Customer Reviews

The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook Volume II

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

 

 

San Francisco has a very unique food and restaurant landscape with more ethinc cuisines on offer than in any other city in the US. This is reflected very well in this outstanding volume that brings together another great selection of eclectic dishes from local restaurants and coinisseurs. This is quite a big book and it is bursting with good stuff. It is also what I call a "no fluff" cookbook that really only has recipe after recipe, with no glossy pictures and other decor.

The recipes are well-written, easy to follow and also organized extremely well. This is a detail that I look for a lot, since you want to be able to pull a cookbook out and get right to the section of dishes that might interest you for a particular type of menu. Many of the more glamorous cookbooks are meant for browsing rather than serious searching, this is not.

If you are a beginner cook who needs visuals with every meal, this book is not for you. Basic cooking skills and a basic recipe skills are a must.

Now that I live in Dallas, I often long for the Bay Area food I grew up with, which has a lot more vegetables and variety than Texas cooking. San Francisco Chronicle has had a wonderful selection of recipes for years, and this cookbook is a wonderful compilation of some of the best. I received this cookbook as a gift.

There is a wide variety of recipes in here, from traditional to ethnic, vegetarian to carnivore. There are, of course, complex recipes because it is the Chronicle, but there are also many recipes that sound fancier than they are. My "meat & potatoes" Texan husband & I both loved the pork chops with lavender and rosemary. The lemon curd is to die for, too. Neither of those recipes required more than a basic knowledge of cooking - just fresh ingredients & an ability to follow instructions. There are a few recipes that call for ingredients that are more difficult to find outside of a foodie area like the Bay Area or in places like Dallas where Asian groceries are limited. But for the most part, recipes call for basic fresh ingredients available anywhere.

If you're looking for a pretty coffee table book, there are no pictures. But if you want a cookbook with a diverse selection of great tasting recipes (I haven't had one fail on me yet), this is it.

I have used this cookbook and several other volumes in the series for about four years. At one point, I misplaced it, and immediately I went to Amazon and ordered another copy.
The recipes are clearly presented and are delicious to cook! My mother was a librarian but not much of a cook. She always said, "If you can read, you can cook." This statement started me on a lifetime of enjoying cooking recipes in cookbooks.

This book gives simple but good recipes for using the local vegetables and fruits that are available at the local farmer's market. I have clipped many of the recipes from past FOOD sections of the newspaper and now I have them all in one easy to find place. I like to cook new recipes and enjoy ones with lots of flavor and I find that in this book.

I've lived in SF since 1970 and I love these cookbooks - I rarely read the paper on Wednesday, but I know the recipes are great, and these books are the best way to collect the best of the best from the local paper!