Review: Not so Fabulous and not much Freezer
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2013
I've been doing freezer cooking for a while and I'm always looking for new, tested freezer recipes to try for our family. There were some interesting recipes in this short book, but in my opinion, there weren't many that really lent themselves to freezer cooking. If you want to make some of these for the freezer, you will be on your own for figuring out how to increase the quantities (most recipes serve 4), how to best freeze the results, and how to reheat or cook from frozen. Most recipes have many ingredients and steps. The recipes are not grouped in any kind of time-saving groups where you are saving time and money by cooking all the chicken recipes, chopping all the onions at once, etc.There are 4 recipes for each day of the week, but each recipe serves about 4. The author is suggesting you cook all 4 recipes on one day of the week, but there are no amounts or preparation adjustments included for doubling, etc. Also, the day's recipes aren't related in any way, so they aren't grouped together to save time and ingredients.There is a brief (very brief) introduction to freezer cooking at the beginning of the book, but if you haven't done freezer cooking before, this will not tell you how to do it. I wasn't expecting a "how to" book, but I did expect specific freezer instructions for each recipe. I also totally expected instructions for how to reheat/cook the frozen meal. There are no instructions for that, so you won't know if you should defrost first or microwave or put it directly in the oven...or at what temperature or time. I buy someone else's freezer recipes because I like that someone else has already tested this and will save me the trial and error. I really don't think these have been tested.The cookbook seems to be written by a UK author, so some of the ingredients and measurements are going to be different for a US cook. Since I've cooked from UK cookbooks (not edited for the U.S. cook) in the past, I know that some British measurements may also differ from standard US ones and that could make a difference if you expect to follow the recipe precisely. Some of the ingredients are not ones that most US cooks might not have on hand or even find at the grocery store easily. I was curious, so I had to google to find out what an aubergine or courgette were (eggplant and zucchini.)There are some things that just don't make sense for freezer cooking. There's a roasted chicken recipe that tells you to add various ingredients and then follow the cooking instructions on the package. ??? If you know how you're supposed to roast your chicken, the recipe is only for 4-6...so again, how do you translate this to cooking in freezer quantities? There's a dessert that has a toasted sugar topping (with a broiler or torch), but no mention that this must not be done before it's frozen.The last 8% of the book has ads for other cookbooks from this publisher group (not freezer cookbooks).