D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch [Hardcover]

Vanessa Barrington (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 25, 2010

For crafty green types who want to master the fundamentals of a scratch pantry and have graduated from simple weekend jam and baking activities, this book offers a wide variety of recipes and blueprints for artisanal food projects. Forty projects with accompanying recipes appeal to a range of skill levels and palates. D.I.Y. Delicious goes beyond pickling and preserving into fermenting, culturing cheese, and brewing sodas and tonics. A total of 75 recipes and more than 50 step-by-step, color photographs lead the way to outfitting a scratch pantry that uses fewer ingredients to make delicious staples at a much lower cost.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Vanessa Barrington is a chef and author with co-writing credits on Heirloom Beans. She lives in Oakland, California.

Vanessa Barrington is a chef and author with co-writing credits on Heirloom Beans. She lives in Oakland, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (August 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811873463
• ISBN-13: 978-0811873468
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,798 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Vanessa Barrington is a self-taught cook who is inspired by the fresh, locally grown produce available in farmers' markets and backyards in her Oakland, CA. neighborhood, as well as the vibrant community of picklers, jammers, urban farmers, and DIY'ers in her community.

She hopes DIY Delicious will encourage and empower readers to take back their kitchens by incorporating the basics of daily food preparation into their lives. By offering recipes for everything from ketchup, to pickles, to sauerkraut, to simple cheeses, as well as ideas and seasonal suggestions for incorporating the basics into easy, everyday meals, she hopes to inspire a new way of eating that is economical, eco-friendly, healthy, and delicious.

She is the co-author of the book, Heirloom Beans with Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tasty read!, October 12, 2010

By 

Elizabeth E. Crane (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch (Hardcover)

This is a useful and well-written book. Vanessa Barrington provides easy-to-follow recipes, just like any good cookbook author should, but she goes the extra mile and gives the reader ways to use what's just been made. Say I make a vinaigrette. So then what? If I follow Vanessa's advice (and I really should because it is excellent), I can use it as a fish marinade, or dress a green salad, or create a grain dish, or... The mix and match possibilities for her recipes seem endless, which makes this book ridiculously useful.

Plus, the recipes themselves are pretty great. I have a family to please, one of whom is a vegetarian, so I am always looking for interesting ways to prepare beans and grains and veggies -- recipes for all three abound in this book. The way the recipes can be juggled and combined really plays into the way I fix meals: some of this for one person, some of the that for the other, with meat as a side dish. This book totally works for the way I cook.

I am a DIY enthusiast (I have a sourdough starter in the fridge, I make canned goods) but I've never made my own fresh cheeses. This book shows me how in a way that seems completely NOT intimidating. And the book itself is nicely produced, with great photos and plenty of friendly advice. It's like having Vanessa hanging out in your kitchen, showing you how it's done. I love that.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Video Review, December 7, 2010

By 

BeachBrights "beachbrights blogspot" (TX) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch (Hardcover)

Length:: 2:25 Mins

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty pictures, Faulty recipes, April 26, 2011

By 

tragedyanne - See all my reviews

This review is from: D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch (Hardcover)

This book is a very attractive and appealing thing to look through. The writer seems to live this peaceful, abundant life and do all the most wonderful things we wish we could do. I can see how it could be "inspiring", as others have said. But if you're a real cook who actually wants to try making some of this stuff, STEER CLEAR.

I am a seasoned DIY cook; I regularly make my own yogurt, pasta, fresh cheese, and bread from scratch. I was excited to expand my repertoire. The first recipe I tried from this book was for Flour Tortillas. It was the darnedest thing-- the recipe called for way too much water! I salvaged it by adding a lot more flour, and they came out good, but I was really taken aback by how off the recipe was. It made me very hesitant to try another. But over time I decided that that must have been a fluke, maybe a typo, and I tried the Whole Wheat Sesame Crackers recipe.

Well, now I am officially convinced: these recipes weren't tested by anyone before they were published in this book. I should have known better than to trust it when it said to process the flour + liquids in a food processor until a dough ball forms-- 2-3 minutes. Two to three MINUTES? In a food processor? Um... But I trusted. I went ahead and tried it. IT SUCKED! There was again, way too much water in the recipe, the dough became a sticky, goopy mess that seeped into the nooks and crannies of my food processor (a HUGE pain in the butt to clean later). To fix it, I had to add a ton more flour and pulse to get the mixture to come together (this is after waiting 20 minutes for the machine to cool down-- seriously they are not meant to be run that long continuously). I kept going and made the crackers...

And here's the part that really bothers me-- the book tells you to pick up your rolled out crackers with both hands and "carefully" place them on the pizza stone that has been heating up in your 400 degree oven. Um... please, no one do that. These crackers, if you manage to even make the dough, are not worth losing the use of even one of your precious fingers. Use a farking pizza peel, my God, if you have a pizza stone you most likely have a pizza peel, or if not you can use the back of a cookie sheet. I have a lot of trouble believing that this writer makes these crackers as often as she would have you believe and uses her hands to "carefully" place the dough on a hot pizza stone.

The most intriguing thing to read about in the book is her friend Rachel Cole's Porridge Manifesto, which I would actually really love to read, but PSYCH! it's not included in the book. It turns out the author herself was not even allowed to read it, but don't worry-- just from talking to Rachel, she got "enough information to start to experiment and pass on some valuable information to you." Oh yes, please do experiment based on what your friend says! And publish your "recipes" in a book that people have to pay for! It's not like anyone's going to try to make any of these things anyway! Who has the time?!?

Well, I do, because it's important to me to make my own stuff, and it's usually really fun, so I don't care if it takes a long time. What I don't like is spending a lot of time on something that doesn't deliver a good product, and making a big mess and wasting ingredients along the way. Sorry, book, you're pretty and all, but I don't want any more to do with you.