The Martha Stewart Cookbook: Collected Recipes for Every Day (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With more than 1,600 recipes, there's something for every palate in this handsomely-designed and sturdy cookbook by the author of 11 best-selling books on cooking, entertaining, gardening and home improvement.

From Publishers Weekly

Stewart assembles her previous nine collections in one volume. New material is included in sidebars ("I have been making pastry crusts since I was a little girl") and some recipe headings ("Guests cannot believe that someone has actually stuffed a snow pea!"). Abundant among the more than 1600 recipes is the sort of labor-intensive company fare that Stewart is known for, like the nine recipes (plus more suggested variations) in "Hors d'Oeuvres" for seeded and filled cherry tomatoes, or Pumpkin Pot Pies, in which the meat from herb-roasted Cornish hens is combined with vegetables and a Cognac sauce and cooked inside hollowed-out, three-pound pumpkins that are capped with puff pastry crusts. There are, however, simple dishes such as grilled Chicken Paillard and Pencil Asparagus with Lemon; others draw on ethnic and regional cuisines, such as Saffron Couscous and Soba Noodles with Cucumbers. Line drawings illustrate some difficult techniques; "Entertaining a Crowd" offers recipes for pasta parties, tempura fetes and clambakes.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 edition (October 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517703351
• ISBN-13: 978-0517703359
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #186,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars tsk tsk tsk, September 4, 2000

By	Cynthia Raxter (BYNUM, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Someone didn't proofreading this volume. It is a shame too. It would be a great cookbook and a source of good inspiration otherwise. As it is, it is a dinner party disaster waiting to happen.

Typos abound. Temperatures are forgotten. Items in the directions are not in ingredients list -- and ingredients listed are not in the directions. (Example: Portobella Mushroom Risotto doesn't mention when to add the mushrooms.) The errors are frequently serious enough to render your very expensive ingredients inedible.

And caveat emptor: This is a compendium of Martha's previously published cookbooks. I do not know if the original cookbooks had the same errors.

The book is also overwhelming -- even for a cooking addict. It became a game for me to see how exclusionist the ingredients list could be. I got out my Italian and French cooking dictionaries to figure out the obscure terms. To share the fun I called neighbors and friends from Venice, Paris and Lyon.... What DOES plissee mean????

Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer are better places for novices to start. Experienced cooks will appreciate and their money will be better spent on another volume from James Beard or Cordon Bleu.

It is a great cookbook to get ideas from... but I would hate to be forced to actually cook from it. Martha, my dear: a major revision with a good copy-editor and recipe-checker would make it worth buying.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars better than you might imagine, September 22, 1997

By	[e-mail] (Indianapolis) - See all my reviews

Even if you can't stand Martha Stewart, you may find this a useful, repetoire-expanding cookbook. While it contains a staggering number of recipes, they are well organized, and the index is actually useful (unlike, for instance, the Moosewood Cookbook's). Imaginative but not too far-out or trendy for the average taste, recipes are easy to follow. I have never encountered a typo, a real pitfall for some of these huge, rushed compendium cookbooks. I especially like the chocolate cookies that have a little cayenne (really, it's good!), and the chicken breast saltimbocca. Martha clones can happily imagine themselves sitting down to the table and eating the same food she does (gosh, maybe even at the same time!), and anti-Martha cooks can just whisk off the offensive book jacket and add the big blue book to their cookbook collection without shame

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An inspirational read but recipe results frustrating..., September 30, 1999

By A Customer

Even experienced cooks don't get good results with this cookbook. Recipes are inspiring to read but must be tinkered with to succeed. Usually cooking time and temperature are the culprits but occasionally even ingredient quantities are off. But this has been our experience with most Martha Stewart recipes (they don't seem carefully tested before publication). Try all recipes before planning your dinner party and take notes. Analyze what happens and note how to fix method for next attempt. You will learn from this process but will probably throw your first results down the disposal. Poll your cooking friends, mine all report the same experiences with Martha Stewart recipes.