Customer Reviews

Cook's Companion

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading this book is like having an older, wise experienced cook hold your hand in the kitchen as well as challenging you in the ways various ingredients can be employed. Every recipe works. The margins are filled with hints to encourage exploration of simple but dramatic food choices. The recipes for Stephanie's steak sandwich and favourite roast chicken are so good that my family repeatedly requests them. The book is organized by principal ingredient with chapters devoted to chestnut, chicken, lettuce etc. I have bought 3 copies - one for myself and one for each of my children to take when they (eventually!) leave home and set up for themselves. This book and a a good market guarantee a life appreciation of great food and confidence in preparing same.

This is really the most amazing cookbook. In many ways it is like the famous French gastronomic dictionaries with explanations of the foods that we eat and the seasonings and other basic ingredients, but it also has fabulous ways to use and appreciate these ingredients. As Stephanie is one of Australia's most famous cooks, we are also privy to many of her secrets and favourites - really yummy things!

Best of all it is extremely readable - I mean sit comfortably and read it simply for the pleasure of the contents. It explains why certain cuts of meats are the best, how herbs and spices grow and are used, different ways of working with fruits and vegetables - it is a spectacular scholarly and entertaining book.

As a collector of books I am also lured by the glamour of glossy cookbooks with their mouthwatering recipes and artful pictures. This book has none of this, but it is smeared with chocolate and dappled with olive oil, lemon juice, flour and dried parsley. Surely this is the best indication of a level of usage for any cookbook. Track it down and buy it!

This book begins humbly enough...set out like a dictionary, it lists ingredients and then a selection of recipes for each ingredient. But it is so much more! Not only does she describe the ingredient in detail, she discusses all the important aspects of it, for example varieties, storage, cooking methods, etc. It really comes to the fore if you say, have a particular ingredient that you would like to include in a dinner - just go to that section and there will always be a fabulous selection of dishes to prepare. It must have been a massive undertaking for her to write and I admire the throuroughness that she has achieved. The book includes recipes from all over the world, as well as a few recipes "that her mother gave her" (see her other book with this title). Bravo Stephanie - it is my all-time favourite cookbook and reference book in the kitchen!

The best companion a cook can have - I use it every day. For tips on storage, types of food, seasons etc. Not to mention the recipes. Handy having recipes listed by ingredient not type. Every cook should have one.

Stephanie Alexander has long been a driving force championing Australian food and cooking. Her opus magnum is 'The Cook's Companion', an encyclopaedic compendium of foodstuffs, cooking techniques, equipment and of course hundreds of recipes. The book is handsomely presented in a burnt orange hardback format and is superbly cross-referenced, full of tantalising hints and suggestions for the preparation and presentation of the produce Australia has to offer. This book is a masterpiece which I read daily, often taking it to bed only to fall asleep planning a menu for the next day. In a time where supermarket shelves are filled with pre-prepared ready-to-cook meals, Stephanie Alexander exhorts us to explore our gardens, plant new herbs, visit markets, make friends with the butcher and in essence, celebrate and enjoy food from selection to consumption. I cannot imagine life without this book - it holds pride of place in many thousands of Australian kitchens and deserves to become a family heirloom in all of them

Stephanie's recipes are everything they can possibly be: fresh, inovative, and oh so comforting. I dare you to find a better and more readable cookbook!

I am one of those cooks who likes to collect only the very best cookbooks- Larousse for France, Hazan for Italy, Fearnley-Whittingstall for meat, Casas for Spain, Kennedy for Mexico. And for Australia? Stephanie Alexander. It has wonderful information about the products and how to prepare them, with perfect easy recipes for beautiful classic immigrant cuisine (Gingerbread? Lemon slice? Minestrone with fresh borlotti beans and cavolo nero? Ceviche?) In the margins she has fantastic little inspirational notes for cooks who don't need measurements, such as "another beef salad: combine light soy sauce with fresh lime juice, fish sauce..." It is a big, heavy, gorgeous but durable book that you will love to see on your shelf almost as much as you love cooking with it. It is organised by ingredient, like Larousse, so you can say, "Hmmmm, I have a lot of potatoes. What can I make?" If you live in Australia, buy this book. It will give you everything your mum used to make. If you don't, buy it anyway- if your mother is Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Mexican, French...it might just have something she used to make too. But maybe even better.

Whenever I am in cooking strife, am looking for a simple reminder on how to do something like make homemade pasta, or want to explore for a tasty recipe I'll turn to my copy of the Cook's Companion.

This is my recipe bible and I love it!

It's a big claim, but this might be the greatest cookbook ever published.

The crowning piece of the author's long and distinguished career, it is utterly comprehensive, authoritative and, befitting its title, friendly and companionable.

Alexander begins with a general introduction followed by thorough sections on equipment and basic ingredients, preparations and techniques.

Then follows the main body of the work, which runs to more than 1100 pages without ever seeming too long or even too heavy. Well over a hundred ingredients, starting with abalone and ending with zucchini and squash, are covered. She begins with introductory remarks, which often venture into history and folklore, sometimes spiced with appropriate literary quotations. Each entry has useful notes on varieties and seasons [although here adjustments will need to be made for northern hemisphere readers] on selection and storage and on preparation and cooking.

Then come the recipes. Each ingredient is given at least two or three recipes, the more significant might have a dozen or so, with cross references to maybe as many more elsewhere in the book.

This is a book to lose yourself in, to seek inspiration in, to answer any of a hundred and one questions.

No serious cook deserves to be without this.

I own the first edition as well as this one. Every recipe that I have used in this cookbook works! Perfect for seasonal cooking too, because it is organized according to ingredients. I am an intermediate level cook, but would happily give this to a beginner cook too. You can follow the recipes precisely, but it also encourages you to be your own cook - with suggestions of matching flavours and combinations. When friends ask which cookbook do I recommend, I automatically recommend this one. I own over 200 hundred cookbooks - and this is the ONE that is not allowed out of the kitchen.