Customer Reviews

The Martha Stewart Cookbook: Collected Recipes for Every Day

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Someone didn't proofreading this volume. It is a shame too. It would be a great cookbook and a source of good inspiration otherwise. As it is, it is a dinner party disaster waiting to happen.

Typos abound. Temperatures are forgotten. Items in the directions are not in ingredients list -- and ingredients listed are not in the directions. (Example: Portobella Mushroom Risotto doesn't mention when to add the mushrooms.) The errors are frequently serious enough to render your very expensive ingredients inedible.

And caveat emptor: This is a compendium of Martha's previously published cookbooks. I do not know if the original cookbooks had the same errors.

The book is also overwhelming -- even for a cooking addict. It became a game for me to see how exclusionist the ingredients list could be. I got out my Italian and French cooking dictionaries to figure out the obscure terms. To share the fun I called neighbors and friends from Venice, Paris and Lyon.... What DOES plissee mean????

Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer are better places for novices to start. Experienced cooks will appreciate and their money will be better spent on another volume from James Beard or Cordon Bleu.

It is a great cookbook to get ideas from... but I would hate to be forced to actually cook from it. Martha, my dear: a major revision with a good copy-editor and recipe-checker would make it worth buying.

Even if you can't stand Martha Stewart, you may find this a useful, repetoire-expanding cookbook. While it contains a staggering number of recipes, they are well organized, and the index is actually useful (unlike, for instance, the Moosewood Cookbook's). Imaginative but not too far-out or trendy for the average taste, recipes are easy to follow. I have never encountered a typo, a real pitfall for some of these huge, rushed compendium cookbooks. I especially like the chocolate cookies that have a little cayenne (really, it's good!), and the chicken breast saltimbocca. Martha clones can happily imagine themselves sitting down to the table and eating the same food she does (gosh, maybe even at the same time!), and anti-Martha cooks can just whisk off the offensive book jacket and add the big blue book to their cookbook collection without shame

Even experienced cooks don't get good results with this cookbook. Recipes are inspiring to read but must be tinkered with to succeed. Usually cooking time and temperature are the culprits but occasionally even ingredient quantities are off. But this has been our experience with most Martha Stewart recipes (they don't seem carefully tested before publication). Try all recipes before planning your dinner party and take notes. Analyze what happens and note how to fix method for next attempt. You will learn from this process but will probably throw your first results down the disposal. Poll your cooking friends, mine all report the same experiences with Martha Stewart recipes.

I have tried Martha's receipes time and time again. I can probably count on ONE hand, the amount of times a receipe has worked. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe she leaves something out, or the time/temp. is off. I'm not sure. But, anyhow, they just don't work.

However, there is a bright side to her books (hence, the extra star) they are very entertaining to read. You can certainly gain some inspiration and creativity from her books, but just look for a receipe elsewhere.

Her books are NOT for the everyday cook.

I really enjoy browsing through this cookbook, however, I've found it impractical for everyday use. Many of the recipes call for unusual and hard to find (translation-expensive) items. For example, about 85-90% of the hors d'ouvre recipes call for caviar, at least as a garnish. My warning to you is expect to spend extra money on groceries to make most of these recipes. Also, as many of the gourmet recipes take many steps to prepare, expect to spend awhile in the kitchen.

The recipes I've tried just plain don't work. My latest cooking disaster from the book was the cheesecake. The baking time was suspect to begin with but I tarried on only to pull out the remains of a less than perfect cheesecake to take to a dinner party (my oven has never had temp. regulating problems before). I disguised the almost burnt offering with a raspberry coulis and brought it anyway. Even though I rescued it before it turned completely unedible (with yet 20 minutes left in baking), the flavor was horrid and the texture was that of a block of cream cheese.

The instructions in a lot of recipes are incomplete and I've had to read them through several times to make sense of them. The index is set up strangely and I didn't care for the cheap printing of the book. The binding is coming apart on mine and for such an expensive book, that shouldn't happen.

I didn't give this cookbook a one star rating because I really respect Martha. She has done a lot for the world of cooking and there are several of her recipes from Entertaining that I would never think of not using for someone else's--like her tart crust recipe, creme anglais, sticky buns, pesto...I have used Martha's books for year and they are fabulous. Needless to say, this one was the ultimate bummer for me. If you're a real cook, and not just a collector of cookbooks, this ain't the book. Get one of Martha's others--Entertaining is a classic.

This book is a compilation of several of Martha Stewart's popular cookbooks. Apart from a few illustrations such as rolling puff pastry and splitting pea pods, The Martha Stewart Cookbook is devoid of visual stimulation and, therefore, perhaps not suited to the inexperienced cook. But once you delve into the book and try some recipes, you realize what value for money you have in this 600 page tome with literally a hundred recipes to choose from for each course, all concise yet clearly explained. This book is a wonderful resource for traditional North American cooking. ranging from chowder to glazed ham to devil's food cake.

This book, published just a bit over a decade ago, contains recipes from her earlier works. Thus, this is a "one stop shopping" guide, if one is interested in Martha Stewart's recipes. And, in fact, this is a fine cookbook. It won't be for everyone. I'm not interested in large parties or dishes featuring caviar, and so on. But I do found a lot of neat recipes in this volume. Of course, this is more than just a cookbook. The lifestyle represented by Stewart's enterprise underlies this book. The little hints for making a dinner party special would not be of much concern to many who simply want a set of recipes from which to choose. But that is a key piece of what this cookbook is about.

As usual with better cookbooks, there are some nice extras besides the recipes. This volume features suggestions as to what should be in one's pantry, a few notes to cooks (including one that I have come to learn as true after taking shortcuts [Page xv]: "When you cook with wine, use a wine you would like to drink. Your dish will only be as good as the ingredients you use." And cooking wine doesn't measure up to the real deal.), and a brief conversion chart at the close.

However, of course, it's the recipes that are the centerpiece.

There are 21 chapters, each covering some different aspect of cooking, starting off with "the basics" (basic stocks, pastry for further cooking, etc.) and "hors d'oeuvres." And let me take a moment to talk about one of those that she describes--the redoubtable "croque monsieur." Those few (and special) times that I have been in Paris, I had a lot of lunches featuring this classic. I have also served it as an hors d'oeuvre at some of the relatively few dinner parties for bunches of people that I've organized over the years. My version features a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich, with plenty of butter on each side. Then, you grill both sides on the stove until brown. Yummy. Stewart adds one wrinkle, though, that I aim to incorporate the next time I make this dish--Dijon mustard. Seems to me that that addition would add a nice bit of bite to the croque monsieur. Next section? Eggs. Here, there are a series of nice recipes. I like making frittata's from time to time, and she provides several recipes for this classic that look pretty inviting to me. I suspect I'll experiment with one of those in the not-too-distant future.

Just listing the rest of the 21 sections would take way too much Amazon space, but I'll mention a few other recipes that seem interesting to me. Under "Vegetables," she has a nice turn on my standard recipe (from the Berghoff Cookbook, as a matter of fact) for red cabbage. I add Granny Smith apples, cut up into small pieces, to the cabbage. She suggests, in addition, some onions (which, by the way, the Berghoff Cookbook refers to as well). But it does sound like it would add an extra dimension to the cabbage, so I'll add onions the next time I make the cabbage (which goes very well, by the way, with Chicken Schnitzel). Salads? One that she includes in this book looks intriguing to me: hot salad of escarole and pancetta. Simple to make--escarole, pancetta, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, Kosher salt, and freshly ground pepper.

The recipes for meats and seafood also contain a goodly number that look well worth making, too.

So, in short, a good cookbook. I'm not much interested in the lifestyle aspects of the cookbook, but I just pass that stuff on by and consider the recipes. Some are not so easy to make, but there are plenty that will work. Anyhow, a good cookbook that has been added to my little kitchen library.

I am an amateur pastry chef and enjoy making all sorts of desserts from cookies to my Croatian grandmother's strudel--the dough stretches the length of my table! I bought this book through a remainder house (which sells off overstocks) because it contained some recipes that I hadn't come across before. I've given it two stars because it's beautifully designed and somewhat inspiring--though the pantry recommendations are crazy for anyone with a reasonable budget. Let's face it, vanilla beans are too expensive.

I was sadly disappointed in the creme fraiche recipe. My husband is British and I was looking forward to pleasing him with this condiment that is unavailable in American stores. But it never thickened as Martha promises. (It was disgusting, actually!)

I thought this was just a one-off faulty recipe, but then I made her Chocolate Architecture Pie for a party. I should have known better than to try an untested Martha Stewart recipe before a party. Superficially her description is seductive (as are most of her descriptions, and even herself), but the recipe is insane. The laws of physics dictate that you cannot fold 7 beaten egg whites into 24 ounces of melted chocolate mixed with 5 egg yolks. It's like trying to fold satin into brick. I had to leaven the filling with 8 oz. of whipped cream. It tasted good in the end (in fact, some of my male guests called it "orgasmic"), but it was a modified version, and it was not "architectural."

Simply, it was not what Martha promised--which, I gather from press I've read about her, is characteristic of Martha. She promises a lot but delivers only superficially, and then blames you for getting it wrong. If you're a reader of fine cookery books, you will comprehend that she's not devoted to cooking, she's devoted to her own image. Really retrograde for women, in my opinion. If you want to bake good pastries, for example, try an author who's truly dedicated to good food, provides dependable recipes, and gives liberal credit to those who have inspired him and given him recipes, such as Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Pastry.

This Marth Stewart's best book to date. I found the cookbook to be not only interesting but very useful as well. Since it contains all of the recipes found in her other cooking and entertaning books, it helps to save your money. In the book Martha teches you to make a variety of different meals which can be served at various events: from your daily breakfast and lunch to your wedding feast and cake. The book also introduces you to quite a few marvolous tasting dishes, which you may or may not have tried before