Review: If you've ever worked at a "from scratch" restaurant....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 26, 2013
You'll probably have seen some version of most of these. And they're written that way, to a certain extent- if you're familiar with Engrish, Italish, or other simplified variations of English translations for recipes, you're right on it. This cookbook reminds me of many, many recipes, written on various scraps of paper or possibly even 3x5 cards that I've seen over the years- they assume that you know some things about how to cook various ingredients (like carmelizing onions, adding flour to browned butter, etc.) and combining 'em, from kitchens I've worked in. These are sound recipes, if you already know your stuff, and they're definitely tried and true- almost all of them looked pretty familiar. Not bad- nice to see scaled-down versions of stuff I've cooked for 100+ at a time. Items like the Buttery Shrimp and Pasta sell like hotcakes at upper-end restaurants on the coast (we made giant batches of an identical recipe, placed a scoop of it in "boat" casseroles, topped with a cheese blend, and then broiled the cheese, at one place that I worked at 20+ years ago, at about $20 per serving!), but they're ridiculously simple...this is basic restaurant stuff, scaled down. Decent. Not surprising, but decent.