Cookbooks: Reference Books for Cooks
These are two of my favourite books. They are invaluable for finding information about ingredients, cooking techniques or even unfamiliar names of food from around the world.
I bought the Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’ one Christmas a few years ago intending to give it away as a Christmas present, but ended up keeping it for myself after browsing through it and finding it very useful. Since then I have used it so often I can’t live without it now! It has got very comprehensive information especially on South-East Asian and Indian subcontinental food and ingredients (usually with techniques of preparation), plus lots of recipes as well.
An extract from Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’
Although it is also very comprehensive on Chinese cooking, I do find it lacking in some areas, mind you just in very very tiny areas, one thing I was looking for, for example, dried squid and its preparation is not covered in the book. Although a large book, it has very little illustrations, just a few pages at the end of the book, making it hard sometimes to read about a particular ingredient and having to flip to the end of the book to look for its illustration.
Some of the pretty illustrations at the end of the book in Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’
Another small thing I find frustrating are the Chinese names given in the book, they are given in direct phonetic translations into English, but did not specified whether they are a translation from Mandarin or from one of the dialects spoken in China. Therefore it is sometimes very hard to decipher their names in actual Chinese characters. I would have preferred it to include actual Chinese characters of the names in the book. However having said that, they are just very small gripes I have of the book. A book definitely worth buying if you are interested in Asian cooking.
The other book ‘Food: the Definitive Guide’ I bought just over a year ago during one of those end-of-year book sale events. It was retailed at $59.95 but was on sale at $12.99, so what could I do but immediately bought it! Now this book has got a lot of photos – I really loved all the beautifully photographed images inside, all so gorgeous too! Makes me drool every time I browse through the book. It has almost at least one picture for each ingredient or food term described in the book.
Beautiful photos accompanying texts in ‘Food: the Definitive Guide’
Of course this book is geared towards western cooking and it is very useful especially when looking up food names or ingredients in their native language, be it French, Italian, or Spanish.
I bought the Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’ one Christmas a few years ago intending to give it away as a Christmas present, but ended up keeping it for myself after browsing through it and finding it very useful. Since then I have used it so often I can’t live without it now! It has got very comprehensive information especially on South-East Asian and Indian subcontinental food and ingredients (usually with techniques of preparation), plus lots of recipes as well.
An extract from Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’
Although it is also very comprehensive on Chinese cooking, I do find it lacking in some areas, mind you just in very very tiny areas, one thing I was looking for, for example, dried squid and its preparation is not covered in the book. Although a large book, it has very little illustrations, just a few pages at the end of the book, making it hard sometimes to read about a particular ingredient and having to flip to the end of the book to look for its illustration.
Some of the pretty illustrations at the end of the book in Charmaine Soloman’s ‘Encyclopedia of Asian Food’
Another small thing I find frustrating are the Chinese names given in the book, they are given in direct phonetic translations into English, but did not specified whether they are a translation from Mandarin or from one of the dialects spoken in China. Therefore it is sometimes very hard to decipher their names in actual Chinese characters. I would have preferred it to include actual Chinese characters of the names in the book. However having said that, they are just very small gripes I have of the book. A book definitely worth buying if you are interested in Asian cooking.
The other book ‘Food: the Definitive Guide’ I bought just over a year ago during one of those end-of-year book sale events. It was retailed at $59.95 but was on sale at $12.99, so what could I do but immediately bought it! Now this book has got a lot of photos – I really loved all the beautifully photographed images inside, all so gorgeous too! Makes me drool every time I browse through the book. It has almost at least one picture for each ingredient or food term described in the book.
Beautiful photos accompanying texts in ‘Food: the Definitive Guide’
Of course this book is geared towards western cooking and it is very useful especially when looking up food names or ingredients in their native language, be it French, Italian, or Spanish.
posted by SeaDragon @ 12.3.06
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home