Customer Reviews

Monterey's Cooking Secrets (Books of the "Secrets" Series)

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

 

 

This book is a travel souvenir cookbook centered on Monterey, California. Fish, who has worked in the travel industry for years, has written a series of books that combine her interests of travel promotion and cooking. In this book, she takes us on a virtual culinary tour of the Monterey area, from Pacific Grove to Carmel to Big Sur. For each small community, she presents a brief one-to-two page historical introduction to the area. This is followed by a selection of favorite recipes from restaurants, inns, and bed-and-breakfasts located in the area. The recipes are quite varied, and include appetizers, soups, entrees, desserts, and drinks.

I was quite impressed with the short summaries of each district that Fish provides. They give an accurate and interesting introduction to the region for visitors. The selection of recipes isn't quite as useful, however. These are recipes that may be signature dishes for each dining establishment, but they lack cohesiveness for a cookbook. They are ordered by district, then by establishment, not by topic, so recipes of different types such as chowders are scattered throughout the book. Such an arrangement means there is a bit of repetition, with several establishments submitting almost identical recipes for the same dish, such as tiru misu. Surprisingly for a cookbook based on geography, there is little local flavor represented, and we find recipes for such dishes as Boston clam chowder. What's special about Monterey food? Unfortunately, you can't find the answer here, although the book provides plenty of decent general, rather than regional, recipes.

I have liked all of this series, but this one is the weakest- seems to be a lot of duplications of recipe types (ie 3 or 4 simillar fish recipes..). I still like the resturant overviews and layout tho. This one just seemed stale..(the Southern book is TERRIFIC.)