Customer Reviews

Fondues & Hot Pots

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

 

 

This beautifully writtten and easy to follow cookbook is all you need to make your family and friends think you've recently graduated from one of the World's great chef schools. Susan Fuller Slack has written several of my favorite cookbooks on ethnic foods- "Japanese Cooking for the American Table" and " MEXICAN - Best of Old Mexico and the Modern Southwest", but this one is even better. It makes my mouth water just to write about it. You should definitely add this book to your kitchen library!

Most fondue books are the size of a pamphlet, or slightly larger. This one is nearly full-sized, and a good 245 pages long. Ms. Slack certainly did not lack for ideas! To a certain extent she got so much further than other authors because she looked further than simple American and European cuisine, dipping (if you'll excuse the pun) extensively into Oriental hot pot dishes, for example.

Chapters include a variety of recipes, plenty of basic information on each type of fondue, dips, and things like the entire side-bar on how to "Jazz Up Your Basic Cheese Fondue." Recipes include cheese fondues, broth and hot oil fondues, hot pots, Nabemono, dessert fondues, and plenty of things to go with: side dishes, salads, breads, beverages, dips, the stocks and broths you'll use in the fondues, and so on.

As if all that weren't enough, Ms. Slack provides endless variations - on dips, on dippers, and on the fondues themselves. This means that there are even more recipes than at first you might suspect! Each fondue comes with a list of possible "foods for dipping," some of which are simple (fruits, bread), others of which she provides recipes for (almond dipping cake - yum!). She provides pages and pages of sources for unusual equipment or ingredients, many of which include web page addresses.

The layout is fairly clean and obvious. My only (minor) gripe is the tendency of recipes to trail from one page onto the back (necessitating flipping around a bit). Other than that, I honestly can't think of a single complaint! Every recipe that we've tried from this cookbook has garnered a great big star next to its title - they've all been fantastic, delicious, and easy.

I ordered three copies of 'Fondues and Hot Pots' for Christmas gifts. One of the copies is fine. The second jumps from page 118 to page 215, then after the index jumps back to page 151. The third skips from page 118 to to page 183, then after 214 skips back to 151.

This book would've gotten four stars (great recipes and hints, but absence of pictures costs a point), but people ordering this book need to be on the lookout for similar printing errors.

I have one gripe about this cookbook-
The recipes are not one to a page. The way it is I find it difficult to find a recipe.

The recipes are very good. The nature of this cooking is that some recipes do require unusual ingredients. However, for the most part the recipes require easy to find ingredients.
The directions are easy to follow.

I enjoy this cookbook.
Enjoy.