Customer Reviews

Art and Cook: Love Food, Live Design, Dream Art

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I was first drawn to this book by the innovative egg-carton packaging and the captivating title and cover design. This unique and delightful cookbook presents all at once a celebration of great food and a salute to fine art.

The recipes offer a tempting array of appetizers, soups, salad and vegetable dishes, meats, poultry, and desserts - some with a European flavor, others Mediterranean and Middle Eastern. Each recipe is accompanied by a professional photograph, and clear, concise instructions that allow even the novice chef to successfully recreate the dishes.

I am particularly impressed by the ease with which I can prepare and present these foods. The complexity of the flavors in each recipe belies the simplicity of execution. For the first time I am able to prepare a dish that really looks like the beautiful photograph in the book! Favorite recipes include Fettuccine Alfredo with Asparagus Tips and Walnuts, Grilled Chicken Soup with Carrot Dumplings, Orange and Cognac Beef Stew over Egg Noodles, and Crepes with Vanilla Pastry Cream and Citrus Sauce.

Of note, too, are the intriguing, and often humorous nods to famous artists and their brand of surreal, abstract and conceptual art. The architects of this book are genius in their creativity, and masterful in their execution.

I highly recommend "Art and Cook" for gift-giving and for personal use!

If you want a cookbook that is so poorly edited that you will have multiple extra ingredients from the ingredient list that are not used in the recipe, then this is the book for you.

Entire paragraphs seem to have been cut out of the recipes for the sake of page layout.

What a piece of garbage. I have never been one to burn books, but this is a good candidate for the incinerator.

I bought this book because of a rave review in the LA Times. It was intended as a gift but I would be too embarrassed to give it to anyone. Rarely have I seen a worse designed book. It looks like first generation web design blown up and printed between hard covers. The recipes themselves look interesting and the photos are cute but the prentious verbiage and overblown graphics gave me indigestion before I set foot in the kitchen.

Ok, so you aren't going to use this cook book to make your sunday dinners, but this book is a BLAST. The recipes are beyond what you would find in your run of the mill cook book, and you'll finally feel like you're pushing the boundaries and finding new flavors. The layout is outrageous, but who cares? Sorry if you can't follow a recipe because the art is distracting, but I've never had more fun pulling recipes out of a cook book. If you want to cook more than your average M-F family dinner, pick up this book. Totally worth it.

Just have FUN

This is a book to be devoured by the intellect while visually stimulating your hunger pallatte. After reading some of the negative reviews, I realize these authors are cooks not artists. To try to collide two disparate disciplines with such style and artistic whimsy is indeed a daunting task, but mastered deliciously by the graphic artists and chefs. Amazing collusion of effort. The only problem is, that the graphics and food combinations are so alluring, the book will never make it past the coffee table to the kitchen.

C. Ratfield

I was very impressed with this book. Art and Cook is a very original concept and a great conversation piece for your coffee table or as a gift. There are fun recipes and VERY fun design to compliment them. This was a great purchase. The package alone is worth the cost of the book!!

Very Recommended.

The creators of this book are genius. I got this book as a holiday present. For the first time I could cook a gurmet dish so easy and talk about the concept behind the recipe. Its one of kind cookbook Infact its a collectible cookbook.
Worth any penny.

Aside from the fact that the book was plagiarized by Allan Ben from unknowing photographers & designers who were swindled out of their ideas, designs, compensation, and credit - the book has no soul. There is no "running thread" or theme. Not one original thought. Not even worthy as a coffee table book. Don't embarrass yourself - you deserve better.

I use the words freakish and pretentious to describe this book because not only is it filled with "the cloud" (frenetic repeated techno-graphics used so commonly in early 90's websites) it reeks of turtleneck sweaters and black berets. The graphic design and images are distracting, at times distasteful, and on occasion, enough that I want to slap the book shut and hold it with two fingers away from me at arm's length.

Some of the images scare me. Take a look at the front cover. You see the eyeball EYEing you from inside the egg? If you perhaps think that a cookbook is about how food should eat you, then maybe it's for you. Or if you want to create food and have a nice display to put next to it when you display it in a gallery, maybe this book is good choice.

This is not a cookbook. It is a graphic design study with the subject of unappetizing food.

This book has mediocre art value and no cook value. At 9.99 it would be expensive.