Customer Reviews

Williams-Sonoma Mastering: Pasta, Noodles & Dumplings: made easy with step-by-step photographs

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

 

 

This review is written from the perspective of a serious home cook that has been studying cooking for 25 years and concentrating on Italian cooking for the last 10 years.

This book is targeted to beginning pasta makers. If you are a skilled pasta maker, there is nothing new in this book. However, if you are new to pasta this book is well done. The directions are well written and the photos of various stages of pasta production as also well done.

The book does an excellent job of telling you which shape of noodle goes best with a given sauce. This is something that the Italians take for granted that most Americans have not been taught.

I also thought the book did a nice job of teaching the reader how to make orecchiette, cavatelli, and ravioli.

If you are new to pasta making this is an excellent primer.

My compliments to the photographer, but the content of this book is mighty thin. I thought I had finally found a book that would go beyond the basic pasta techniques and that would tell how to make noodles and dumplings. Burn my soul! This book has the basic pasta recipe along with a few recipes for sauces and such. There is nothing in this book that you won't find in a comprehensive cookbook like Betty Crocker. Spaetzle isn't even mentioned! Save your money, friends. Or wait a year until they sell the remainders for 50 cents.

The first step to recovery is admitting that one cannot control one's addiction or compulsion, so here goes nothing: I am a cookbook-o-holic. You can't swing a dead cat in my kitchen without hitting The Joy of Cooking or The Grilling Bible (please note: the reviewer does not condone the swinging of dead cats in his kitchen). My addiction, however, is not fruitless, for, after flipping through dozens of volumes of bound banality my eyes have at last landed on a masterwork that slakes my thirst for cook-bookery perfection. I am flabbergasted to find that--at the time of this writing--no other reviewers have exalted this book. Why has nobody elese praised this book? Are people not purchasing it? Have Amazonians let this one slip through the cracks? Will you palate forever shun this elusive eden? Who knows. I don't. All I'm really saying is, well, that this is a damn fine cookbook, one that will, rather than make you work hard at decrypting shoddily written recipes, a better cook. And everyone deserves to be a better cook.

I was given this book years ago as a guide for making pasta, recipes for pasta, sauces, fillings, etc... When looking for this book or a similar one for a friend, I was told it was out of print. I searched two different large box bookstores for another book that was comparable but found nothing! I was able to locate this one through Amazon. After receiving it I find it is the same book as mine with a different cover. THANK YOU. I would recommend this book highly!

Normally, I'm not very impressed by Williams-Sonoma books, but I liked this one enough to buy it. It has lots of full-color pictures, which is good for those of us who get many of our ideas by seeing things. The instructions are easy to understand, and coupled with the great pictures, make you excited to get going making some pasta.