Six Spices: A Simple Concept of Indian Cooking
Author: Neeta Saluja
Featuring authentic recipes and introducing the use of fundamental spices, this recipe collection guides cooks of all levels of expertise in the preparation of healthy, delicious Indian meals. The recipes selected use no more than six spices to create tasty, satisfying, and authentic dishes and introduce a simpler way to prepare Indian food. Each chapter focuses on a different cooking technique, offering insight into foods that at times can seem daunting for the novice cook. This recipe collection has been tasted and tested through more than 20 years of the author's teaching experience and Indian cooking expertise.
Kansas City Star
[This book} takes great pains to ease fears, with a section dedicated to cooking tips and making one's own spice blends.
Sunday London Times
Inspiring and informative.
Philadelphia Inquirer
If you enjoy Indian cuisine you will appreciate the straightforward approach and easy recipes in Neeta Saluja's book Six Spices.
Capital Times
Neeta Saluja's advice comes down to this: Simplify
The Onion
Culinary instructor Neeta Saluja makes the subcontinent's cuisine even more accessible with her idiot-proof book Six Spices.
Wisconsin State Journal
Count the spices called for in Indian recipes and, somewhere before a dozen, most cooks are going to give up and eat out to satisfy curry cravings. But they could start with a new cookbook that reflects everyday Indian cooking.
Book review: How to Ruin the United States of America or Profiles in Courage
Jacques Pйpin Celebrates
Author: Jacques Pepin
A fabulous book for people who love to cook. Or for those who want to cook well and are afraid to try.
To Jacques Pйpin, every meal is a celebration. And his delight in creating delicious offerings for family and friends is contagious. Moreover, as he shares here the secrets of the meals he has prepared over the years, his careful instruction and his appreciation of ingredients and techniques that make a difference are so persuasive that you want to jump right in and join him at the stove.
Here you'll find all the dishes that make up the celebratory menus Jacques demonstrates in his new twenty- six-part television series—plus many more. Most of the recipes have been drawn from Jacques Pйpin's The Art of Cooking (now out of print), with many of them updated and refined for today's home cook.
Although the book is organized in chapters from soups to sweets, many main-course recipes are offered with one or two accompaniments that are an integral part of the presentation—and Jacques carefully walks you through the preparations so everything comes out on time. Some are more ambitious, such as a splendid dinner of Chateaubriands with Madeira-Truffle Sauce, Mushroom Timbales, and Crкpe Shells with Corn Puree; others are simple family fare, like Tuna Steaks with Potato-and-Zucchini Salad. All are delicious, representing a range of exquisite and earthy flavors that you can, of course, mix and match at will to create your own menus.
Two chapters are devoted to mastering the techniques of making bread and various pastry doughs, and are followed by recipes—both savory and sweet—that utilize theseessential culinary skills. Once you've learned how to make a crusty baguette, you'll be confidently whipping up a round of Black Pepper Bread with Walnuts, or Brioche Mousseline, or Cheese Bread. Master the relatively simple pвte а choux and you can make gougиres, gnocchi, profiteroles, and a Paris-Brest cake, all with the same basic dough. The same goes for puff pastry, for which Jacques offers three versions: classic, quick, and instant.
Embedded throughout the text are Christopher Hirsheimer's vivid step-by-step photographs of Jacques demonstrating specific essential techniques. With his splendid knifework to guide you, you'll soon be boning out your own salmon and home-curing it, or creating a beautiful coral tree out of carrots and scallions. Jacques is an artist (his drawings embellish many of these pages), and he inspires you to make your own food visually enticing. Particularly inviting are the chapters devoted to sweet creations, which will bring out the artist in you.
Above all, the message here is that cooking is a joy and that your food is a gift to others. So don your apron, fill your kitchen with good smells, and make every occasion a celebration а la Jacques.
Publishers Weekly
In this companion to a new PBS series, Pepin builds on a broad definition of celebrations encompassing holidays, special occasions, and simply nice weather to present a collection of typically solid French recipes and numerous useful tips and techniques. As on his television series, P?pin's daughter, Claudine, pipes up with the comments of a novice, although these tend to the banal, as when, to accompany recipes for Velvet of Carrot with Browned Almonds and Farmer'sStyle Soup, she gushes, "Soup soup soup! I love making any and all kinds of soup." Recipes for French classics such as Cold Mousse of Chicken and Pistachios and Parsleyed Ham with R?moulade Sauce, and for more untraditional fare like Broiled Lobster Benjamin with Caramelized Corn and Potato Flats and Chateaubriands with Madeira-Truffle Sauce, Mushroom Timbales, and Cr?pe Shells with Corn Puree are complex, but broken down into more manageable components. More valuable than the recipes, however, are the many notes on chopping, garnishing, carving and so forth. Pepin provides step-by-step instructions and often illustrative photographs for everything from how to make a melon swan with a cunning peppercorn eye to how (and why) to rinse chopped onions. (Sept.) Forecast: Pepin is a deservedly successful television host, and his easy manner and impressive skills are well represented here. Although at $40 this is a pricey book, the full-color instructional photos lend much value. This is likely to be a solid seller. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Pepin's big new cookbook is the companion volume to his latest PBS series, which features 13 half-hour shows with menus for various occasions (e.g., "Dinner Party al Fresco"), six one-hour specials highlighting different holidays, and seven hour-long theme shows ("Puff Pastry Showcase"). The recipes, however, are more accessibly organized by course. Many of these are drawn from Pepin's earlier two-volume The Art of Cooking (o.p.), and although there are more contemporary dishes here, too, some of them, unfortunately, seem rather dated (deep-fried eggs, cream puff swans, etc.). However, Pepin has always been a wonderful teacher, and this book is filled with innumerable cooking tips and valuable techniques, many of which are illustrated by color photographs (there is a helpful index of these step-by-step photos at the back of the book). An essential purchase for most collections. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
