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Title: The Essential Asian Cookbook by Whitecap Books ISBN: 1-55110-793-7 Publisher: Whitecap Books Pub. Date: December, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Functional easy to use cook book
Comment: In Australia peoples diets have tended to contain to higher level of fat and meat products. This has led to people becoming overweight and suffering from heart and arterial diseases. As a result people have been trying to reduce the fat levels in the food they eat and introduce more vegetable into their diets.
Asian food is good for this purpose as it uses smaller amounts of highly flavored meat dishes instead of large slabs of meat like steaks. Thai Cuisine is especially good as the amount of fat used in cooking is very small. As a result Asian Food has started to become immensely popular.
This is an excellent book as it covers a wide range of regional Asian Cuisine. Each section is illustrated with the final product and the directions are easy to follow. Each recipe also has nutritional information.
In addition to the recipes there is an introduction which explains basic cooking and preparation techniques. This is followed by a glossary that explains basic Asian food terms and ingredients. Lastly there are sections which deal with preparation of spice pastes and bread.
The key to producing Asian food is in the texture and visual appearance of the food. This book shows the key techniques in food preparation and one is able to use the pictures of the finished food as a guide. It is a very easy book to use.
The recipes are all authentic. Some cook books tend to remove some ingredients which might offend the palate of some readers such as chilli, fish sauce and the like but this book does not.
The only weakness is that some of the ingredients might be a little hard to find in America. A list of substitutes may have been of assistance.
Rating: 5
Summary: Easy to follow, beautiful pictures, delicious recipes
Comment: I prefer cookbooks with pictures of the food so that I have a better idea of what I am actually making. This cookbook has lots of beautiful pictures, the recipes are easy to follow, and they also give a timeframe for preparation and cooking so you don't wind out starting something a little more difficult on a weeknight. I followed most of the recipes exactly, with a few exceptions. Since my husband is allergic to fish, I do not use fish oil and I substitute chicken for fish in some cases. I also do not have a mortor and pestle so I cheat and use a spice grinder. Still, the recipes came out just delicious, and I love the different regional dishes available. This book gives excellent examples from many different asian regions. Well worth the money in my opinion.
Rating: 2
Summary: Westernized ingredient lists are incomplete, inaccurate
Comment: I received this book for my birthday because I had it on my Amazon wish list. I like it fine, but I think the recipes were not tested thoroughly in regards to their ingredient lists. For one thing, some dishes are missing what I consider the defining flavor/ingredient, like omitting star anise from the Vietnamese beef noodle soup (pho) recipe. I just about fell off my chair when I saw that...star anise IS pho. My mother is Vietnamese, so I've had plenty of pho in my lifetime to know this. Ironically, there's a picture of star anise on the page that introduces the Vietnamese section.
I also think there should've been red onion and Thai basil in the Thai beef salad recipe. Lastly, the Singapore noodle dish came out a bit bland because the recipe called for way too many noodles and not enough seasoning. I didn't even use the full amount of noodles -- it called for roughly 9.5 oz., I used 8 oz. I had to add a lot more extra seasoning during the last stage of cooking, and by then the meat had overcooked.
The book also has the annoying habit of integrating prep instructions with regular instructions. Anyone who knows anything about Asian cooking understands that prep is 90% of the work -- you need to have everything sliced, diced, marinated, because you toss it all together very quickly when cooking. Although each recipe has estimated prep and cooking times, it wasn't clear to me what the authors considered prep vs. cooking.
This book is good for someone who already knows how to cook and is just getting their feet wet with Asian cooking. It's also good for cooks who don't have the access or knowledge to some of the harder-to-find ingredients. You swap authentic taste for convenience, however. Also, it's a bummer that I feel I now have to second-guess the recipes where ingredients and measurements are concerned.
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Title: The Essential Asian Cookbook (Essential Cookbooks Series) by Juliet Rogers, Wendy Stephens ISBN: 1592230016 Publisher: Thunder Bay Press Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.98 |
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