145 of 148 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No-fail recipes for everday meals, September 5, 1999
The book teaches you everything you need to know from how to hard-boil an egg to stir frying broccoli. It makes are great gift of any beginning cook.
Recipes include breakfast foods, eggs, breads, soups, sandwiches, salads, main dishes, vegetables, desserts, & appetizers. There is no gourmet fare here, just the delicious uncomplicated meals for everyday people.
Some of my favorite desserts are the apple dumplings & easy lemon chiffon pie. I enjoyed the oven pot-roast, meatballs, chili, & pork chops as well. I know I will never get bored with 8 different potato recipes.
I also loved the one-step lasagna. It's great because you don't have to cook the noodles before baking, making it quick & easy to make. The never-fail cheese soufflé & salmon pate will impress dinner guests without hours of frustration.
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256 of 276 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
NOT for beginners. Assumes a lot., March 24, 2006
This is overall an excellent cookbook. It's simple, easy to follow, and has good recipes. Not great but good. That being said, this is NOT a book for the absolute beginner. It assumes that you know a lot of basic terminology and technique, which is really stupid considering the title.
The book is marketed for people who don't know how to boil water, and yet on the very first page it tells you to fill a saucepan with cold water and immerse an egg. A SAUCEPAN? I don't know about you, but when I was a beginning cook, I called that particular item "a pot" -- the word saucepan is correct, but you'd need to be a culinary sort of person to know that a saucepan is not a pan at all, that is, not an object which is wide and round but only an inch deep. A novice cook sees the word PAN and thinks of a skillet\spider\frying pan. Most people do; it's an understandable error.
I gave my sister this book and asked her what she'd do when confronted with the instruction to fill a saucepan with cold water and immerse an egg. She went into the cupboard, took out a 14" frying pan about half an inch deep, filled it with water, and stuck the egg in. The egg was about three times as high as the sides of the pan. My sister isn't stupid, she just doesn't know that a saucepan is actually a small pot. Nobody who buys a book titled "How Long Do I Cook a Three-Minute Egg?" is going to know that!
After this, the book goes on with such instructions as, "dice the vegetables finely" ... um, dice? What does dice mean? Oh, it means to chop up? How was I supposed to know that? Into what shape do I chop? How big should the shapes be? How thin is finely? The book says nothing, so if you're unfamiliar with a fine dice, you're screwed.
After that, here's the book telling us "allow to simmer for half an hour" without ever bothering to mention what simmer means. Is it high heat? Low? The same heat I was cooking on before? Does it mean there are bubbles in the liquid? Again, no explanation whatsoever.
As I stated, this is a great book, but I cannot stress enough how it is NOT FOR BEGINNERS.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What I was looking for., February 25, 2006
I bought this book as a gift for my grandchild who wants to start cooking. As I looked though it, I was pleased at its contents. It has the basics explained well with recipes that are simple but not so simple as to be boring. Actually my daughter has used it (mother of the child I bought it for)and was pleased with the recipe she used. I would recemmend this book to anyone interested in beginning cooking.
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