Review: Top Rating From Someone Who's Picky
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 20, 2011
Barbara Bretton's cookbook is a delight, a real gem.I hate most cookbooks. Many of them have no real reason to exist. Sometimes, I wonder if the author had ever made the recipes! A lot of them seem to be collections of recipes plucked from ads in women's magazines or the backs of cans.It's easy to tell that these are Barbara's favorite recipes. The collection is eclectic and uneven, just like the cards in your mother's recipe box, and it's pretty apparent that she's not only typed in the recipe on the card, but she includes notes on how she ACTUALLY makes the recipe!I don't like it when recipes call for "patent foods", things like Cool-Whip or Betty Crocker White Cake Mix, because the recipes for those things change over the years. Mrs. Bretton suggests Rotel diced tomatoes in one recipe, but also lists an alternative - and Rotel is pretty basic, being tomatoes and hot peppers diced together. She calls for broth, and recommends College (College Inn?) but she suggests vegetable stock or soup base and filtered water would be suitable as well. These aren't "convenience food mash ups", these are recipes for REAL foods. The one problem is "Spike" seasoning. It's available online - but a $3 bottle of seasoning costs $6 to ship.Most cookbooks are fairly boring to read. When my late first wife gotThe Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece, and Rome, she thought it was a wonderful read. When she tried to follow the recipes, though, they were terrible, not just one of them, but all the recipes. The recipes in Mrs. Bretton's cookbook, however, include several that are similar enough to things I regularly cook, that I know they will taste good.The biggest problem with the cookbook is that she talks about making her own bagels - and fails to include her recipe. That's especially disappointing, because I'm trying her recipe for Pasta e Fagiole (Pasta Fazool) tomorrow, and fresh bagels would go well with it. The other shortcomings? Well, there's a wonderful restaurant mentioned with no name - and no address.It appears that Mrs. Bretton writes romance novels. I can't judge them - but I know a great cookbook when I read one.