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Cooking for Two
Sharing a meal doesn't mean that you have to be a genius in the kitchen. Cooking For Two will reveal the secret to fantastic and hassle-free cuisine. Gorgeous gull-color photographs and step-by-step guides will ensure that cooking for someone else has never tasted so good.
48 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 9, 2012
I've found that generally, when a cookbook tries to format for both US and imperial measures, it does nothing more than ruin the readability and interest for everyone. Every "cooking for two" cookbook I've come across from Parragon Publishing has been horrid. Part of the problem is that they don't seem to get that it's not just measurements that are different in the US, we also have different names for some products and ingredients. US cookbooks don't list "mealy potatoes" as an ingredient, for example, and frankly it's not at all an appetizing way to refer to russets. This book only has 19 recipes total, two of which are drinks (which I always consider to be a complete waste of paper), and only 11 of which are entrees. The biggest problem with it, as with the other Parragon cookbooks I've found at Half Price Books, is that the dishes look boring. Spaghetti and meatballs. Broiled lemon salmon. Broiled chicken with bell peppers. These are dishes that hardly need recipes, are available anywhere, and are the easiest in the world to cut down from larger-yield cookbooks. The photos are only OK, mostly taken from far too close so you don't see the composition of the whole dish.
The final straw, which pushes this down to a definite 2 star rating, is the recipe for Individual Chocolate Desserts, which has their standard icons across the top "easy, serves 2, 10-15 mins active time, 50 min inactive time" (btw, I'm guessing on those last two icons, there's no explanation and in some of the recipes the times given in the icon box don't match anything in the directions, whether totaled or not). So! This dessert recipe in the cooking for two cookbook with the box that says it serves two starts out "to make four desserts..." How hard is it, when making a cooking for two cookbook that only includes two desserts, both of which are specifically labelled as serving two, to actually give the measurements and instructions for a two-serving dish?!?!
Thank goodness this is a library book, not something I spent money on. I've got to start checking publishers on cookbooks before bringing them home, such a waste of time. Although I do admit that I might scan the lamb curry recipe, because I don't seem to have a basic one anywhere.
The final straw, which pushes this down to a definite 2 star rating, is the recipe for Individual Chocolate Desserts, which has their standard icons across the top "easy, serves 2, 10-15 mins active time, 50 min inactive time" (btw, I'm guessing on those last two icons, there's no explanation and in some of the recipes the times given in the icon box don't match anything in the directions, whether totaled or not). So! This dessert recipe in the cooking for two cookbook with the box that says it serves two starts out "to make four desserts..." How hard is it, when making a cooking for two cookbook that only includes two desserts, both of which are specifically labelled as serving two, to actually give the measurements and instructions for a two-serving dish?!?!
Thank goodness this is a library book, not something I spent money on. I've got to start checking publishers on cookbooks before bringing them home, such a waste of time. Although I do admit that I might scan the lamb curry recipe, because I don't seem to have a basic one anywhere.
Displaying 1 of 1 review