Complete Cook’s Book: Techniques, tips, ingredients and recipies (Good Housekeeping) - Hardcover

Ingram, Chrissie; Alburey, Pat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007100744 ISBN 13: 9780007100743

Publisher: HarperCollins Illustrated, 2000

Synopsis

A highly illustrated comprehensive cookery manual that will teach its readers every thing they need to know about how to be successful in the kitchen.

Chapter One: Essential Know How outlines the enormous range of equipment available and details the best buys. It distinguishes the must-haves from the less essential items of equipment, enabling readers to create well-stocked yet efficient kitchens. Included in this information will be care and cleaning tips and the know-how necessary to use both familiar and specialist items. Detailed information is provided on the different techniques used to produce sweet and savoury dishes, such as roasting, sealing, beating, blanching and poaching. Step-by-step photographs and easy-to-follow instructions illustrate the method of each technique while helpful tips ensure that common pitfalls are avoided and offer logical solutions to the most frequently encountered cookery problems.

Chapter Two: Ingredients is devoted to individual ingredients, from dairy products such as milk and cheese through to meats, fish and poultry and then to vegetables, noodles and grains and finally to flavourings such as chocolate and sugar. All ingredients are illustrated and described in detail with advice on the cookery terms and techniques associated with each.

Finally, a collection of 120 classic recipes offer an invaluable resource for cooks of all levels. These are cross referenced throughout the rest of the book and to ensure complete reliability, all the recipes have been tested in the Good Housekeeping Institute kitchens. Vital information on preparation and cooking times, freezing notes and a calorie count are also provided.

A soon-to-be classic work of food reference, the Complete Cook’s Book is packed with important, enlightening and eye-opening culinary information – something that no ordinary cookbook can deliver.

About this title

Review:

This is just what it says on the cover. A comprehensive guide to just about everything that goes on the kitchen and that enters or leaves it. It assumes nothing, starting with the basics. It's unlikely to set the fashionable world on fire, but there will always be an enormous demand for a straightforward, modern tutorial in cooking techniques and ingredients. This is one such. The majority of the book is taken up with Essential Know-How and a long section dealing with Ingredients, but a limited number of mostly classic recipes are appended, for reference as it were.

Essential Know-How dives in with the Batterie de Cuisine--knives, pots and pans, pastry and cake-making equipment--following that up with Cooking Terms and Techniques. This starts, interestingly enough, with pastry and cakes (quite an emphasis laid on these two), before moving on to the savoury techniques of stuffing, boiling, braising and so forth. The central Ingredients sections is extremely thorough, and covers all categories: fish and shellfish, meat, poultry and game, dairy, pulses and grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts, and flavourings. Under the entry for duck, for example, you may learn about the different varieties of duck likely to be available, storage of their carcasses, how to prepare them for the different cooking methods (quartered, breasts removed and grilled, or roasted whole), together with some detailed instructions for a handful of recipes and suggestions for more. The Good Housekeeping Institute bases its reputation on total reliability, which this book can only enhance. --Robin Davidson

About the Author:

Chrissie Ingram has been a cookery editor for many years and has contributed to many cookery publications. She lives in Surrey with her husband and two children.

Pat Alburey is a food writer and also regularly prepares and styles food for photography. In addition to writing several cookery books, she is a regular columnist for Zest magazine and lives in Cambridgeshire.

Good Housekeeping Institute. Since its foundation in 1924, the Good Housekeeping Institute has been an independent champion of consumer rights and has built up an established and trusted reputation. In purpose-built kitchens, the GHI consumer researchers and home economists rigorously test the latest household appliances from the consumer's perspective, and the cookery team develops the most delicious contemporary recipes that will always work.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Illustrated
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0007100744
• ISBN 13: 9780007100743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Jackson Petra