Good to Eat: Flavorful Recipes from One of Television's Best-Known Food and Travel Journalists (Hardcover)

~ Burt Wolf (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wolf, in this companion to his public television show, promises healthy and flavorful foodAa difficult task, he says, because flavor often comes from fat. Unfortunately, what results is muddle: Skimming fat off chicken stock won't help if recipes call for bacon (Bahamian Grilled Chicken; Green Bean and Potato Salad), sausage (Hearty Bean Soup; Beaufort Stew) and cola (Cola Baked Ham). Skillet Spanish Rice, which could easily fulfill Wolf's criteria, is bland. Recipes are organized by food type and are accompanied by sketches of luxurious venues, but from the Excelsior in Rome to Antonio's in Las Vegas the pasta remains Olive Garden variety. Wolf recommends using pre-packaged ingredientsAcanned clams in Clam Chowder, despite a preface on fresh clams, and fig preserves in Fig-Glazed Pork ChopsAfrustrating to those who like cooking from scratch. He provides such alternatives as rum, Cognac or orange juice in Tiramis?, but mainstays like heavy cream (Napa Crab Cakes) and processed starches (white bread in Cod Steaks with Tomato Sauce) will daunt dieters. Fans will enjoy Wolf's fifth collection if they can wade through the simple filler (Mozzarella Rice), but the book's unlikely to win many converts. Authour tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The companion to his new PBS series, Travels and Traditions, Wolfs latest is another collection of recipes and esoterica gathered on his travels throughout the United States and abroad, from Richmond and Las Vegas to Scotland, Norway, and the Caribbean. Recipes are organized by course rather than locale and therefore seem to jump around. Most of the headnotes read more like encyclopedia entries about ingredients than background about the dishes themselves: how, for example, did Chicken Stogies with Clapshot get its name? Boxes scattered throughout the text include travel lore, history, and stories Wolf picked up along the way, but generally this is not as entertaining as his earlier books, such as Burt Wolfs Table (LJ 8/94). Overall, a disappointment; however, the authors name and the PBS series will generate demand.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubelday (April 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385482663
• ISBN-13: 978-0385482660
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,020,418 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting,confused presentation of two different subjects, July 13, 2004

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

`Good to Eat' by Burt Wolf has a simple title with a double meaning, as it signifies that the food it presents is both tasty and good for you as well. Tie this together with its being a companion to an `important' PBS culinary / travel series by someone whose other series have won a lot of awards, and you wonder what can possibly keep this book from being wonderful.

There are several good things about the book. The first is the fourteen-page introduction to nutrition entitled `You Are What You Eat'. This information appears in dozens of other well-known books, however this discussion is an excellent summary of all this stuff, even if it's visual aids for the discussion of types of fats is not up to an Alton Brown standard of excellence. The best recent other culinary / nutritional combo book I can mention is `The Healthy Kitchen' by Andrew Weil, M.D. and Rosie Daley. Both books nutritional information seems reasonably up to date; however, Weil does not have to warn us that he is not a doctor.

The first problem I sense with this book is that it is trying to do two very different things, and it ends up so diluting its energy, that it does neither well. After it's impressive opening to a discussion of nutrition, the author seems to drop the subject and launch into a culinary travelogue which has none of the panache of Tony Bourdain a la `A Cooks Tour' or much of anything else going for it, aside from bits of useful information from all parts of the world, with not much tying it all together. Specifically, the remainder of the book consists of sidebars on semi-exotic locales such as the Bahamas and Belgium, with recipes from posh spots at these locations. Tell me what is so great about that. The recipes do contain incidental comments on the nutritional properties of some of the dishes, but not a thing to tie them all together. There is also nothing whatsoever that tells me how dishes selected from exotic waterholes are necessarily nutritious. I can occasionally get put off by, for example, Kathleen Dalhmann's cheerleader disposition, but she certainly stays on message, and you have faith that all her dishes have something about them which will help you loose weight, as long as you don't eat 5 portions of the dish.

Speaking of Ms. Dahlmanns and Rachael Ray and Sara Moulton and Bobby Flay and Tyler Florence and Mario Batali and Jamie Oliver, none of these Food Network worthies have ever put out a cookbook which is DIRECTLY tied to the content of one of their shows. Many have come close, some so close that they have had books with the same title as one of their TV shows, but, oddly enough, it is often the case that the book came first and the TV show is based on the concept of the book, as with both Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay. A singular exception to this is Bourdain's `A Cooks Tour', but that is not a cooking show, it is pure travelogue. I have seen more than one PBS Culinary Show / Book tie-in which just didn't seem to work, if you never saw the show. Julia Child is the only principle character in this mold (well, she created the mold, did she not) which works, as with her collaboration with Jaques Pepin. But then we are talking about caviar and truffles here. You could put Julia and Jaques on Nick at Night at 2 AM and print the results on toilet paper and it will come off well. But getting back to Burt Wolf.

One symptom of how this book does not work is the fact that all color plates are located in two special rotogravure sections at the first and second third of the book. These pictures include locations and dishes discussed elsewhere in the text, with little rhyme or reason to their placement. All this leads me to believe that `you had to be there to enjoy it'. That is, you had to see the TV show to appreciate the content of the book.

I do not want to give the idea that the recipes in this book are bad. Quite the opposite is true. The problem is that the author gives many recipes for classic dishes such as Baked Alaska, Pecan Pie, Peanut Butter Cookies, Blueberry Muffins, Pound Cake, Tiramisu, Zabaglione, Linguine Puttanesca, Rice Pilaf, Beef Stewed in Beer, Chicken Cacciatore, Codfish Cakes, and Fish in Puff Pastry, which are available in dozens of other sources with better reasons for appearing there. If I want to learn how to make Fish in Puff Pastry, I would much rather read how Jaques Pepin does it in his own words. If I want yet another recipe for Puttanesca, I would rather see Marcella Hazan's authentic version or `Cooks Illustrated's' riff on how to make the BEST pasta Puttanesca rather than see it in a collection like this simply because it is a famous dish.

I also do not want to give the idea that the travelogue sidebars have no substance. Most are interesting and most say something I did not know.

Three stars is my standard rating for books with good content where the buyer must be careful in deciding to lay out cash for the volume. If you loved the TV series and wish to recapture feelings you had when you saw it, get the book. Otherwise, especially if you have the least bit of a cookbook collection, pass it up.