Customer Reviews

Beer and Good Food (Nitty Gritty Cookbooks)

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I got this book hoping to find others like garret oliver's "the brewmaster's table," which i highly recommend. this is a cook book, with relatively few thoughts about pairing beer and food. the book's divided by meal categories (i.e. soups, appetizers, deserts, poultry, etc.), and within these categories there's several recipes that entail using beer in the cooking process. to start off, "beer cheese puffs". YUCK. this book is filled with "american" cuisine, but is also influenced by british cuisine (hence the welsh rabbit/rarebit recipe).
my complaint is thus that the author tried to hard to find recipes that include beer as an ingredient, when there's nothing new about that at all.
If you ARE looking for a good cookbook that deals with beer as an ingredient AND pairing, I'd recommend Harlow's "Microbrew Lover's Cookbook"--it is wonderful. this book might satisfy someone who doesn't really concern themselves with fat/calorie/cholesterol levels in their diet, but most of the recipes here just seem unhealthy--plus it's really heavy on the stews and soups.
I'd say that the best thing in this book is the recommendations on what each beer style is best paired with at the beginning. it's short and without any creative insight, but good knowledge to have for someone who wouldn't normally think about these things and is curious.
Overall, I doubt I will use this book that often. It just has too many unappetizing-sounding recipes, too many obvious recipes that I could figure out on my own, and not enough about pairing. On the positive side it is well written, the directions are very clear, it has a good index, and most of the bread and meat recipes look pretty good. Plus the book is generally low in cost ;)