Customer Reviews

Heirloom Cooking With the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love

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When I received this cookbook I decided to sit down and give it a good once over. I first noticed the beautiful cover, substantial weight and quality feel to the book. In reading the preface it gave me a better insight as to just who the Brass Sisters are, since I had not come across them previous to this book. The helpful tips and hints that they provide you throughout the book, although sometimes basic, are a good reminder of things we often overlook.

Two recipes that immediately piqued my interest were Mrs. Yaffee's Pierogi and Billionaire's Macaroni and Cheese. Two takes on recipes that were a memorable part of my childhood, but made different than how I've always done them. To give this book a full review I decided to try their macaroni recipe instead of mine this time and see what my family thought.

The directions were very clear and easy to follow. Several ingredients I don't normally use were called for here, ricotta being one and although I was confident in my recipe I can honestly say that this recipe won hands down for me. My family knew immediately that this was not my normal "Mac-n-Cheese". They said that as much as they have always liked mine, that this one was very good. I believe the combination of several cheeses gave it wonderful flavor and creaminess.

The Brass Sisters have given us a cookbook that we can feel good about giving to anyone, from your best friend to your daughter to your grandmother. All of the detailed recipes, beautiful pictures and handy ideas will keep you looking at this book over and over. One clever touch I don't want you to miss is the "My Recipes" envelope securely attached to the inside back cover for you to tuck in your own "Heirlooms".

If you already own this book or are just looking for more from the Brass Sisters, make sure to check out this one on baking also sold here on Amazon. Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters: More than 100 Years of Recipes Discovered from Family Cookbooks, Original Journals, Scraps of Paper, and Grandmothers Kitchen

If you collect those regional cookbooks with spiral bindings and hand-typed recipes inside, looking for that "secret family recipe", the Brass Sisters may have written just the book for you. Instead of guessing what "Billionaire's Mac 'n Cheese" or "Mock Chicken Salad" or "Salmon Squares" looks like, you get a handsome large volume lavishly illustrated with pictures and some stories. But mainly, this book is about the food, straight-up American style comfort food.

While I was thrilled to have what looks like the ultimate in mac 'n cheese (Billionaire's) I was actually really drawn to the side dish section, with stuffed baked onions, "church" cauliflower bake, baked butternut squash, caramellized potatoes from a German recipe and a zucchini cheese casserole. How many times am I looking for that covered side dish for a party or to enhance a simple meal of baked chicken? These look tremendous. The soups were less appealing to me, in fact one, tomato peanut butter soup really put me off but I am sure someone out there would probably adore it. There are a lot of good breads, including Baps, those soft Scottish rolls as well as bagels, crackers and a farm rye bread. I plan to be trying quite a few of these.

By far, my favorite chapter, however, is "Home Plates" which are those dishes beloved by men especially (corned beef hash, Shepherd's Pie, Swedish Meatballs, and stuffed cabbage.) Since our household loves traditional American cuisine, this cookbook looks like a roster of champions, waiting to hit home runs in the kitchen. Big (flour-dusted) thumbs up here.

I've found that so many cookbooks try to impress us with their fancy methods, exotic ingredients, and interesting new ways. This cookbook is absolutely marvellous, because it doesn't try to be any of that - they focus on great, homestyle cooking that everyone in your family will actually want to eat!

Dishes like Billionaire Macaroni and Cheese, Louella's Church Cauliflower, Auntie Rose's Vegetable Beef Soup, Deviled Ham and Cheese Strata, and Crispy Norwegian Potatoes had my partner hopping up and down wondering when it was going to be dinner-time. With so many cookbooks he's sniffing the weird new dish with trepidation and I have to convince him to try it.

This is your Grandma's cooking, if you were lucky, and each dish is laid out in a beautiful and simple way. There's some background information on the chef who contributed the recipe or the old-fashioned book it came from, lovely full-color photos of many of the dishes, and the decade the recipe was from, to give you some context of the time and culture.

Another awesome thing? They have a Tips and Touches section for some recipes which give you ideas on how to use what you're making. Like for a recipe for Chicken soup that ends up with chicken lard as a throwaway, they tell you that you can check out a Pierogi recipe that uses chicken lard for the dough, so you don't have to waste. I really felt like they were looking out for me and helping me get the best result possible.

It's a gorgeous book to read and would make a fantastic gift for any young person missing the comfort food of home, or really for anyone who likes to eat down-home food like this. It's beautifully designed and done.

And hey - try that cauliflower dish - amazing! I ate the entire dish over a week's time myself, and still wasn't tired of it at the end.

Heirloom cooking is just another way of saying comfort food, so say the Brass Sisters and even if you only give this book a quick glance you'll know this is a book chock full of comfort food. These are recipes your grandmother might have used. The Brass Sisters have scoured the country, eating here and there, sampling recipe after recipe, saving the best and here they are. If you've ever wanted to be the cook your grandmother was, this book will help you achieve that goal.

Call them farschpais, antipasto, hors d'oeuvre or simply appetizers, they are how you start a good Heirloom meal and some brilliant recipes for them start out this book, then the Brass Sisters move you to Salads and from there onto Side Dishes, then the Soup of the Day. And they don't forget the Staff of Life, breads are important to Heirloom cooking. Of course Home Plates or the main dish is the heart of the meal and here you have some to die for, but will you be too full for the Sweet Finale or dessert.

Boy oh boy there is some good cooking to be had if only you had this wonderful cookbook.

My Grandma always had a big box of note card sized recipes that she did her cooking from. I don't know where she got them originally...from magazines, from friends, passed down from family. All I know is that they were good. When my Grandma passed away, it was my privilege to inherit her big box of recipes, and to insure that her home cookin' wasn't lost.

With "Heirloom Cooking with the Brass Sisters", the "big box of recipes" from many people's grandmothers have been gathered together, sifted through, and the best-of-the-best bound together in one big book. They scoured garage sales and used book stores for hand-written recipe collections, some of which are so old they almost fell apart at the touch. Adjusting the proportions for modern measuring equipment (i.e.: cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, etc...) and adjusting the portions for the modern family (many of the recipes were for families of 10 or more); they tried every recipe so that they could give specific notes and recommendations on each.

The result is an awesome collection of recipes, all with a distinct American flair. Chili Cheese Cornbread, Mrs. Carter's Baked Stuffed Onions, Onion and Olive Tart, Chicken Pot Pie, Danish Roast Goose Stuffed with Apples and Prunes...every single one is a treasure of history and flavor.

The recipes require a bit of skill at times, and this is by no means a "Quick and Easy" style of cooking. Anyone looking for "health food" had better stay away. The Brass Sisters tell it straight in there introduction that to get authentic flavors you need to use traditional ingredients, and that means lard and full heavy cream. Just the way Grandma used to make it

If, like me, you love old cookbooks, particularly ones from churches, women's clubs and the like, this cookbook will probably appeal to you. There's nothing here that requires pink peppercorns or a panini press. Rather it's a book filled with the sort of recipe your mom or grandmother would turn to when searching for a good, filling meal that would bring the family together over the dinner table.

There are hearty, warming soups, filling casseroles, and a collection of entrees which include three sorts of meatloaf and several pot pies. There are good, honest desserts like red velvet cake, and even the ubiquitous jello salad.

The recipes are beautifully illustrated, and look fairly straightforward. After all, how homey can a recipe be if it requires hours of work and a hundred ingredients? The essence of comfort food is, after all, simplicity and honesty. Food that is a pleasure to prepare and to eat, filled with flavor.

I can't help but feel that this would be a wonderful gift, particularly for the holiday season, and especially for that person on your list who always seems to feed the soul as well as the body.

I am just an average cook and who wants to be an average cook forever. I've always wished I could go into the kitchen and whip up something mouthwatering good. Well, I've got a few cookbooks, mostly ones I've picked up at second hand stores and I have, on occasion, followed directions and cooked up something moderately good.

But this book has inspired me to do more. After reading the introduction about Heirloom cooking and how the Brass Sisters put together this book, I felt like I'd been touched by the Cooking Angel, like she'd dipped her magic wand of onto my shoulder and turned me into something special, because these women have inspired me.

I mean, you have to eat, after all, so you might as well enjoy it and not just the eating part, but the cooking part too. And part of enjoying the cooking part for me now is knowing where the recipe came from, it's roots so to speak. After reading what the Brass Sisters say about a recipe, I feel like I want to do my absolute best to do it justice. I guess that's what I'd been missing all along, the inspiration to do well in the kitchen. Now I know that meal making is an art in more ways that one and now I'm not an average cook anymore. Thank you Marilynn and Sheila.

This recipe book should be a must read for every family. You'll find every imaginable recipe you'll ever need for small family dinners or large party gatherings.

Start with appetizers, soups and salads. Enjoy mouth watering "home plates" (entrees) served with delicious sides and unforgettable breads. And don't forget dessert!

My personal favorite recipes are Katherine's Shepherd's Pie, Enormous Popovers and Shoofly Pie.

The book cover of this beautifully illustrated book says "recipes you remember and love" - no doubt YOU will be remembered the first time you serve one of these dishes!

My family reads cookbooks like fiction. We have several hundreds of cookbooks, but in that selection, I do not remember any that come close to resembling this work of art. Marilynn and Sheila Brass with their photographer, Andy Ryan, have put together a book that will give you several hours of reading pleasure before even starting to do any actual work. Although I have not tried any of the recipes yet, and I will be doing that shortly, I have read through the book and the recipes. Let me explain some of the differences between this and most of the cookbooks in the world.

This book tells a story with every recipe. There are attempts to disclose the author of the original recipe and sometimes more information if available about how the recipe was obtained and from which part of the country and era. From this book's beautifully written Preface and Introduction, I began to feel like the pressures of the daily grind were melting away like fresh butter in the pan. My memories were stirred to my meals with my grandparents and family gatherings. That is worth more than the price of the book.

The choices of recipes run the gamut from appetizers to desserts, from Nick's Savory Blue Cheese and Walnut Crackers to Mrs. Julian's Shrimp Salad to Mrs. Carter's Baked Stuffed Onions to Vermont Corn Chowder to Grandma Hail's Buns (bread) to ethnic varieties galore in the main meal section and then to finally the "Sweet Finales" including Milk Chocolate Pound Cake, Red Velvet Cake, Gertrude Woods' Steamed Pecan Cake, Toasted Almond Butter Cookies. Okay, you get the picture.

And pictures of over half of the dishes are professionally staged and taken by Andy Ryan. The covering material for the outside of the book is substantial and should hold up very well. Additionally, the pages are thick paper stock for wearability.

There are many hints included in little boxes on the recipe page for changing the favors and adding additional spice to the dishes. The authors make sure that the cook understands the theory behind the recipes and the ingredients. If there are any ingredients that are beyond the normal ones generally in the kitchen, the authors explain their use and possible substitutions. Reading through these boxes show some very interesting ideas, explanations and hints. I'm not sure what improvements that I could make in this cookbook as they have covered everything and added all the extras. I highly recommend this cookbook.

The first thing that I noticed about this cookbook was the quality of the paper that comprises the book. A cookbook should be able to stand up to kitchen abuse and these pages are a heavier paper stock and should take years of good use. The next thing is how well the book lays open to the recipes and this one does a great job. There is really little need to use a holder or any clip to maintain recipe location. It basically stays on the recipe page. Each recipe is well laid out with easy to following instructions for successful cooking. Loaded with years of cooking information/hints that are not normally found in some cookbooks, this is a nice touch in making anyone a better cook. At the back of the book are blank lined pages for adding comments and other recipe information as well as a pocket to hold other recipes. There are alot of recipes that I'm anxious to try. The first one I'm going to try is the Chicken Pot Pie to see how it stacks up to mine as well as trying the Macaroni and Cheese (maybe my kids will finally give up that blue box). All in all this is a nice quality addition to the cookbook shelf. It is loaded with color pictures and 135 recipes of long time comfort foods. Well worth getting for personal use or gift giving.