Review: Not basic enough
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 26, 2012
I picked up this book free during an Amazon giveaway. Super-basic instruction in the various ways to cook eggs. Very short ebook; only 202 locations including the introduction and ending statement.Although I'm a good cook, I was pleased to see a cookbook aimed at the inexperienced cook, and eggs are wonderfully flexible. If you can nuke a couple pieces of bacon, stick bread into your electric toaster, and fry or scramble a couple of eggs, you won't starve and you can even feed unexpected company. But these, sadly, aren't quite basic enough. Smedley starts with soft-boiled eggs and is quite explicit as to how long the eggs should cook or stand, but he seems to have gotten tired when he got to hard-boiled aggs as he starts giving ranges and adding "The exact time will depend on how hard-boiled you prefer your eggs to be." Well, duh, but how is the novice cook to know where in that range his preferred hardness will fall? Smedley's instructions for frying eggs start: "I use butter but you can of course use oil or margarine or whatever you prefer." Experienced cooks realize he is talking about some kind of shortening to keep the egg from sticking to the pan, but the inexperienced cook may decide "I like Worcestershire sauce or hot sauce on my eggs, so I'll use that." The results would not be good. Then Smedley instructs: "Crack an egg onto a plate ensuring that the yolk does not break." How? Even experienced cooks have trouble with this, and Smedley gives the novice no help. He also ignores flipping the egg (does he think sunny side up is the only method people like?) or just what "spooning" butter over the egg is. The same shortcomings appear for poaching eggs (no cooking times or ways to tell when the egg is done). For omelettes, he assumes the cooked omelette will slide effortlessly out of the pan; for scrambled eggs, he talks about how "creamy" you want the final product - maybe that is a British term but in the U.S. I've never heard it applied to eggs and don't know what he means. I tried his instructions to push the outside towards the center and it would have resulted in unevenly-cooked eggs, not a uniform scramble, if I hadn't watched and flipped uncooked bits. As is, it's probably a good book for the marginally-experienced cook, but not the raw novice. A few hours' work adding the information that a total newbie would need could make this a wonderful first-apartment or off-to-college gift.