Product Description

short description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43613 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Features

• Binding: hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Weight: 2.48 lbs
• Dimensions: 8 1/4" x 9 5/8"

From Publishers Weekly
Fishbein, editor of the highly popular and successful Kosher Palette, has produced a cookbook focusing on elegant kosher cuisine that is easy to produce by the modern at-home cook. She precedes each section with a description of a festival and its customs, and includes a suggested menu and kosher wine list. Interspersed with vibrant color photographs, the recipes make full use of the growing range of kosher ingredients available, and she has no compunction in saving time and effort by using store-bought sauces in some dishes, such as Tarragon Chicken. Traditional recipes also appear, but are usually given a new twist-the visually pleasing Tri-color Gefilte Fish once again utilizes a store-bought item but enhances both it and the conventional presentation by layering to make a terrine. Useful tips are added where needed, and Fishbein indicates when a recipe is parve (neutral) or dairy. She also offers a comprehensive Passover section that includes a chart of all the recipes that can be used for this festival, with its additional dietary requirements, as well as the steps needed to adapt many others. With kosher cookbooks becoming more sophisticated, Fishbein has produced a volume that straddles that delicate line between modern and traditional and between refined cuisine and everyday ease.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

amazing
delicious recepies for kosher or even for a non-kosher consumer. Love the salads, the dressings, and cakes, and vegitable dishes, basically everything is sumptios. Highly recommend it.

My current favorite cookbook!
Wonderful recipes, great menu plans, and amazing photos! The bread machine challah recipe is the best I have ever tried.

This would be a thoughtful hostess, housewarming, or bridal shower gift as well.

Excellent cookbook, with some minor issues
I don't own this cookbook myself--my boyfriend's mother does, and I cook out of it sometimes when I'm at their home for Shabbat and I'm doing the cooking. I don't think it would be practical for day to day cooking for me at the moment: I'm a graduate student, and I don't think I would be able to eat my way through six servings of pomegranate chicken before it spoiled. However, for family cooking, I think this book is excellent and everything I've made out of it has been met with great enthusiasm.

Some of the recipes are more intensive than I would want to cook on a daily basis, but just as many of them come together very quickly--the artichoke chicken, for example, or the emerald soup, both of which seem very sophisticated once they're finished and plated for how absurdly easy they come together. I tend to prep everything before I start to cook something--that probably helps. Still, just yesterday I cooked a batch of challah and a three course meal out of this cookbook at the same time without too much difficultly and believe me, that's saying something.

I'd give it five stars, but I think the organization's a little odd and hinders the book's usefulness in several respects--they've got holiday menu ideas, for instance, scattered throughout the cookbook, with very little relation to where the actual recipes for the menu are, so I really wish they'd have just grouped the holiday menu ideas all together in the front rather than speckling them in at random (I can just see myself getting irritated when looking for a menu for Purim, for instance, and not remembering whether it's in with the pastry or in with the appetizers) Sometimes Fishbein recommends what holiday an item might be good for, or what side dishes might go well with an entree, or what wine might be complimentary, and sometimes she doesn't. I wish she did this more often; I'm an experienced enough cook that I usually have a good sense of what will compliment and what would clash, but I could see that being very helpful, and I'm not very experienced at matching wine to a meal, something I'm occasionally asked to do when I'm cooking for others.

Still, I think this cookbook is a very good addition to any family kitchen, kosher or not: the recipes are modern and tasty enough to satisfy any family, Jewish or kosher or not. It's one I'll definitely be interested in picking up for myself when I'm cooking for more than just myself on a regular basis.