The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing Kindle Edition

With trends gravitating toward simplifying our lives and back to basics, comes this excellent cookbook teaching modern cooks to do just that. The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing is an excellent book that teaches forgotten kitchen skills and includes mouthwatering recipes that almost everyone will want to make.Although many use auto bread machines and mixers to make bread, this book teaches us to make bread anywhere by hand. It includes step-by-step instructions, so even beginning cooks can master this skill. The bread recipes included are excellent, and most importantly, the finished product turns out picture perfect.The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing is a British cookbook, and so has dozens of traditional British recipes, such as marmalades, puddings, potted meats, pâtés and terrines, scones and crumpets, cordials, cakes, and sweets. There are also ice creams and sorbets flavored with lavender, honey, and other unexpected ingredients. Who knew that fresh cheeses such as ricotta and soft goat cheese, as well as clotted cream can be made in the home kitchen, and the taste is fabulous.All told, this excellent cookbook is one that is perfect for anyone who loves to cook and wants to go back to basics. It will teach forgotten skills that are becoming trendy as food tastes go from chemical-laden convenience foods to organic and fresh, as well as healthy and delicious. The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing makes an excellent gift for a new bride or young person getting a taste of the joy of cooking from scratch. Highly recommended, this cookbook will hold a special place on any cookbook shelf.Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

The first thing I pictured in my mind when looking through the book, was a picnic in the great outdoors with friends, a bottle of red wine and a basket full of food made from Alison Walker's recipes. Her recipes are simple, yet elegant. They all have in common that they can be prepared with basic cooking equipment and a small number of kitchen staples, easy to find ingredients, and valuable tips. The book starts out with rustic breads, followed by either hearty or sweet pastries that can serve as a meal on their own. Then come cakes and sweets that can casually be served with a coffee or tea at the kitchen table or put into the picnic basket. This is followed by a very informative chapter of how to make your own milk products, like butter, basic cheeses, and yogurt. Also included are recipes for ice cream and sorbets, marmalade, jams, jellies, chutneys, condiments, canned fruit, and various beverages. The book ends with cured and canned meats. I really like the simplicity of this book. Here are some of my recipe highlights: Walnut and Raisin Bread, Sausage and Apple Plait, Lavender and Lemon Madeira Cake, Sticky Gingerbread Loaf, Candied peel, Fresh Ricotta, Soft Goat's Cheese, Raspberry Ripple Parfait, Lemon and Honey Marmalade, Pickled Shallots, Cherries in Brandy, Elder-flower Cordial, Gravadlax, and Creamy Chicken Liver Pate. The only recipes that I probably will not try from this book are the cold smoking recipes because they involve investment in smoking equipment. But I think of the smoking chapter as a nice add-on for anyone interested in smoking meats. This book is a good investment. Just picking one or only a few recipes at a time will add a little extra to simple meals and entertaining.

Alison wants to take the reader back to a simpler time, when people grew their own ingredients and used old-fashioned tools to make their food, instrad of buying ready-made food that you do not have to integrate the ingredients together.The first section of the book deals with Baking, where accurate weighing, measuring and cooking temperatures are vital.The author discusses what flour does and what the best types of flour are; she does the same thing with salt, yeast and butter. You will learn how to make good bread, what kind of equipment you will need, and how to knead the bread properly so that it rises and turns out well.You are given specific, easy to follow directions, so that your bread is easy to make and consistently good. The photos give you an idea what your bread do should look like as it is mixed, kneaded and left to rise, which is a big help!You will also learn how to make baguettes, cheese and cayenne sticks, rye bread and crumpets.You will also learn how to make pastry, yogurt, cheese, jams, marmalades, pickles and many other foods by using ingredients, tools, and techniques that have been used and proved for many years.Enjoy cooking homemade meals that your family will love for many years!

As a training chef this book covers everything I learned in college and more. Fantastic book and great recipes. Here's White Dough breadrolls I made from the book. Great book to have in the kitchen

Me sorprendió el libro algo completo y con muchos tips