This cookbook was reviewed by Carol – a non-blogging member from Canada.

I love reading cookbooks! Reading recipes can transport me on an armchair food journey ending in salivating taste buds and is often punctuated with a resounding “YUM.” My tastes have evolved and changed in many facets of my life including cookbook styles. Thankfully, this has been aptly matched by a growing trend in cookbook publishing. No longer are cookbooks simply volumes of recipes interspersed with close-ups of food and a few glossy pictures.

Today’s modern cookbook is evolving into more prose-like missive, complete with explanations as to why the recipe is important to the author or what technique can be honed from a particular preparation. This is one reason why I enjoyed Michael Ruhlman’s Twenty so much as he takes this one step further. In Twenty, Ruhlman puts forth a manifesto of the most essential twenty techniques needed in the kitchen to make you a better cook. This is an educational experience indeed! Even the look and feel of Twenty mimics the size and page weight of scores of textbooks familiar to students all around the world.

This cookbook was reviewed by David and Karen of Twenty-Fingered Cooking.

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical when I opened up the package from the Daring Kitchen crew to find the stars-and-stripes-and-beer-studded cover of Entertain Like a Texas Gentleman by David Harap staring back at me. Full disclosure: I am not from Texas. I do not want to be from Texas. And, while I do try to generally be nice and respectful of people, being called a “gentleman” just makes me feel old. So, in short, I’m definitely not this book’s target audience.

That being said, however, I can’t argue with good food, and to use a bit of Texas slang I just found on the internet, the food in this cookbook is larrupin’! Harap’s recipes look and taste out of this world. He has a knack for taking ingredients that you can’t possibly picture being on the same plate together, and making the most scrumptiously delicious meal out of them that you can imagine.

First, a bit on the overall organization and design of the cookbook. Each chapter is designed as a full-course meal or spread of food for all occasions, from the “Scotch Tasting Affair” with the guys, to a long, detailed “Romantic Dinner” with the woman of your dreams. Each chapter includes a bit of advice for the meal at the beginning, and gives you lots of space at the end of the chapter to scribble down your own notes on the meal. The back of the book gives complete shopping lists for every chapter, so you can just cut them out and run to the store.

If you haven't caught on to the phenomenon that is Twitter, what are you waiting for? Everyone is "tweeting". In the case of Maureen Evans, not only is she tweeting, she's tweeting recipes.

In her book Eat Tweet: 1,020 Recipe Gems from the Twitter Community's @cookbook, Evans condenses recipes down to the very essence to present them in tweet format.

This review was prepared by Recipe Sleuth of Eye for a Recipe.
***************************************************
Believe it or not, Chef Thomas Keller, master of high-end French cuisine and founder of The French Laundry, Per Se and Bouchon restaurants, dreams of opening a restaurant featuring burgers.

So when a former diner not far from his restaurants in Yountville, California became available, he snapped it up, thinking it would be the perfect location. However, Keller soon discovered that he was too busy to design and build the burger restaurant of his dreams.

Instead, he decided to create a temporary restaurant dedicated to the kind of home-style cooking done daily for his staff, known in the restaurant business as the “family meal”. In an April 2006 email to his colleagues, Keller described the concept: Simple, affordable, one service a night, no menu, served family-style.

This review was prepared by Anny of urban egg.
**********************************

In the space between a Michelin three-star restaurant and a neighborhood bistro, an artful coffee-table book and technical cooking manual, emerges The Modern Café by Francisco J. Migoya. Illustrated with sumptuous full page color photography by Ben Fink, this cookbook is a feast for the eyes.

Migoya, who teaches a class on Café Operations as part of the Baking and Pastry Arts Program at the Culinary Institute of America, delivers a comprehensive cookbook encompassing all the possible areas of a café’s various departments from baked goods and savory food to beverages and packaged retail items. In his book, however, his target audience is no longer the student gathering educational information, but professional chefs and pastry chefs who have the foundation to interpret the complex recipes and techniques he assumes as a prerequisite to using the book.

This review was prepared by Suzy of Serenely Full.
*****************************************

Levi Roots -- creator of Reggae Reggae Sauce, chef, musician, television presenter and food writer -- returns with his third cookbook, Levi Roots’ Levi Roots Food for Friends: 100 Simple Dishes for Every Occasion, taking Caribbean cookery out for another spin with a wide array of tasty recipes.

The book is certainly comprehensive: it lists chapters on brunch, lunch, puddings, parties, barbecues, high tea (my own personal favourite) and many more, while winter warming stews snuggle up next to fruit kebabs for a summer afternoon. There’s also a section on Roots’ favourite ingredients, which all feature prominently in the recipes – thyme, coconut, Scotch bonnet chilli, mango, rum and lime to name a few. The flavours of the Caribbean are showcased in inventive ways, including some twists on the classics. You can try Caribbean spiced shepherd’s pie, a special Sunshine Sauce spaghetti Bolognese, or pecan and ginger shortbread for something familiar but a little different.

This review was prepared by Lo of Burp! Where Food Happens.
*********************************************

Published in 2009, Martha Stewart’s Martha Stewart's Dinner at Home: 52 Quick Meals to Cook for Family and Friends offers a wide variety of seasonal menus that take full advantage of accessible ingredients that are easily available at your local market. The book is divided by season and features inventive and mouthwatering menus for healthy, delicious meals that make the best use of ingredients in your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.

This review was prepared by Katherine of Flavor Profiler.
******************************************

When I think of summertime, I think of light breezes, humidity and doing not a whole lot. When I think of summer food, I think of crisp salads, light lunches and cold treats. The Summertime Anytime Cookbook: Recipes from Shutters on the Beach has recipes that look like they deliver – unless you happen to be the one making them. The recipes are loaded with ingredients and preparation. As an advanced home cook, I knew that I could tackle the recipes in this book but I don’t know why anyone would want to in the summer.

This review was prepared by Andrea of New Holistic Guide.
****************************************
As a nutritionist, mother of two little boys, and a cooking enthusiast I am always on the look-out for recipes that are not only delicious and easy to prepare, but also provide ample nutrition. Time and again I bump into recipes that claim to be both nutritious and delicious, but fall short of my standards. This is why I welcomed Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking by Heidi Swanson.

Heidi makes learning about nutrition and preparing new recipes from whole foods fun and easy. No matter where you are on your journey toward healthier eating, she can inspire you to take further steps. She brings you recipes from her travels guiding you to distant lands, but will also guide you through the maze of whole food markets. She helps stock your pantry with natural ingredients, and even if you don't have much cleaning out to do, you will surely find new ingredients to experiment with. Once you start using them in the dishes found in the book, new ideas will pop into your head. Heidi encourages experimenting by providing variations for many of her recipes. Who could be a better guide into the world of unprocessed, whole foods than Heidi Swanson, the creator of 101 Cookbooks, one of today's most popular food blogs.

This review was prepared by Recipe Sleuth of Eye for a Recipe.
****************************************************
The liner note for the cookbook ’wichcraft says it all: “This is not your mother’s sandwich.”

That’s for sure. With sandwich fillings ranging from Chicken Liver Pâté with Fried Onions and Radish Salad to Whipped Salt Cod with Roasted Peppers and Parsley, ’wichcraft is full of unusual and creative combinations.

Even those two universal favourites—PB&J and egg salad—get a makeover. The ’wichcraft version of PB&J mixes butter with the peanut butter to add richness and tops it with homemade rhubarb jelly. The egg salad includes caviar, crème fraiche and chervil.

Written by Tom Colicchio (of Top Chef and Craft Restaurant fame) and Sisha Ortúzar, the book includes recipes and techniques from the popular ’wichcraft sandwich shop the two chefs co-founded in 2003. Inspired by their shared vision that “a sandwich should be a portable meal sourced and crafted with the same intention and excitement as we brought to the food in our restaurants”, the two chefs opened a sandwich place that has now expanded to several locations in New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.