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Title: Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley O. Corriher ISBN: 0688102298 Publisher: William Morrow & Co Pub. Date: September, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.48
Rating: 3
Summary: Good book hampered by poor editing
Comment: "Cookwise" is a mixed bag that tries to accomplish several goals at once. It's part upscale cookbook, offering recipes for Hot Thai Curried Chicken with Coconut Milk and Avocados, Ring of the Sea Schrimp with Fish Market Sauce and Cherry-Chambord Butter; part basic cookbook that discusses making stock, omlets, vinaigrettes, biscuits, pie crusts and sauces; part trouble-shooting guide that explains which flours are appropriate for biscuits, pancakes and bread, how to beat egg whites so that they rise properly, and how to calculate the right amount of sugar for the perfect fruit ice; and sometimes part memoir. It's a schitzophrentic book.
There's no doubt that Shirley Corriher knows cooking like Dr. Stephen Hawking knows the cosmos. She came to the kitchen by a circuitous route, as a research biochemist at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville. When her husband opened a boarding school in Atlanta, she was responsible for feeding 140 boys three meals a day. A winning entry in a grits recipe contest in the mid-1970s brought her cooking lessons with Nathalie Dupree, who was impressed with her pupil's questions and knowledge.
Since then, the 63-year-old Corriher has built a career as a food consultant, working with restaurant chefs and food industry scientists, leading workshops, and writing articles. "Cookwise" is her first book, a decade in the making and, judging by the long list of people she thanks in the beginning, a number of editors, including top food editor Maria Guarnaschelli, who completed the makeover of the "Joy of Cooking" recently.
So there's a lot of prime information tucked here and there among the 230-plus recipes. The problem is digging it all out. It took a number of readings to conclude that the editors of "Cookwise" thought the seven major chapters were too large to be digested, so they broke them up with recipes, smaller articles and cooking tips. The mix was sweetened with a hash of type fonts chosen more to create a visually appealing style than for clarity's sake. Since it's publication, I've consulted it a number of times, and found that "Cookwise" makes an acceptible and interesting supplement to "Joy of Cooking" (both volumes) and Julia Child's "Way to Cook," without replacing them.
Rating: 5
Summary: The serious home-cook's bible
Comment: This book is a precious fountain of knowledge and experience. The author who is clearly an able cook and teacher offers information that is vital for anyone who wishes to understand the processes that occur while we cook. The language of this book is very friendly and reading it, one gets the impression that the author is right there explaining and supporting.
What can this book contribute to your cooking abilities? It allows the serious home-cook to improve existing recipes or create new ones according to his/her taste. It empowers us to correct mistakes (who hasn't blundered a recipe and wished for the ability to fix it?), adjust recipes to local materials and fine tune all those nagging little techniques we never quite got to mastering (the elusive meringue, getting consistently perfect pie-crust etc').
This isn't a recipe book and shouldn't be treated as one. The recipes are examples of subjects explained and are not the real value of this book. The more useful recipes are the ones that provide basic examples (and there are enough of those). If you want to prepare something "Now" (as one of the reviewers of this book pointed out) and have no desire to pursue excellence in your kitchen, then this book isn't for you. As a serious amateur cook and baker, I feel this book has promoted me to a higher level of cooking abilities. I have learned more from this book than any other cookbook I have and I do have quite a few. My cooking library consists of about 60 cookbooks and this one gets into my top 5 list of favorites hands down.
Rating: 5
Summary: I'm a cooking smarty-pants now!
Comment: I got this cookbook for Christmas after I dropped several very broad hints. I skimmed it, then decided to enroll myself in my own Cookwise Class--I've started at the beginning with The Ultimate Brioche, and I'll cook all the way through to Chocolate Walnut Ruffle Cake. I figure you can't get a much better kitchen chemistry education than that without actually going to cooking school. For all you folks out there who thought that bread baking was an art and you didn't have it, PLEASE read Shirley's chapter on breadbaking and try some of her recipes, especially the French-style Crusty Loaf. Now I know why my bread always resembled large beach cobblestones (too much of the wrong kind of flour)--but no more! My only gripe is that some of her kneading techniques would be much more understandable with some photos or even simple line drawings, but I guess I'll make do until she gets her own cooking show. (Hint, hint, any TV producer that might be reading this.)
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Title: I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking by Alton Brown ISBN: 1584790830 Publisher: Stewart Tabori & Chang Pub. Date: 10 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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Title: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee ISBN: 0684843285 Publisher: Fireside Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore by Harold McGee, Laurie Anderson ISBN: 0020098014 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 20 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained by Robert L. Wolke, Marlene Parrish ISBN: 0393011836 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: The Inquisitive Cook (Accidental Scientist) by Anne Gardiner, Sue Wilson, the Exploratorium, Exploratorium ISBN: 0805045414 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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