Cookery Reviews

Synopsis: Chocolate - irresistible to so many of us - has gone upmarket, with chocolate shops full of the most beautiful confections. Luckily, creating mouth-watering confections at home no longer requires hours of training and this book will teach you all the inside tips, techniques and methods for making chocolates like a professional chocolatier. Using ingredients such as strawberries and cream and espresso, to the more adventurous flavour combinations such as jasmine and rose, chilli chocolate, rosemary and thyme and white chocolate and cardamom, you will learn how to make fabulous chocolates to suit any taste. There are also recipes for a range of dairy-free chocolates and a collection of chocolates that even the youngest children can help to make.With chapters on the history of chocolate as well as a comprehensive section covering ingredients and equipment and techniques such as melting, tempering, making molds and gift-wrapping your chocolates, this is the perfect book if you want to dazzle your friends and family with delicious chocolate gifts.

http://www.newhollandpublishers.com/details.asp?pid=9781847738202&t=Auberge-Du-Chocolat

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
With a wonderful introduction to chocolate, the techniques, and presentation, the main body of the book is full of fabulous recipes, dipped chocolate, truffles, moulded chocolates, flavoured chocolate, dairy-free chocolates, chocolate and children. The final section is about Auberge Du Chocolat itself. Beautifully photographed, the chocolates are mouth-watering, choose from, apple strudel logs, apricot pavé, champagne truffles, or the dairy free orange and cinnamon, and many,many, more. If you are looking for a perfect present for a chocolate lover, you can either create some of these mouth-watering chocolates as a gift, or give the book itself, but you may end up having to buy another one! This is a delicious book! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: The big, bold taste explosions of Asia have had Bill Granger hooked since childhood. With Bill’s Everyday Asian, he takes the best that Asian food has to offer and gives it the unique Bill makeover, simplifying his favourite classics and creating his own dishes.

The Asian dishes he loves to eat and cook are quick, easy and healthy. For Bill, this isn’t exotic food, it’s an everyday thing. Bill has drawn on all his experience to demystify the idea that Asian food is somehow complicated and difficult to prepare – in a lot of cases it's incredibly simple. The secret is in the harmonious balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot, with some help from tangy aromatics such as ginger, coriander and lemongrass. The dishes of Asia are truly democratic; served simply and cheaply to anyone and everyone, but with punchy, vibrant flavours that make absolute sense every time.

The recipes in this book are inspired by Bill's many experiences, from a home-cooked dinner enjoyed in Singapore to a businessman’s breakfast in Japan, and range from simple street food from roadside stalls to some of the most exciting foods from restaurants around the world.

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
In the introduction Bill explains how he wants to demystify the idea that preparing Asian food is more complicated than anything else, and suggests that in a lot of cases it’s actually simpler. It’s all in the balance he explains.

‘achieving harmony between salty(soy, fish sauce) sweet(brown sugar, honey) sour (lime) and hot (Chilli) with some help from aromatics like ginger, garlic, coriander and lemon grass. You’ll know when you get it right. And the best part in most cases you’ll only need one wok, or pan to create the most delicious meal’

And true to his word, Bill has created some beautiful recipes divided into Bill’s Asian Pantry, Starters, Soups, Salads, Seafood, Poultry, Pork, Lamb & Beef, Noodles & Rice, Vegetables & Tofu and Desserts. Some of our favourites included the delicious Sticky Pork Chops with Peach Chutney, Barbecued Prawns with three dipping sauces, Chinese Custard Tarts, Mandarin Crème Brulee. This is a mouth-watering collection, we loved it! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: Trained in the classic French style and an inveterate global traveler with a passion for different cuisines, Michel has been inspired by many influences to develop an outstanding repertoire of desserts. Classic recipes are given a modern twist, while original recipes boast new combinations of flavours or a lighter or simpler style of cooking.
The book is divided into 10 chapters, each focusing on a particular type of dessert, from simple fruit desserts, hot soufflés and puddings, ice creams and sorbets, through meringues, mousses and parfaits to delectable tarts, pastries and gâteaux. Step-by-step photographic sequences guide you through specific techniques throughout the chapters as Michel presents recipes that are straightforward to prepare and designed to suit today’s fresher, lighter palate.
Illustrated throughout with Martin Brigdale’s stunning photographs and designed in a clear, modern, easy-to-follow style, Desserts is set to become a classic from the moment it is published.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Desserts-Michel-Roux/dp/1844009831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318692797&sr=1-1

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict

Michel Roux’s books are one of our favourite recipe collections, we loved his earlier collections; eggs, sauces and pastry. Desserts is another in this popular format. Easy to use, this collection is divided into a really helpful introduction followed by fruit desserts, crèmes and sabayons, hot soufflés & puddings, crepes, batters & beignets, ice creams, sorbets and granitas, sponges & meringues, mousses, parfaits & bavarois, tarts & pastries, cakes & gâteaux, chocolates & petits fours, basics and a glossary.

The delectable recipes include temptations such as Passion Fruit and Kiwi Souffle, Citrus fruits in a Sauternes Jelly, Chocolate Truffles, Honey Roasted Apricots on Sablés Bretons, Tarte Fine Au Citron and Almond Tuiles, Mango Charlotte and many,many more.

With mouth-watering photography and step-by-step instructions this wonderful book is full of delicious recipes that will delight the most discerning dessert lover. We loved it! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: Swedish cuisine is delicious, varied and often unexpected, and in this delightful book Margareta Schildt Landgren shares wonderful stories from her own Swedish kitchen along with over 100 fabulous recipes.

Here Margareta includes both traditional and modern recipes, from Gravalax with Herbs and Swedish Meatballs to St Lucia Buns and Elderflower Cordial. Also included are some traditional Swedish Christmas recipes including a Christmas ham,Creamed Kale, Homemade Toffee and Orange Truffles.

The mouth-watering recipes are interspersed with captivating narrative on Sweden’s food traditions, the development of regional cuisine, the importance of seasonal eating and celebration foods.

Margareta’s text is illustrated beautifully with stunning recipe and location photography from Tine Guth Linse as well as photographs from her own archive. This is essential reading for anyone with a passion for food or a love of Swedish culture.

Margareta Schildt Landgren is an established food writer who also trained as a home economics teacher. She is the author of several books on Swedish cuisine including Simply Swedish.

http://www.newhollandpublishers.com/details.asp?pid=9781847737779&t=Notes-From-A-Swedish-Kitchen

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
We love cookery books from different regions and Notes from a Swedish Kitchen is an absolute delight. Divided into Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn and beautifully illustrated with atmospheric photography that sets the scene for each season. Included in Winter is a Swedish Christmas and the dishes representative of that festival. The section devoted to Spring includes the Easter traditions, but our favourite is Summer which is full of overflowing bowls of fruit with mouth watering recipes such as Strawberry Gateau, Blueberry Pie and wonderful Cinnamon Buns. Finally to Autumn with wonderful Crayfish Parties, Ligonberry Jam and other delights. Delicious, tempting, wonderful food, we loved it! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: This beautiful book, based on the original notebook and recipe journal of a 1900s Viennese Baroness, takes readers on a journey through fin de siècle Viennese high society. With over 100 original recipes, all of which have been tested and brought up to date for the modern cook, it is not only a beautiful collection of recipes but is also a fascinating look at the life of a turn-of-the-century family. Filled with anecdotes and personal stories to bring the recipes to life, this book will be a charming insight into a bygone era. The classic recipes will cover a range of dishes both savoury and sweet, with a strong emphasis on the desserts and pastries for which Vienna is famed. Chapters include Starters, Soups, Meat Dishes, Side Dishes, Biscuits & Cookies, Sweet Pastries, Cakes & Gateaux, Tortes and Puddings. In addition there are beautiful photographs of Vienna throughout the book, capturing the architecture, café culture and beauty of this elegant city.

Monica Meehan food writer and publishing professional with a keen interest in travel and cooking, is the great niece of ‘Tante Hertha’. Dividing her time between London, Canada and Austria she has co-written this book with her mother, Maria von Baich.

http://www.newhollandpublishers.com/details.asp?pid=9781847737267&t=Tante-Hertha's-Viennese-Kitchen


Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
This book is an absolute delight, beautifully illustrated and evocative, it is so much more than a collection of recipes, it takes the reader back to another time with writing from the original notebook and photographs as well as the recipes which have been updated and deliciously photographed. The contents include an introduction and a background to the Viennese Life. The mouth-watering recipes include Pork Roast with Root Vegetables, Chocolate Truffles, Plum Cake, Apple Strudel. and many many more! An absolute treasure to be cherished for future generations! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: The Great British Bake Off: How to bake the perfect Victoria Sponge and other baking secrets is published by BBC Books to accompany the new 8-part series of the hugely popular Great British Bake Off on BBC2.

If your Victoria Sponge seems a bit dense, or your pastry is a doughy disaster then this is the book for you with expert advice and tips from The Great British Bake Off judges and the ‘best’ of the bake off recipes from the contestants.

There are over 120 recipes in the book and they range from Mary’s Coffee and Walnut Battenburg and Tarte au Citron to Paul’s Pork Pies with quails’eggs, however this book isn’t just a collection of recipes. It also covers the essentials of baking - The techniques, terms and ingredients to help your baking taste, look and smell better than ever.

Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood‘s expert advice and tips are featured throughout the book to show how we can all achieve baking perfection. Each chapter begins with a specific baking skill which, once mastered, allows you to tackle Mary and Paul’s technical challenges, as seen in the series, with confidence.

To ensure that the final result isn’t revealed before the winner is announced, each book buyer will receive a code so they can download an exclusive digital booklet of the finalists’ recipes at the end of the series.

Linda Collister is an experienced cook and baker, having trained at L'Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris and Le Cordon Bleu in London. She is the author of a number of baking books, including The Great British Book of Baking.

Mary Berry is the Queen of Cakes. Much-loved for her trusted recipes and experienced advice, she has been teaching the nation to bake for over 30 years. In 2004, Mary was voted Top 3 by BBC Good Food for ‘Most Reliable Celebrity Cook Book’ alongside Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith. Mary Berry’s Baking Bible was published in 2009.

Paul Hollywood is one of the best known artisan bakers in the UK. His bestselling book 100 Great Breads was voted 'Top Bread and Pastry Book' in the English language by the Gourmand Academy.

http://www.bbcshop.com/food/great-british-bake-off-hardback/invt/9781849902687/

Hot Brands Cool Places
The Great British Bake-Off is one of those beautiful television programmes that transport you to another world at the end of a busy day. If you have been following the series you will love this accompanying book. As well as the baking basics there are over 120 delicious recipes including cakes, biscuits, breads pies, tarts patisserie, puddings and celebration cakes. Our favourites include, Gorgeous Lemon Cream Cake, Millefeuilles with Raspberries , Paul’s Focaccia and many,many,more. It's a celebration of the best in baking and we loved it! Quite simply this is a must-have book! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: Whether you are going to be 1 or 100 years old Fiona Cairns has the perfect birthday cake for you – all not only amazing to behold but also absolutely delicious to eat.

Fiona is a veteran at catering for every style and taste, and amongst the 50 cakes featured in this book there are masses of tempting choices as well as six themed birthday parties, each with a large cake, cupcakes, and biscuits.
Starting with kids, any child will remember their birthday party when it has been embellished with tiny fairies sitting on top of tasty lemon fairy cakes; or a Dinosaur Party complete with Volcano Cake, Dinosaur Biscuits and Bones Cupcakes.

A spherical Disco Glitter Ball Cake is a wonderful gift for the party girl in your life, while a realistic Vegetable Plot – complete with hidden courgettes and carrots in the cake beneath – is the very thing for your favourite gardener. And don’t worry if that recipe isn’t right for the birthday boy or girl; most of the decorated cakes in the book have alternative suggestions and recipes for making a deliciously simple iced cake like a Masala Chai Cake with Ginger Fudge Frosting. Even those who lack a sweet tooth are remembered, with a Savoury ‘Cake’ of home-made soda bread and smoked salmon, ‘iced’ with cream cheese to look like the real thing.

Those with allergies are catered to as well: there is a choice of recipes that are flour-free, and some even free from all common allergens.
Fiona’s warm writing style and easy-to-follow instructions means making beautiful, surprising and divine-tasting birthday cakes is something everybody can achieve, no matter how inexperienced, and enjoy the process. So bring a special gift to the party, and get baking!

http://www.quadrille.co.uk/books/food-and-wine/book/1844009858/the-birthday-cake-book

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
We love Fiona Cairns books, and as the maker of the Royal Wedding Cake earlier this year, she certainly knows something about making celebration cakes! The recipes are beautifully photographed with mouth-watering images of delicious cakes, from simple to more ambitious designs. There is something for everyone here, whatever the occasion. We loved the beautiful Strawberry and Elderflower Cake, the very pretty Alice’s Teapot, and the Turkish Delight Meringue, but there is so much more, her recipes for children are inspired. A delightful book, we loved it! Highly Recommended!

Published in hardback by Bantam Press

Synopsis: Everyone loves a pie. Pies are part of our food culture and heritage, as British as ...er... pork pie, and nowadays they are also an essential fashion accessory for the festival goer as well as the dish of choice at a trendy gastropub near you. pieminister - the creation of Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon - is the undisputed leader of this pie revolution. Their brilliant and original creations have reinvented the pie for a new generation, as well as for all the people who liked pies quite a lot in the first place...

Now pieminister have produced the book that launched a thousand pies, putting on paper the brilliantly creative and utterly delicious pie recipes which are making the likes of their Heidi Pie and Moo Pies into household names. From much loved classic recipes to stunning new ones, veggie pies, fruit pies, meat pies and fish pies - including the unsinkable Pietanic - there are pies here for all seasons and every taste.

Asparagus, mint and ricotta pie... chilli con carne pie... pork, chorizo and prawn pie... strawberry marscapone pie... this is a cook book not just for cold stormy nights, but for summer parties, spring suppers and autumn lunches.

2011 is going to be the year of the pie and don’t just take our word for it, according to many a food fashionista, we, the British nation will have eaten all the pies by the end of next year. While for some of us the pie was never off trend, lots of foodie forecasters predict that we will be high on pie this year.

Pieminister is this autumn’s must-have cookbook. The pie is, after all, the limit...

About the authors
pieminister was founded in 2003 by brothers-in-law Jon Simon and Tristan Hogg. After months of mixing, baking and tasting (they tried over 200 recipes), the first range of pies was born. Jon and Tristan had worked together in Jon’s south London pub (bought from his winnings from a TV game show), which became a destination for great food and booze for those in the know. He sold the business and set up pieminister with Tristan, who had been surfing and sunbathing in Australia for a while, and came up with the name pieminister while eating a pie on Bondi Beach.

Jon and Tristan both live in Bristol.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pieminister-Pie-Seasons-Tristan-Hogg/dp/059306805X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315220301&sr=1-1

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
Packed full with photographs and enthusiastic text, pieminister is an invitation to jump in and enjoy making pies. As the sub-title suggests there is a wonderful selection of pies for all seasons. Following an introduction about the company, and how to make pastry, there are mouth-watering recipes for spring, summer, autumn and winter, as well as other fascinating information, like how to run a street party, the world of pie, New Year’s resolutions, Christmas party Games and so on. The recipes are delicious with imaginative titles, this isn’t just a book, it is more like an experience! We loved it! Highly Recommended!

Synopsis: Jake Tilson used to be scared of fish (a feeling many of us share). Ice-laden market stalls were avoided and seafood recipes were left safely on the shelf. Yet, rather than resort to the analyst’s chair, Jake decided to overcome his culinary phobia by cooking his way out of the problem. In this fascinating book, the award-winning artist, designer, writer and cook travels the world on a quest to buy, prepare and cook fish and seafood. In at the Deep End is an engaging personal story of discovery of fish cookery.

Travelling from Venice to Tokyo, New York to Sweden and Aberdeen to Sydney, Jake chronicles his journey to in absorbing detail. Whether cooking and eating Venetian Bigoli with Clams or New York Crab Cakes, Swedish Soused Herrings or Japanese Sushi and Sashimi, Jake effortlessly conjures up the worlds in which these dishes originated – the fishing villages and coastal landscapes, the fishermen and their boats, the markets, smoke houses and restaurants.

An evocative exploration of Jake’s many experiences with fish, this delightful food memoir and recipe book catalogues Jake’s conversion to seafood obsessive. Jake’s acute eye and enticing recipes make In at the Deep End a book to be read, savoured, used and,above all, enjoyed.

About The Author
Jake Tilson is an award-winning artist, designer, writer and cook. A pioneer of early website design, including the award-winning website The Cooker, Tilson also founded the influential arts magazine Atlas in 1984. His first cookbook, A Tale of 12 Kitchens won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award and was shortlisted for both the Andre Simon Food & Drink Award and the Glenfiddich Food & Drink Award. His eclectic eye and collaborative approach extends into the graphic design work he produces for architects, publishers and individuals. In 2009 he produced shoe designs for Paul Smith and exhibited with the Japanese artist Kyoichi Tsuzuki at The Wapping Project in A Net of Eels, commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella.

For further information on the book, please visit www.jaketilson.com/fish

http://www.amazon.co.uk/at-Deep-End-Jake-Tilson/dp/1844009750/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314020732&sr=1-1

Hot Brands Cool Places Verdict
We love every aspect of this book, from the pre-publication information sent out in advance, to the actual production of the book, it’s innovative, imaginative and absolutely stunning! This is no ordinary cookbook, it’s part journal, part travelogue and also includes delicious recipes! You don’t just read it, it’s a feast for all the senses! We loved it! Highly Recommended!