Sara Moulton Cooks at Home (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sara Moulton is a very, very busy woman: Food Network host and personality, executive chef for Gourmet magazine, food editor for Good Morning America, and the mother of two children. Now add to that author of her first cookbook Sara Moulton Cooks at Home, in which Moulton delivers easy-to-prepare recipes as well as plenty of timesaving tips. If you wonder where Moulton draws her inspiration from, this book is all about family, including her extended family of friends and professional associates. Her recipe introductions read like an autobiography. She shows how it is done, and then she challenges the reader to do much the same with his or her own family of recipes. Moulton's 200-some recipes break down into standard sections such as hors d'oeuvres, soups, salads, meat, pasta, and so on. But she also pays homage to vegetarian main courses, light lunches, and breakfast and brunch. Look for Gingery Chicken Broth with Wonton Ravioli, Blasted Chicken (it's about roasting at high temperature), Sautéed Pork Loin with Mustard and Grapes, Roasted Salmon with Warm Lentil Salad, Andrea's Blackberry Crumble, and her own daughter's contribution, Ruthie's Chocolate French Toast with Raspberry Sauce. Sara Moulton Cooks at Home is about real food for real people. Sometimes it's homey, sometimes it's homely, and sometimes it puts on a string of pearls. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly

The food media juggernaut Moulton (executive chef for Gourmet, food editor for Good Morning America, and Food Network host) has designed an all-purpose working cookbook for a wide audience. That means lots of chicken, pork and beef. Most recipes are fairly straightforward (spinach salad, chicken tarragon, parsnip puree); a few are elaborate, like the weirdly multicultural Fontina-and-Prosciutto-Stuffed Wonton Ravioli with Porcini Sauce and the Seared Sea Scallops with Celery Root Puree, Parsley Oil, and Lemon-Caper Brown Butter. The book is filled with helpful tips, anecdotes (told in the unflappable, all-American Moulton style) and photographs of Moulton as a young girl, gradually working her way up through restaurant kitchens-hard at work, eyeing the camera with a determined grin. The book does lack focus, and there isn't much that differentiates it from other homestyle cookbooks. But Moulton's thousands of fans will certainly flock to it, leaving their Joys and Fannie Farmers on the shelf for a while as they tackle such dishes as Roasted Ratatouille Crepes with Goat Cheese.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (October 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767907701
• ISBN-13: 978-0767907705
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #313,623 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All around good cookbook, January 23, 2003

By	Elizabeth S. "elizh77" (High Point, NC USA) - See all my reviews

Sara Moulton is by far my favorite TV chef, and I've been watching her for about 3 years on both "Cooking Live" and "Sara's Secrets." If you've ever tried her recipes that are available from her shows, then you know that her style of cooking is simply all around good food. Her show has inspired me to try new things and styles of cooking, and this cookbook continues in that tradition.

The recipes in this cookbook appear to be a bit more difficult than the ones that she usually features in her shows, but they are still very reasonable. The variety of recipes runs from hors d'oeurves to soups to meat dishes to deserts. There are even separate sections on vegetarian main courses and breakfast foods. Most of the meat dishes also include a tidbit letting you know the appropriate wine to serve with that dish. The beginning of the book includes a special section that defines what the the items in recipes mean (like when she says eggs, she means large ones). I especially like the section she calls Pantry. This includes simple recipes for essentials such as chicken stock and vinaigrette dressing.

She has included personal stories with almost every recipe, and many of the recipes have been inspired by close friends and family. For example, she tells how her sister makes wonderful cookies and has continued making cookies their grandmother Ruth made, hence the setup for Ruth Moulton's Spice Balls. These personal touches help bring life to the cookbook.

I do wish there were more pictures of the food, however. Even though my cooking never looks as perfect as the pictures in the cookbooks, I like having an idea of how it's supposed to turn out. I do wish there were just a few more recipes that are styled for a quick meal- most of the recipes are a bit time intensive.

I strongly recommend this cookbook, but just keep in mind it's not for a beginner.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good recipes, especially well suited for the home cook, December 9, 2003

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

As the title of her book indicates, Sara Moulton's recipes are aimed precisely at what one would want to cook at home if you enjoy cooking, have the time to spend on longer procedures, and do not wish to chase after a lot of special ingredients. In a way, that sounds like a very retro scenario, predating the current popularity of fast cooking, the renaissance of gourmet cooking of the seventies and eighties, the convenience product / soup can cooking of the fifties, and the dark days of the thirties and forties. If you ignore the cosmopolitan sources of many recipes, this a refurbished look at the kind of cooking your first generation American grandmother or great grandmother did at home.

That is not to say these recipes are especially easy. Many are not. However, I have made several dishes from this book and I have gotten more personal favorites from this book than from all my Italian cookbooks combined. That doesn't mean these are the very best recipes either, but they work. When you compare Sara's recipes for chicken stock with those in `The Best Recipe', you find many differences, but I will bet on Sara's recipe or even James Beard's recipe over the `Best Recipe'.

Sara's book includes several things I love to find in a cookbook.

First, it's very chatty and informative about how she arrived at the recipe. Outside of the kitchens of Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio, and Charlie Trotter, for example, there are probably very few genuinely new recipes being created even today. Almost all are variations on traditional classics. How many ways, for example have you seen tomato, basil, and mozarella combined. You will see at least five more variations on this very old theme on the Food Network over the next year.

Second, Sara revels in her roots, and she has very interesting roots to celebrate, as her mentors are three of the most distinguished culinary writers of the last fifty years, including Jean Anderson, Jacques Pepin, and the incomparable Julia Child, for which Sara was an assistant for many years.

Third, the book begins with a feature which should be manditory in all cookbooks. The notes on how to use this book give the meaning of a large number of common ingredients such as eggs meaning large eggs, flour meaning general purpose flour, and butter meaning unsalted butter.

The book includes a wider variety of dishes than you may find in restaurant or speciality cuisine cookbooks. It also contains a lot of classics such as crab cakes, fried green tomatoes, apple strudel, rice pudding and oven fried chicken. While these are classics, there is usually some twist to make them fresh.

I would recommend this as a very good second cookbook, after the `Joy of Cooking', `James Beard's American Cookery', or Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything'. The recipes will be fresher and have greater cachet by being able to announce that they are from a celebrity chef.One caveat is that this will not teach great technique, so your third book should be the excellent books on cooking technique by Jaques Pepin or James Peterson.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Home Cooking 101, but she is Gourmet's Exec Chef, August 2, 2003

By	Cilla123 "cilla123" (NY) - See all my reviews

This is a terrific cookbook and while I feel that the title might lead some to believe that the food prepared here is more basic than what is prepared on her Food TV shows, the opposite is actually true. That said, it's important to note that these recipes, while not primer-simple are still straight-forward, well written and very user friendly.

Menu/accompaniment suggestions are included as well as wine suggestions and from my experience, they work beautifully together. The combination of Tarragon Chicken,Lemon Roasted Potatoes and Provencal Tomatoes is one of my personal favorites.

There is a great variety of recipes here that can be used for family meals as well as entertaining. A very "able" book - usable, doable, reasonable recipes. This one will not collect dust on a shelf.