14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Reads like a catalog, not a reference, April 20, 2008
This review is from: New Good Food, rev: Essential Ingredients for Cooking and Eating Well (Paperback)
Taking a quick flip through this book has one thinking that the volume is encyclopedic and loaded with good information about ingredients. Unfortunately, the depth of information is very shallow and, in some cases, of unclear value.
As background, I have a good sized bookshelf filled with cookbooks and tend to prefer those that discuss authentic ingredients and techniques over the "quick and easy" type. If I'm looking for information on ethnic ingredients, the source should stand up to content in texts like "
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" (Tsuji), "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking" (Tropp), or "
Classic Indian Cooking" (Sahni).
"New Good Food" often has little more than a paragraph of general information on each ingredient, with the focus seeming to be on why a food store like Whole Foods would select it for its claimed health benefits, rather than providing significant culinary or cultural depth.
There is some substitution information (e.g., sweeteners) and cooking information (e.g., grains and legumes), but its accessibility and depth ("Cut in half or in wedges and steam, or bake with a splash of oil, a favorite seasoning, and salt or tamari.") is not enough to make this book a "go to" for me.
Some of the discussions about what the food terms, such as "organic" and "free range" mean, might be of value to some, but that information is widely available elsewhere.
In some cases, the information is questionable. For example, the section on cooking by color identifies potatoes in the "yellow or orange" group or the "red" group according to their skin color, though the skin is generally not eaten and does not contain the carotenoids at the levels associated with eating "orange" vegetables. It further lists eggplant as a valuable "blue or purple" vegetable, though eggplant has very little value other than a little dietary starch.
"New Good Food" also falls into the trap of "natural is good" on occasion as well. After dismissing all "artificial, nonnutritive sweeteners" (which I generally would agree with), the virtues of Stevia are extolled, because it is a "natural, plant-based substance," even though the "human body can't completely metabolize [Stevia-based sweeteners]." Conium maculatum is a common herb, which produces a "natural, plant-based substance" known as "deadly hemlock." I'm not suggesting that Stevia is poisonous. However, I am aware that it is recommended against for people with liver conditions, probably because of the load its non-nutritive, non-metabolizable chemicals, naturally occurring or not, put on that organ.
With two vegetarians in our family, along with allergy to soy and soy products, I was hoping for a reference on some of the less common ingredients available at market today to complement my current "go to" general reference cookbooks. "New Good Food" isn't about to find a place next to, for example, Cooks Illustrated "The [New] Best Recipe" or many of the excellent CIA series, such as "
Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Professional Edition"
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another useful resource to be used with others, May 28, 2009
This review is from: New Good Food, rev: Essential Ingredients for Cooking and Eating Well (Paperback)
I have given up on ever finding a single book which will identify everything I find in the market, tell me how to select, store and use the product, and whether or not its good for me. So I rely on a short shelf of books e.g.
Melissa's Great Book of Produce: Everything You Need to Know about Fresh Fruits and Vegetables or Cooking With Asian Leaves by Devagi Sanmugam & Christopher Tan (apparently out of print),
Buried Treasures: Tasty Tubers of the World (Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guide) etc. etc. New Good Food is a good addition to the collection.
It's strong points: the section on beans, peas, and lentils provide specific instructions for a wide variety of beans etc. Rather than guessing what class of beans I have, I more often can find the actual bean variety. It doesn't always help ... I still had to struggle with my mideastern "ful" beans that weren't foul beans (North African flat type) that were foul beans (North Indian brown beans). However, if I restrict my shopping to Whole Foods (where the author works.
There is also a wonderful segment on pasta - Jerusalem artichoke pasta, quinoa pasta, sprouted grain pasta, kuzukiri (Japanese kudzu based).
Like most similar books, one needs to take nutritional information with a dose of skepticism - its a matter of which study producing incompatible results fit the bent of the author. On the whole, however, the author appears to try to be even-handed with regards to most of the locavore / slow foods / organic eating contraversies.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a map for the grocery store maze, May 4, 2008
This review is from: New Good Food, rev: Essential Ingredients for Cooking and Eating Well (Paperback)
Most grocery stores today offer a lot more choices than they used to. There are so many types of cheeses, there are different types of apples, there are choices from the Asian food section, there are a lot of different pastas. And then what do you do with these foods? How do you store them? I found this book to be an excellent guide as to what unusual looking fruits or vegetables were and how they could be used; how to store cheeses; what vegetables should not be refrigerated. In other words if I want to try a food that I am not familiar with I use this book to help me incorporate it into my menu. I find the information on storage very valuable since I don't seem to have time to shop frequently and like to buy in at least a weekly quantity.
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