Review: Good for "What Grandma used to make" assuming your grandma was Irish
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 21, 2012
I am usually reluctant to accept book review copies from authors. I've had too many disappointments. But Bryan Bowers' e-book cookbooks seemed straightforward enough, and looking at his website made me feel as though I found a kindred soul. I cheerfully accepted his offer of _Irish Recipes: Mouthwatering Meals Direct From The Emerald Isle_, and I'm glad I did.The Kindle cookbook is a collection of 30 recipes that are "the usual suspects" for home-style Irish cooking. There's nothing astonishing here, nothing that'll make you say, "That's an interesting twist on an old standard." This _is_ the old standard, which is a very good thing if you want to cook dinner the way Grandma did (assuming Grandma was Irish. My Jewish grandma boiled _everything_, so much so that my father never had a roast beef until he was 18. But I digress.)This is obviously a self-published work, and Bowers does some things that a formal editor might query. For example, so far I've made his recipe for Colcannon (which is mashed potatoes, leeks, and cabbage, with milk and butter). It's tummy-satisfying comfort food. But he calls for "3 medium potatoes, quartered and peeled" and I might have appreciated an eensy bit more guidance. Potatoes can vary in size so much that adding "about 12 ounces total" would have been helpful. (I had fingerlings on hand... hmm, how much should I use?) There's also no illustrations at all, which I know bothers some cooks.Yet I _like_ this cookbook. You might argue that you could find plenty of recipes for baked brown bread, boxty, and cottage pie with a quick Internet search. That's true -- assuming you are looking for something specific, rather than, "Hmm, what shall I make tonight?" So if you have a mild interest in Irish cooking, I think this is a very good value.