and often longed for the food of his youth. This book was invaluable; it had all the recipes for dishes that he missed, with instructions that let me turn out perfect pulla (a wonderful bread), kalakukko (rye bread stuffed with fish and bacon) and piirakka (rice or potato pasties) in record time. Some of the cultural information is a bit dated in my edition (I have the old 60s version), but it was still an interesting read. My daughters still make piirakka every Christmas Eve.
   
   My edition has a typo that I hope has been corrected in the newer one. The recipe for lutefisk starts with "Take a large fried codfish..." It should, of course, be a large dried codfish.



4. This is an excellent Finnish cookbook. My wife, who is of Finnish decent, has been thrilled with her copy. She says she has found many recipes that her mother and grandmother both used and it is especially fun to read the titles in the Finnish words she has known . We use a great deal of Finnish food in our daily diet, but there are a great many in this book that are yet to be tried. Beatrice Ojakangas deserves 5 stars for putting forth such a great book, and for mixing in a little of Finnish culture as a bonus.



5. I love this book. When I married a Finn, (in 1980) his sister gave me this book. I've had it for years and use it whenever I need a Finnish recipe. According to my in-laws, the recipes are very authentic. I eventually bought both of my daughters the book for their cookbook collections. Make the Pulla (coffee bread) it's the best!

5 comments about The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour.

1. I wasted an hour searching for something of substantive interest in this work. It was time spent in vain. A frivolous book about frivolous things.



2. This is not really a book, but more of a collection of essays examining the origin of various modern concepts of style: hair, culture, fashion, marketing/tourism, footwear, fine dining, coffee, champagne, diamonds, mirrors, nightlife, umbrellas, shopping, perfumes, and entertaining.
   
   As a scholar of French history and culture, the unifying theme of Joan DeJean's work is that the origins of these parts of our modern society came in the reign of Loius XIV of France, and fairly amazing are largly unchanged since their implementation.
   
   By this I mean not the specifics of style, but in the way they function in the greater culture.
   
   DeJean speaks well to the technology being developed at the time as well as the reasons that the late 1600's were the first time these aspects of life could be mass consumed, instead of say, the 1200's.



3. Fantastique! As entertaining as it is enlightening! Authoress Joan DeJean's delightful and witty style of writing will make you feel as if you too are partaking of all the lavish indulgences and gossip of King Louis the Fourteenth's court!



4. Nice book. Gives us an indepth knowledge of how fashion took place and evolved. Nice to read how the many common articles of fashion we see today were styled and how the entire process of style took place



5. This reads like separate articles -- maybe lectures? -- thrown together to make a book. A good editor would have smoothed out the bumps. And it needs many more illustrations. That said... it's fun to read, well researched, and fascinating as we're led to consider how much from the time of Louis XIV still influences how the wealthy spend their money today!

5 comments about Kibbee 'N' Spice and Everything Nice : Popular and Easy Recipes for the Lebanese and American Family.

1. I have really enjoyed owning this cookbook. My great-grandparents were from Lebanon so I've grown up eating Lebanese food but this was the first Lebanese cookbook that I've seen where the recipes are just like what I used to eat at Sittee's house on Sunday after church. Also, I want to add that the recipes are relatively easy and require ingredients that you can get at your local grocery store.
   
   I HIGHLY recommend it!



2. This book is well laid out with a myriad of Lebanese dishes. The Author being Lebanese-American has adapted the recipes easily to the American Kitchen and Supermarket. Everything I have tried out of this cookbook has been delicious. I grew up eating this kind of food and the smells and flavors take me back. I would highly recommend this book for anyone that wishes to learn and more importantly eat Lebanese food. The copy I have has nutritional information with each recipe. The only reason it didn't get 5 stars is because I would have like more pictures and to have them with the recipes themselves. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.



3. Simply and understandably written for anyone who cooks Lebanese food or not, great cookbook, bought 5 for giveaways to my family



4. Easy, delicious, authentic recipes! My husband is Lebanese & I have been using this book for years since his aunts who cooked are no longer around to teach me. Everyone in his family raves about the wonderful authentic dishes I have prepared using these recipes! I just bought one for each of my daughter-in-laws for Christmas gifts so they can make this delicious food my husbands' sons were raised on.



5. Bought this a year ago for a Lebanese friend who loved it-said it was just like her grandmother's cooking. Flipping through the book before I gave it to her, I realized that many of the recipes were nearly identical to the Armenian recipes I grew up with. I bought a copy for myself and think it's a clear, enjoyable cookbook. Now I'm back purchasing more copies for friends who are neither Lebanese nor Armenian; they're just good cooks. It's worth the money.

5 comments about The Best of Croatian Cooking.

1. Before my trip to Croatia I wanted to become acquainted with Croatian cuisine. Also, I collect cookbooks from my travels, so this way I had the book in hand BEFORE I left and didn't have to search for it in Croatia. I have already tried several recipes which are simple and good. I was pleased with my purchase.



2. There alot of receipes that include pork or are pork. You can subsitute lamp or beef for some. The book is very imformative though. Some receipes come with little back grounds on where they come from and their use in holidays. So if you eat pork. Good book. If not.. Well it's still has some good stuff in it.



3. `The Best of Croatian Cooking, Expanded Edition' by Liliana Pavicic and Gordana Pirker-Mosher is published as a member of `The Hippocrene Cookbook Library' which seems to focus on all those national and regional cuisines which will appeal to a sizable emigrant population, but which is not covered by the mainstream foodie literati. This would be just about everything except French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, `Mediterranean', Moroccan, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian, Turkish, Lebanese, and Jewish cooking. Their real forte is for small central and eastern European nationalities such as Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian cooking. I am especially drawn to several of these national cuisines, having some relatives from Hungary and Slovakia.
   
   The problem with these books in general and with this volume in particular is that amateurs in both culinary skills and journalistic or scholastic skills write them. We are not reading minor league Paula Wolferts here. That is not to say there is nothing of value here. In fact, the intellectual discoveries one can make in this book may be even more interesting than the culinary ones. Croatia lies squarely in the confluence of three culinary dynamos. Directly to the west is Italy, especially the leading culinary region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. To the north is Vienna, the capitol of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which Croatia was a part for several centuries. To the south is Greece and Turkey, the heart of the old Ottoman Empire who was Croatia's landlord before the Austrians took over. So, Croatian cuisine is a great gemish of world class influences, with a bit to add on its own, being, like Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a fertile site for grape growing and, therefore, wine making.
   
   The authors take seriously their interest in giving a good picture of the regional cuisines of Croatia, except that they fail to handle this task effectively. Their first lapse is that they neglect to include a map of modern Croatia. I would consider this a flaw even in a book about well-known Italy. When you are covering Croatia, the omission is deadly, since the modern borders are highly irregular, shaped as it is like an hourglass tilted at a 45 degree angle, with its base on the Adriatic. When I checked my trusty Oxford Atlas of the world, I saw things of which this book gave me little inkling. And yet, it was not much help, as the book deals with provincial names, which are very difficult to see on a small-scale map.
   
   The next failing is that they don't identify the regional source of the various recipes, after going to so much trouble to identify the culinary characteristics of each province, they don't say from which province each recipe comes. It would be very interesting to know if a strudel recipe comes from a province closer to Vienna or closer to Greece.
   
   Speaking of strudel, the one reason I would buy this book is because it has a recipe for both strudel dough and for cabbage strudel. This reason is not compelling, as if you already own Rose Levy Beranbaum's `The Pie and Pastry Bible', you already have a whole chapter of strudel, but our authors give us a fair approach, but few tips if things go wrong. For that, you will need to go to Beranbaum.
   
   Since we are at the confluence of three very well known cuisines, there is really very little here which is new to the experienced culinary eye. There are novelties, especially among the simpler dishes, so that the book may be a truer picture of the cuisine of poverty than most books on Italian cuisine, but the similarities are such that if you already have lots of Italian cookbooks, especially Lydia Bastianich's `La Cuisine di Lydia', you will not get much that is new (Bastianich grew up in Istria, which is now part of Croatia).
   
   My last comment is that I think the authors may have gone just a bit too far from their roots to standard American cooking practice in that their most common cooking fat is `cooking oil'. I am willing to bet that the traditional Croatian cook, like their Italian and Greek neighbors primarily used either olive oil, pumice oil, lard, or butter, not corn or safflower oil.
   
   If I were to pick a single recipe that makes this book worthwhile for the cookbook collector, it would be the squid and potato salad, in spite of the fact that the title and ingredients say `squid' and the procedure says `cuttlefish'. This is just another dropped detail which makes the book less than perfect.
   
   Recommended for the foodie cookbook collector. Highly recommended it you have a Croatian background.



4. If you need to keep the Croatian culture in the family, you need to have this book on home!



5. My Croatian husband has a little trouble getting these recipes to come out right and he is an excellent cook. Some of the ingredients are difficult to find where we live (in the States) and sometimes the instructions are unclear. He made that rum cake recipe and it just tasted like pure rum. The cake was beautiful but tasted awful. The recipe for the crepes is delicious though!

2 comments about The Food and Cooking of Belgium: Traditions Ingredients Tastes Techniques Over 60 Classic Recipes.

1. I bought this book for my Dad, he is a prefessional chef, he was so happy to finally have a nice cooking book about belgium cooking written in english! a nice xmas present!



2. Belgian food is great and it is mentioned so little in the U.S. This is a great resource from a wonderful cook!

5 comments about In Memory's Kitchen : A Legacy from the Women of Terezin.

1. This book is an amazing document and is a important part of holacaust literature. Furthemore it is most moving and keeps us connected to the past.



2. I now keep Cara De Silva's In Memory's Kitchen on my cookbook shelf, not for the recipes, since most don't translate well to a modern day kitchen. No, I keep this book there to remind myself that even on my toughest day, when conflicting family schedules and obligations pull me in all directions and cooking is a chore, I have it so good! I am blessed beyond measure in comparison to the brave souls who lived their last days in a place of horror, yet kept alive their hopes and dreams of lovely times by recording their recipes. I wept at the descriptions of conditions in this place and marveled at the faith and ingenuity born of such times. This book uplifts and exalts the women ~~ and men ~~ who preserved with such dignity the reflection of their spirits, and in so doing uplifts the spirits of those who learn their stories.



3. I first learned of this book when it was initially published and a small article about it was carried in The Parade Magazine appearing in The Boston Sunday Globe. What caught my eye was a recipe for roast goose (a weakness of mine) and then I read the accompanying piece -- I was moved to tears and tore out the recipe and placed it on my refridgerator under a magnet. A few months later, I was preparing New Year's Day dinner -- I got up at 5am to boil chestnuts for the stuffing ... and cursed my hangover as I was peeling the shells off and cutting up apples ... I followed the recipe and made the most delicious roast goose I have ever eaten ... and have cherished this recipe ever since. Then I had to search for the book -- and it is now one of my most favorite cookbooks.
   
   I use the recipes often and each time I turn to the book, I think of the women who passed on these gems ... it gives me great pleasure to know that they live on and remembered every time I cook ... I think it would make them smile to know that their history continues and I am teaching my daughters about their history as I teach them to cook.
   
   There is something wonderfully cyclical in that knowledge ... and it brings a smile to my lips as I watch my daughters stir and taste and know that they will teach their daughters in this same way.



4. The horrors of the camps in World War II are among the worst humanity has ever seen. It's hard to fathom just how little the people murdered by the Nazis seemed to matter -- visiting the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, with its towers of numbers etched in the glass and the creepy fog machines blowing over simulated cinders, proves that. But even then it's hard to focus on the humanity involved -- six million Jews alone, and millions more gays, Romani, "lesser races", "defectives", and dissenters murdered at the same time. This book is a tiny spot of humanity in the masses of the dead, a memory of a few dedicated cooks who struggled to keep some kind of creativity going in a city that became the last stop before Auschwitz. I had wanted a copy since I first heard of it over a decade ago, and I stumbled across it in a Massachusetts bookstore notorious as a money vacuum for cookbook collectors. I had to grab it.
   
   Many of the recipes are in fragmented form; a cooking beginner would struggle with many of them, since they often assume intimate familiarity with a kitchen and style of cooking that most English-speaking readers have never seen. Many of the dishes (the original recipes written largely in broken, Czech-accented German, with a few in Czech) are what might be seen as party food, and more importantly a large number of them are desserts; Michael Berenbaum of the US Holocaust Museum, the writer of the foreword, points out that food was an obsession in the camps since the Nazis fed most of the inmates on starvation rations (if they bothered to feed them at all), and sweets are a human obsession even in the best of times. There's still a lot for modern cooks to learn, though; the creators of this book made frequent use of potatoes for example, and liked their dumplings a lot (one recipe I found resembled a Germanized version of the Italian passatelli (bread gnocchi)).
   
   There is some poetry in the book as well, written by the book's original compiler Mina Pächter (who died in 1944), and a few art pieces done by other inmates at Terezin. Sadly, a few intriguing recipes are completely lost, having evidently been mangled or torn out in the original manuscript. Pächter's own story, as well as that of her daughter Anny Stern who worked to publish the book, is told in brief, including the peculiar odyssey that brought the book from the camps to 1970-ish New York. All in all, it's one of the most poignant cookbooks I've ever seen, rivaling Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food (one of my all-time favorite cookbooks) as a marker of history.



5. 
   IT is heart wrenching and yet it shows how the spirit of the Jews cannot be broken and that they didn't lose their humanity even under most harrowing conditions.

5 comments about Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine.

1. If I had to choose only one cookbook to keep, this would be it. I can't tell you what good bread I can make with this book. It is truly wonderful. The only thing I would do to improve this book would be to add more illustrations. I love being able to make truly wonderful bread free of preservatives and corn syrup for my family.



2. It is a very nice recipe book. Got many, many recipes for your Breadmachine. Some need to be baked in the oven. Some on a pizzastone in the oven. A book I sure will keep forever.



3. When we "graduated" to our third breach machine (having worn out two others), I discovered this book almost by accident in an on-line search. I had lived for several years in Europe, and, because of my line of work, I'm actually able to return periodically. The recipes in this book, frankly, can bring the best of European bakeries right into your own kitchen. The authors are very encouraging in their approach to introducing new breads to your repertoire, and seem to strive to make challenges relatively dauntless proposals.
   
   People considering buying this book should consider a few things before purchasing. First, this book is not only recipes that you put into your machine and return to in a few hours. Yes, it has those, and they are all quite good (the whole meal bread is a perfect example and yields a loaf reminiscent of Bavaria). But to get into the heart of the approach, you need to expand your repertoire and, perhaps, the utensils you may have around your kitchen. The apple-apricot crumb kuchen is straight out of what any decent German "bäckerei" offers, and basically took us back on a return trip for only the price of the ingrediants. The chocolate-cranberry gugelhupf takes a lot of work, but I'm telling you, after one bite you'll feel like you're on the streets of Vienna (be absolutely sure you make the chocolate cinnamon butter that is in a sidebar!).
   
   Second, some of the recipes require a few days to complete, but they are worth it. I gave a loaf of the Danish Sourdough Rye to a representative of a Nordic embassy (no kidding!) and he was astounded that not only was an American knowledgeable about European-style bread, but that an American could actually bake it. This particular recipe requires some TLC and 4-5 days of advance planning to nurture the sourdough through to proper preparation. In a case like this, the authors tell you up front so that you know in advance what lies ahead.
   
   Third, there are very few illustrations that accompany the recipes. Personally, I like to have illustrations, especially when I'm making something the first time, just for some positive reinforcement that I haven't made any errors.
   
   Fourth, this book is becoming increasingly harder to find. You should therefore consider purchasing not one, but two, copies, in case you wear out the first one (no, I'm not kidding).
   
   Fifth, if the authors, Ms. Eckhardt and Ms. Butts, decide to publish an updated and/or revised edition, by all means buy a copy or two. This book dates from the mid-1990s.



4. I bought this for my daughter in law to bring back along with the shared bread machine. She said :this looks familiar----I had already given her a copy a few years ago! So I gave it to the friends who had first introduced me to it via a library copy. It looked brand new and it arrived quickly!(this review is actually by MRS. Charles Yurick )



5. Bought this book because I wanted to find good bread machine recipes, and there are plenty in here. Good, tasty, and many are really easy. My only unfulfilled wish is to find high-fiber recipes--flax, for instance, or wheat or oat bran. Nutritional values would be a plus.

5 comments about The River Cottage Family Cookbook.

1. An excellent cookbook for the whole family to enjoy. The recipes are basic and simple. The authors have written this book so that children can learn where the foods they eat (and cook) actually come from. The recipes are unlike so many other cookbooks written with families or children in mind- these are not prissy, cutesy or too complicated. My children love to get this book out and find something new to try.The photography is wonderful too- showing children of all ages cooking and helping in the kitchen.



2. This is a wonderful book full of beautiful photographs. I would like to move right in to the pictures. That being said, there is also some useful advice not normally found in other books. It is more a lifestyle book than merely just a cookbook. Terrific for families!



3. We wanted our kids to love food, love cooking and be comfortable in the kitchen, and we thought investing in some family cookbooks would be the perfect place to start. Let the kids flip through the recipes and photographs, find things that tempted them and take it from there.
   
   Sounds easy, right? It's not! Because most cookbooks aimed at children, or families, contain really gross recipes that do the following: 1. Try to sneak healthy foods into kids, like putting spinach into chocolate pudding, thereby insulting children by treating them as idiots who won't like so-called adult flavors. 2. Try to make foods kid-friendly by making them look like clown faces, or animals, by using shredded carrot "hair" or olive "eyes". or 3. Try to make recipes kid-friendly by using shortcut ingredients (dough from a tube, pre-made sauces) that turn cooking into a joke.
   
   In the face of all the bad books, The River Cottage Family Cookbook stands out as one of the best books we've found, not just for our children, but for our entire family. We like everything about this book, from the explanations about cooking, to the photography, to the inclusive nature of the recipes.
   
   We find that the more we cook with our kids, the more adventurous they become about food and the closer we all grow as a family. Don't waste your time with bad cookbooks. The River Cottage is a perfect place to start.



4. This cookbook provides an exceptional breadth of information about not just how to prepare food in the best way, but why. It has a breadth of recipe types and could easily suffice if it were the only cookbook in a kitchen.
   
   But, if you buy this book for nothing else, do so for the chocolate chip cookie recipe.



5. Just what I was looking for! I had been looking for a cookbook for the kids . . . and this is it! My initial goal was clear instructions and engaging photos. I got that and so much more--informative backgrounds on basic ingredients AND the author's philosophy on cooking and food matches nicely with ours. Already the kids have dog-eared the recipes they want to try next.

4 comments about Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination.

1. Professor Freedman examines Medieval Europe and its metamorphosis into Modern Europe from the perspective of spices...as condiments, as medicine, as perfumes, and as stimulants to world exploration. This fascinating book provides some novel historical perspectives - Genghis Khan as a facilitator of European travel to East Asia, for example. Its description of medieval cuisine will surprise most readers by how very unfamiliar medieval taste would be to contemporary Europeans. This is a very enjoyable read. I recommend it highly.



2. This is a learned book, and a pleasure to read. Freedman succeeds admirably in describing and explaining Medieval Europe's passion for spices. But the most interesting part of the book is his analysis of Europe's voyages all over the world to obtain spices for domestic consumption. It's an ambitious project, and he pulls it off in a style that is lucid and also fun.
   
   I also very much enjoyed another book on food that Freedman recently edited, "Food: The History of Taste" (University of California Press, 2007). The essays in the book are consistently insightful and entertaining. Here's to more academic work on the history of food!



3. This is one of the best cross-over books (appealing to both academic and lay audiences) that I've ever read. It unobtrusively explodes many myths about the "unsophisticated" Middle Ages while providing a well informed picture of medieval food and economic practices. It is a genuine pleasure to read. Freedman is an engaging writer who never wastes his reader's time (no academic jargon here). A wonderful book.
   
   A little quibble: Why is his name listed as "Professor Paul Freedman"? Yes, he is a professor, but so are many authors, and that professional fact does not usually get registered as part of an author's name; this makes it sound like his first name is "Professor."



4. This is a wonderful book that tells you why the medievil people expended so much energy and adventure to pecure spices. Reading the menues and seeing how the spelling has changed was great. There was also the sadness that came over me when I realized how many of the birds, animals and fish that the population were able to eat that are now extinct. This bookwas a wonderful refresher to remember the richness of the medievil people.