Customer Reviews

Ultimate Potato Book: Hundreds of Ways to Turn America's Favorite Side Dish into a Meal

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I bought this book because I owned others in this series (ultimate shrimp, ultimate ice cream)--and I'm not disappointed. All the recipes are for main courses with potatoes, so this is a book for real potato lovers. Great soups, really yummy stews, and some cool new things I've never seen before--potato casseroles that are way great. I love all the international dishes, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, French, German, African. It's so cool to make potatoes from around the world.

Here's a great set of recipes for every spud-lover in your life. Every recipe is a main course--some fudge a little, like "steak frites," but the authors claim it's not steak frites without the frites. Fair enough. But beyond those, there are a terrific set of international dishes, from Congolese to Japanese, from Chinese to Chilean. Who knew the spud was such an international favorite? And there are plenty of home-spun, American recipes, too. From latkes to hash, here's a book that will make the potato the centerpiece of any plate.

Listen, this may be a completely nitpicky thing but this book has no pictures of the recipes. I HATE when cookbooks have no pictures and after speaking with some folks online I found I am not alone. The recipes "sound" good and we made two of them and they were okay. But there is more to the eating experience besides tasing, the visual is important. I also learn a lot from recipe pictures insofar as how to arrange the dish and to help to "see" if I have done things correctly, which is also part of the learning experience of cooking.

So, I am not saying this is a bad book (I would have to complete more recipes in it) but without pictures it just is not my thing. So I am hoping this may help someone else who feels the way I do.