Review: Basic Information, No Recipes!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 11, 2012
Grandma was surprised, having read such glowing reviews, to find thatThe Green Gourmet Little Book of Charcuterie : An Introduction to the Art of the Charcutier - Smoking and Curing Meats, Forcemeats, Terrines, Sausages & Blood Puddingswas little more than a book of the most basic definitions (often poorly worded and sometimes wrong at that!) with not a single recipe for a single item in the lot.Grandma found the section on "Charcuterie - Across the Ocean" particularly egregious.  Early settlers to the Americas did not "adapt to using livestock native to the regions."  There was no "native livestock" to adapt to, other than the turkeys raised domestically in Mesoamerica.  Virginia is not known for cured hams because hogs were native to Virginia but because the early settlers raised hogs fed on peanuts, which they then dry cured.  Pennsylvania is not known for sausages because of the "native livestock" but because of the large numbers of settlers from Central Europe.A chapter on "Equipment Selection and Sanitation" has very little to say, though the author takes more than a few words to say it, other than that you need a knife, food handling gloves and a cutting board, and so it goes.There is an interactive Table of Contents, but there is so little actual content it is hardly necessary.  Certainly there is nothing whatever in these pages you'll ever refer to a second time.  Much better and far more authoritative sources abound on the internet.  Save your money.Not recommended.