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What's Cooking
America
Linda Stradley & Andra Cook
(Illustrations by Ben Anderson)
Publ: BookPartners, Inc.
PO Box 922
Wilsonville, OR 97070
800 recipes, 433 pages
It's not easy to write a general cookbook these days, especially when you consider all the competition out there for the public's cookbook budgets. So you are left with the challenge to produce something that is somehow better than all or most of the rest, something that will catch the eye, deliver more than the ordinary, etc. I'm sure you know what I mean.
The first thing these authors had to overcome was fulfilling the promise of their title. I wondered what else you could possibly say about American food, but I was wrong. Upon opening the cookbook, I discovered that this was NOT about American food, necessarily, but rather what we as Americans are cooking. That's easy enough---everything. And it should be noted that this volume is actually a combination of two separate books which are a collection of favorite recipes they have shared with family and friends over the years. One may easily recognize the influences of the various regions in which the authors have lived, but they note that they have standardized "phrases or measures not universally familiar throughout" our country.
I'm a sucker for any cookbook, but that doesn't mean I'm not particular about certain aspects of them. One particular criticism I have when reading cookbooks is finding recipes which don't list the ingredients in the order used...or worse yet, list something and don't tell you to use it (or tell you to use something that wasn't listed).
I'm also a stickler for a good, readable format. There is nothing worse than being in the middle of cooking something and you can't figure out where you are in the recipe. Or go one more step: there is something worse...the instructions are vague or in some way leave you wondering what to do next.
I only mention this because it's the first review I am writing for this website, and in case anyone is thinking of asking me to review theirs, you might you might as well know what I'm looking for.
This particular cookbook has none of those problems. There was no desparation to cram too much on a page in order to save money on paper, and everything was easy to read and follow. In other words, it was nicely formatted, which I appreciated very much.
What I -really really- liked about What's Cooking America was having a sidebar on every single page. These contained a wide variety of information, such as how to pick good produce (and when it's in season), what to do with leftover pie crust dough, what to look for in olive oil, poultry safety, how to freeze herbs, etc.
The illustrations are nicely done and help to break up the space on each page. I love a cookbook with lots of photos, whether they be of the step-by-step process or the finished product. This cookbook, unfortunately, has none, but considering the much-higher cost of putting out such a volume, added to the fact that everything else was done well, this is not that significant.
If you're looking for complicated recipes which use long lists of
hard-to-find ingredients and dozens of intricate steps, this is not for
you. But if you are interested in a wide variety of interesting dishes
that go a tad beyond the everyday fare, take a look at What's Cooking America.
Order
your copy of What's Cooking America from Amazon.com
