Customer Reviews

Bobby Flay Cooks American: Great Regional Recipes With Sizzling New Flavors

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Flay is really good at combining flavors in great, unique combinations, e.g. Lemon Sweet Potatoes. Here in this his new cookbook he takes regional American recipes and spices them up with his normal approach, Southwestern/Spanish influence.
Great dishes in here, including: Roasted Cauliflower and Lobster Soup with Crushed Almonds, Carmelized Apple Salad with Maytag Blue, Black Walnuts and Spicy Orange Vingarette, Crab Cocktail with Avocado, Coconut, Fresh Chiles and Lime, Sixteen Spice Rubbed Squab with Aged Goat Cheese, White Chicory and Wild Mushrooms, Fresh Fig-Blackberry Shortcake with Maple Whipped Cream, and Toasted Coconut Custard Pie with a Brulee Crust.

These are bright, fresh flavored recipes that will stretch many a cook's reportoire of recipes. It spans cusisines and geographical regions, providing a unique collection. Well done book with wide format, great color photos along with Sources and well done Index.

Don't try this if you're looking for simple dishes. But if interested in stretching and expanding your cooking horizons, this is defintely a book for you to try out. You'll be delighted with the results. Your best yet Bobby.

I have read all of Bobby Flay's cookbooks and made several of the recipes. This is my favorite cookbook. It is so much fun to read and the recipes are so incredibly varied. The recipes are presented well: clearer and more organized than his previous volumes. Julia Moskin, co-author, may be the new ingredient that makes this cookbook so special

Bobby Flay, owner of Mesa Grill and Bolo - along with numerous shows on the Food Network, has published his latest cookbook, "Bobby Flay Cooks American." This collection of regional recipes from his travels across the country is a wonderful way to experience new tastes, new combinations with a little bit of the down home flavor. I love Bobby's use of fresh ingredients and being from the Midwest, it allows me to expand my horizon's with new variables.

A few of my favs are : Mesa Grill's Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon Cream and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds, Shrimp and Avocado Salad with Roasted Chayote, and Pressed BBQ Rueben Sandwich with Homemade Spicy Pickles.

Bobby's unique (New York) gourmet palate expands into this down-home and Mexican adventure with great excitement and enthusiasm. You can clearly see why he enjoys this type of food. I have been a fan of Bobby's for years and really enjoyed this new book. I found it a bit more user friendly than some of his other's and find myself really enjoying the recipes and little intro's about this history of the dish. This one is a hit!

Mr. Flay has some great recipes in here. The combination of ingredients sure makes some delicious food. I've done a handful of these, however, and it seems to me the translation from his mind to the page resulted in some odd results.

We made Steak Frites with Blue Cheese sauce. There was enough resulting Blue Cheese sauce to accompany a dozen steaks, let alone four. I made his candied mango butter (serving size in the book: 4) and halved the recipe for two and have over half of it left. One recipe calls for Shrimp stock - six cups. The recipe for Shrimp stock shows it makes FIVE cups. COME ON! By the bye, who has 3 POUNDS of shrimp shells around for this?

Perhaps I'm too amateur but do keep a close eye on these recipes. I followed many unquestionably and had some gripes.

I like a cookbook that I can use, not one full of esoteric ingredients and recipes with many steps that are many pages long. This book captures the best of both worlds - short, simple (if you're kind of a foodie)recipes that bring glory to regular ingredients. Not another American food goes uptown book, this book keeps the cooking down on the farm, but modifies and combines American ingredients to achieve new and flavorful dishes.

OK, I'll admit it...
I am a Bobby Flay fan. But Bobby Flay Cooks American
is truly Bobby Flay at his best!
The recipes are easy to prepare, with basic ingredients,
with not a lot of frill. Easy to understand, and will
bring you many compliments!

I got this cook book to hoping to find some great ideas for dinner and meals on the grill. After looking through the different recipes I was actually able to put together a great brunch for my mother on Mother's Day. I highly recommend this book for anyone that wants a little challenge when they cook. All the work pays off when you eat what you created.

My wife got me hooked on Iron Chef last year, and since then we have both become fans of Bobby Flay.

I purchased this book about 2 months ago, so that I could do more in the kitchen. I'm willing to try, but I need an instruction manual when it comes to cooking. So far, I have tried a fair number of the recipes, including: catfish, crawfish lasagna, pumpkin soup, crab & salmon cakes, reuban sandwhiches, Cubans, white corn porridge with wild mushrooms, spice-rubbed ribeyes, apple & blackberry cobbler and the apple pie. All have turned out very well, and I have made several of the dishes multiple times.

Bobby Flay explains many things that I would not otherwise have known how to do; such as roasting peppers. This may be simple to most of you, but I appreciate the help. Also, his descriptions of the different types of peppers was very helpful as a guide.

I only have two minor complaints, more like suggestions. First, it would be nice to have pictures of all the recipes. Most in fact do have photos, but I am a visual person and it would help me if all the recipes had even a small picture associated with them. Second, I would like to see the directions for some of the garnishes in the photos and the plating" techniques / directions. As I noted, these are minor suggestions, and I may be one of the few people who would appreciate them.

All-in-all a great cookbook. There is plenty in here to keep you busy, and the food is fantastic.

OK, I'll admit to making only one of the recipes in this book, Sweet Potato-Chicken Hash with Poached Eggs and Green Chile Hollandaise Sauce (p. 32). You are supposed to make patties out of the hash, but the ingredients don't stick together well enough to form patties. The principal binding ingredient seems to be one tablespoon of honey and I actually increased that to three tablespoons on my second try of this dish. I thought it enhanced the taste without over sweetening, but it didn't help the patty hold together. So I tried frying the hash loose and serving it in serving-sized ramekins with the poached and Hollandaise sauce on top. I also tried roasting the hash in the ramekins. Both tasted OK, but neither has the look or consistency this recipe is supposed to be all about. The recipe involves a fair amount of work, so the lack of reliable results was frustrating.

Nothing bugs me more than recipes that don't work as advertised, but it's possible that there was some variable, unforeseen by the author, that messed it up, such as moistness of the ground meet, the consistency of the brand of honey, or whatever. If anyone has any better luck with this particular recipe, please put that info in a review. In the meantime, I question whether Bobby or his people adequately tested all of the the recipes exactly as written. Many of the dishes have no accompanying photos, which might also raise a red flag about testing.

This is the first review I have ever written about anything. I puchased the Mesa Grill Cookbook being no stranger to southwest cooking. It's my specialaty. I have tried a total of 5 recipes in this book and NONE of them came out according to the directions. I've never seen anything like it. Cooking times are incorrect, some of the methods are questionable. Even as I sit here and write this, I am RE-roasting my cauliflower becuase the recipe for the roasted green chili and cauliflower soup called for an odd roasting method that left me with warm/raw cauliflower after the 30 minute cooking time. The Lamb Shanks were outstanding but the sauce needed some extra help and dont even try to make his dulce de leche recipe. I am really disappointed.