Customer Reviews

The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

CPK brings a wide variety of international cuisines to the pizza crust. I was delighted when they came out with this cookbook, but was disappointed to find that my favorite item from the restaurant, the Oriental Chicken Salad, is not included in the cookbook. Well, they need to get me back into the restaurant once in a while. The recipes make extensive use of cilantro and garlic. Also note, that although the recipes are easy to make (as cited by the other reviewers), the first time you make the recipe it make take a long time. For example, the first time I made the Shrimp Scampi pizza (listed as Shrimp-Garlic in the book), it took me about 3 hours, not including the dough preparation time. This is because just making one ingredient, the roasted garlic, took about an hour. Since then I have learned which ingredients can be prepared in advance. The Shrimp Scampi Pizza with whole wheat crust is the best pizza that I have ever tasted, and that opinion has been shared by everyone who has tasted it. It is better than the restaurant's and worth the trouble. Another family favorite from this book is the broccolli with sun-dried tomatoes. Again, except for getting all that garlic peeled, this recipe has a minimum number of ingredients, is quick to make (30 minutes), is extremely tasty, and can feed a crowd. You feel really special when you get to have this for lunch the next day.

For those of you who don't know CPK, it is a chain of pizzarestaurants in the USA. (There may be some abroad, I don't know.) Theyproduce gourmet pizza including some very unusual recipes which taste remarkably good. If you're after something to impress a weekend casual dinner guest, or just fancy some adventurous cooking, this is the book for you. However, some of the ingredients can be fairly expensive or hard to find. This is not a book for your workday evening meal. No complaints about the recipes I've tried so far; They've all been very good. Picture-by-picture instructions on how to 'throw' a pizza provides a lot of fun. Make sure you have a very clean floor...or ceiling!

I was so excited to find that this cookbook existed that I bought it right away. I love making homemade pizzas. I use my bread machine to make the dough and a pizza stone & their crust recipe is WAY better than the one I was using. The Thai chicken Pizza is my favorite and it's not really that hard to make if you have all the ingredients. You won't be disappointed.

I have given a ton of these books away along with pizza stones as wedding presents (with many thanks!). The pizzas are wonderful! Easy to use and find ingredients. I only wish I had a CPK near me so that I could try the real thing!

My sister gave me this book along with a Calphalon Pizza Pan and a Bread machine as a wedding gift. We use the bread machine to make our own pizza dough, use the pizza pan to cook the pizza in our own oven, and use the cookbook to make the most amazing and delicious pizzas to serve right in our own home! I use these recipes for entertaining all the time and they are really easy, absolutely yummy (even better than eating at the restaurant), and always get rave reviews from my guests! Thank you CPK for sharing these with us!

At a recent family cookout, our host used these recipes for CPK pizzas and they were amazing! Mind you, it took time. In fact, he prepared the dough the night before and spent quite a bit of time assembling all the ingredients. But it was a fun process because everyone was sitting around the kitchen enjoying conversation while others chopped ingredients or checked the oven. Some things are simply worth the extra time and effort. If you are looking for something quick & easy, this isn't your cookbook. But if you want to take the time for great pizza, plus maybe add a little creativity of your own, the CPK cookbook is perfect. The salad recipes are wonderful, too.

To be fair, the food comes out exactly as it does in the restaurants, which is what you want a restaurant cook book to do, but the recipies are very time consuming and call for ingredients you probably don't have at home. If you really love their food, and I do, than you will probably get a bit of use out of it.

I had never heard or been to CPK when this book was given to me. I followed the recipes, and although they call for numerous ingredients, the results are fantastic. The pizza dough recipe is time consuming because you need 2 days to prepare it, but it's worth the effort. Last June, I was in California and went to CPK for the first time. I was surprised to see the results from the book are very very similar to the real thing!

Recipes were excellent and easy to follow, although they were very very time consuming. Since I did not have 1/2 the ingredients, and the dough takes forever, but the final result is EXACTLY like the pizzas at the restaurant. My family was very impressed, and didn't beleive that I had made the pizza! I highly recommend.

This is the best pizza cookbook out there. It is easy to follow, has great pictures and fun, usable recipes. I would give this book as a gift anyday!