Customer Reviews

Glass Pantry

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I have used the Glass Pantry for 3 years now to make delicious Christmas gifts. I've found the book easy to use, and beautiful to look at. The recipes make small amounts but they're easy to multiply unlike some canning recipes with which you seem to be preserving for an army.

Not all the recipies actually look like the accompanying photographs, and I was wary at first at making my own notes on the wonderfully photographed pages, but after 3 years the book definately has a well-loved patina. Ms. Brennan also does an admirable job of demystifying the canning process. Her instructions and descriptions helped me become comfortable with her recipes and even now with inventing my own.

This was the first book on preserving and canning that I owned. As with the gardening books by Georgeanne Brennan, everything in here is beautifully photographed, arranged in four seasonal sections to guide the reader to recipes that include ingredients available according to what time of year you are canning at the moment.

The author explains first, in near-poetic text, how she came to learn and appreciate preserving seasonal harvests while she lived in Provence many years ago. Guided by the French style of seasonal harvest, she shows us how, by using freshest available, preferably home-grown ingredients, we can make a plethora of delicious and lovely preserves to enjoy or as gifts.

Indeed, the presentation of the preserves' natural beauty through glass is what inspired these unique recipes. Far from a standard how-to canning book with basic recipes, we are presented with unusual varieties of fruit and produce, or perhaps unconventional treatments for more conventional subjects: Nectarine mustard, Yellow tomato ketchup, quince slices in vanilla syrup, Rose hip jelly. Try your hand at Vin d'orange, poor man's capers(using Nasturtium seeds), or sweet-and-sour radishes. Often you will not be able to find enough of the more exotic ingredients at the local supermarket(where am I going to get a cup of nasturtium seed pods, or a pound of rose hips?), and if you do not grow them yourself, you're out of luck. You may come to understand as I did, that the author's gardening background had a lot to do with her tendency to push the envelope in her recipes.

If there is one problem with this book, it is that the current canning standards have since changed, and her often-recommended use of paraffin wax seals is now discouraged for long-term storage of preserves. Still, one could easily substitute hot processing methods for wax seals in many cases.

This is the fourth copy of "The Glass Pantry" I've purchased. It's not simply because Ms. Brennan is one of the rare writers in my experience who combines marvelous writing skills with exciting culinary skills.

The "Pantry" purchases were also made because friends expressed an interest, especially in the current economy, in canning and pickling and I think this is one of the more encouraging and easily utilized books for someone who cooks pretty well but wants to expand their skills. I won't go so far as to say that all three of the people who were gifted with this book started pickling within 10 minutes or even 10 days, but I can say comfortably that they were delighted with the book and periodically call to say that they've tried a new recipe. It's a reaction that keeps me buying the book for new people.

I should add that I'm probably going to have to buy a fifth book pretty soon because my own copy is getting pretty disreputable.

I found and read this book at my local library. I haven't had a chance yet to make any of the receipes so I'm not quite sure how difficult they are. However, there is a great number of interesting and unusual recipes that I haven't found in other similar books. There are a couple of recipes for pesto-like products that look wonderful.

It's not a comprehensive guide -- you can't go looking for a specific recipe, most likely -- but there's at least one good (and beautifully photographed) recipe for most every seasonal ingredient.