Review: A Farmer's Daughter

Farmer's Daughter, A: Recipes from a Mennonite Kitchen

About the Book:

Welcome to the warm and inviting kitchen of Dawn Stoltzfus, a young Mennonite wife and mother who was raised on a dairy farm where simple, wholesome food was a key ingredient of the good life. In A Farmer's Daughter, she opens up her recipe box, wipes away the crumbs and wrinkles from the well-loved recipes, and shares them with cooks and food-lovers everywhere. She offers us over two hundred delicious recipes that reflect the comfort foods she learned to cook from her mother, the same hearty and creative recipes she made and sold at The Farmer's Wife Market.

Along with the simple, wholesome recipes for starters, main dishes, sides, and desserts, readers will find charming stories from Dawn's Mennonite upbringing, tips and tricks for easy meal planning and preparation, and ideas for serving with flair. Anyone who loves to feed their loved ones hearty, wholesome meals will treasure this cookbook.

My Comments:

Usually when I review a cookbook I like to make a recipe or two, so I can let you know how good they are.  Unfortunately, it has been crazy around here lately and I haven't had time to cook except on auto-pilot (making the old stand-bys that I always have the  makings for in the house) or remote control (what I can tell a teen to make over the phone).  The recipes in this book aren't complicated, and if I had everything to make something in the house, my teens surely could follow this cookbook and make something; however that would require planning, and that's been in short supply around here lately.  

In any case, the recipes seem kid-friendly.  Most are made with basic ingredients and there is not an excess of overly packaged stuff in them.  Many of the recipes have variations listed on the page with them and there are some meditations scattered throughout the book.  The book is a bound paperback, but it seems to lay open rather well.  There are no pictures. The Amazon link above will all you to preview some of the recipes in the book.    All in all, I'll give it a B.

Available October 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Cookbook Review: Taste of Home Cooking School Cookbook

Taste of Home: Cooking School Cookbook: 400 + Simple to Spectacular Recipes

About the Book:

No matter what you crave, cook it with confidence with taste of Home Cooking School Cookbook! Whatever your skill level in the kitchen, you will learn step-by-step techniques and discover new favorites with more than 400 best loved recipes and over 600 full-color photos from our expert instructors. Create a memorable game-day-get-together with nacho dip, hot wings and yummy pizza. Master the grill with succulent ribeyes, monster stuffed burgers and a whole salmon fillet that’s a real showstopper. Whip up sumptuous holiday meals with all of the trimmings from citrus-rosemary rubbed turkey with artichoke stuffing to chipotle sweet potatoes and caramel apple trifle. The Taste of Home Cooking School Cookbook features delicious dishes from breakfast to lunch to dinner and including dessert, of course.Sample recipes include:

• Eggs Benedict Casserole
• Brie Phyllo Cups
• Sweet-Tangy Wings
• French Onion Soup
• Lemon Chicken Tortellini
• Taco Lasagna
• Roasted Chicken with Oyster Stuffing
• Sizzling Ancho Ribeyes
• Creamy Parmesan Spinach
• Chocolate Mousse with Cranberry Sauce
• Easy Grasshopper Ice Cream Pie

Contemporary topics are comprehensively explored with techniques ranging from simple basics to true wow-factor recipes. Each recipe has been tasted and reviewed in the Taste of Home test kitchen, plus there are over 140 practical, proven tips from our Cooking School experts—so you’ll enjoy perfect results every time.

My Comments:

This is a cookbook for people who have to cook dinner every night, not necessarily for gourmet cooks.  In making the recipes in this book, you will not need to go to the fancy gourmet food store to buy ingredients, you will not dirty every pot you own, and, if you have the basic cooking supplies usually given via wedding showers, you will not need to buy new kitchen equipment that you will never use again.  You will not spend all day in the kitchen and, if you can read and follow simple directions, you will not end up with a failed dish.

As far as ingredients go, I'm a pantry keeper.  I keep a large variety of staples in my house so that I can cook what I want when I want.  If I want to try a new recipe, it is best if it uses things I usually have on hand; if it needs something else, my preference is that it use a purchased unit of it--in other words, I don't mind buying a leek for a recipe, but use the whole leek, not a sliver of leek.  Spices that I'll never use again if we don't like this dish make me hesitant to try things; more than one of those spices practically guarantees I won't try a recipe.  I decided to look up the recipes above and see if I could make them with what I had in the house or by buying something that would be pretty much used up with the recipe.  I found:

• Eggs Benedict Casserole--yes
• Brie Phyllo Cups--yes
• Sweet-Tangy Wings--needs 2 teas. fresh gingeroot, 1/2 cup apricot jam
• French Onion Soup--yes
• Lemon Chicken Tortellini--needs 1/2 small sweet red pepper, 2 teas. lemon peel
• Taco Lasagna--yes
• Roasted Chicken with Oyster Stuffing--yes
• Sizzling Ancho Ribeyes--yes
• Creamy Parmesan Spinach-- needs 1/2 c whipping cream, 1/8 teas. red pepper flakes, 2/3 cup croutons
• Chocolate Mousse with Cranberry Sauce--needs 11/2 cup whipping cream, 1/3 cup light corn syrup, 1/3 cup cranberry juice, 1teas. lime juice
• Easy Grasshopper Ice Cream Pie--needs 5 cookies, 1/3 cup Junior Mints (of course the left-over extras here won't mold in the back of the fridge).

If you are familiar with the Taste of Home magazine or website, you are familiar with the types of recipes and ingredients used (yes, they use condensed soups, packaged seasonings and packaged stuffing mixes).  The book is printed on reasonably heavy glossy paper and each recipe has a color photograph of it.  Besides recipes there are quite a few sidebars that give "how tos" on various cooking techniques.  There are pages about basic needed kitchen equipment and on using herbs and spices in cooking.  The book lays open  well, making it easy to actually use as a cookbook.  

I'd like to thank FSB Media for providing a review copy.  Grade:  A.

I'll be back soon with more posts about this book.

Other Taste of Home Books:

Book Review: Strictly Sundays

I have found there  there are generally two types of cookbooks:  the kind with elaborate recipes and fancy ingredients that make dishes the kids won't eat; and the kind with a few ingredients, usually including some processed base like canned soup, ketchup or barbecue sauce, that are easy to get on the table and kid-friendly.  This book, Strictly Sundays: Making every cook a hero on Sundays, doesn't fit in either category.   

The author calls himself  "The Blue-Collar Gourmet", and that really does characterize  his recipes. Sometimes they are long and involved, like gourmet recipes, but they also use "blue-collar" ingredients like powdered onion soup mix, condensed cream of mushroom soup, BBQ sauce, or Old Bay Seasoning.  He has two recipes for Spaghetti Sauce.  One has 24 ingredients, including three kinds of meat (pork butt bone, lamb shank and Italian sausage).  It calls for dried herbs and canned tomatoes and tomato paste, as well as canned chicken broth.  It looks like it would take about 30 minutes to prepare, three hours to cook during step one, about 10 minutes of prep for the second part, followed by another hour of cooking time.  The other recipe calls for 9 ingredients.  It calls for canned tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste, and for Schilling brand Italian Seasoning.  You only cook it for an hour.

The book is printed on glossy paper and has some illustrations, but not enough to put it in the coffee table book category.  It includes recipes for appetizers, main dishes, salads, soups, side dishes and salsas, but no breads or desserts.  

I'd like to thank publicist Barbara Kindness for sending me a review copy, via Bostick.  Grade:  B.

Jack Daniel's Spirit of Tennessee Cookbook by Lynne Tolley and Pat Mitchamore: My Review

I like cookbooks, but find they are often divided into two types: 1) "Kitchen Porn"--those with pretty pictures of fantastic food that are utterly impractical for the average family or 2) Basic cookbooks filled with the kind of food real people cook, but not many pretty pictures. Jack Daniel's Spirit of Tennessee Cookbook is one that transcends those categories. It is an attractive, photo-filled book with recipes that real people actually make. However, most of the photos are of the people and places in Tennessee, not of the food in the book. There are chapters on Drinks, Appetizers, Soups & Salads, Vegetables, Breads, Entrees, Outdoor Cooking, Desserts and Cakes & Pies. Given the name of the book, it should come as no surprise that many of the recipes contain Jack Daniel's whiskey; however not all do.

In general the recipes are short and contain ingredients found in most kitchens. I'll share two with you--one with Jack, the other without.

Mashed Potato Casserole (page 71):

6 medium potatoes, peeled
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt
Pepper
1/2 cup bread crumbs
butter

Preheat oven to 400. Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender. Drain and mash. Add onion, sour cream and cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour into greased 1.5 quart casserole. Sprinkle with bread crumbs dot with butter. Bake until brown.

Pineapple a la Jack Daniel (page 36)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup Jack Daniel's Whiskey
2 fresh pineapples, cut into cubes

Bring sugar and water to boil, simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat. Add Jack Daniels Whiskey. Pour over pineapple cubes and chill for a few hours in the refrigerator.

I can hardly wait to start cooking some of this food!

Thanks to the Thomas Nelson Book Review Program for providing a complimentary copy of this book for my review.

To purchase from Amazon: Jack Daniel's Spirit of Tennessee Cookbook

Thomas Nelson Product Page

Note: The cover of my book does not look like that shown above; mine resembles the Jack Daniel's label.

My Review: The Flavor Bible

Thanks to the folks at Hatchette and some blogger whose name I can't find, I won a copy of this lovely book.

There are two types of cooks, in my experience. The first type follows recipies; the second mixes things together to make something new. This book is for the second type. There are no recipies; rather there are a couple of chapters about things to consider when mixing flavors, followed by lists of about every ingredient you can think of, followed by what to use with it. For example, about Blood Oranges, it says they are sour-sweet, medium weight and moderate volume. They go with carmel, Chapagne, white chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, cream grapefruit,honey, kumquats, lemon, mint, pomegranates, salads, brown sugar, tarts and vanilla. Regarding Oregano, it gives an extensive list of things that could be flavored with oregano, but suggests avoiding cilanto or desserts. For some ingredients, flavor affinities are suggested--for example, snap peas + brown sugar + sage. For sweet potatoes, among other flavor affinities, they list sweet potatoes + chile peppers + lemon zest.

If you are someone who likes to create in the kitchen and is looking for a roadmap to point you in the right direction, try this book.