This is really the most amazing cookbook. In many ways it is like the famous French gastronomic dictionaries with explanations of the foods that we eat and the seasonings and other basic ingredients, but it also has fabulous ways to use and appreciate these ingredients. As Stephanie is one of Australia's most famous cooks, we are also privy to many of her secrets and favourites - really yummy things!

Best of all it is extremely readable - I mean sit comfortably and read it simply for the pleasure of the contents. It explains why certain cuts of meats are the best, how herbs and spices grow and are used, different ways of working with fruits and vegetables - it is a spectacular scholarly and entertaining book.

As a collector of books I am also lured by the glamour of glossy cookbooks with their mouthwatering recipes and artful pictures. This book has none of this, but it is smeared with chocolate and dappled with olive oil, lemon juice, flour and dried parsley. Surely this is the best indication of a level of usage for any cookbook. Track it down and buy it!

Reading this book is like having an older, wise experienced cook hold your hand in the kitchen as well as challenging you in the ways various ingredients can be employed. Every recipe works. The margins are filled with hints to encourage exploration of simple but dramatic food choices. The recipes for Stephanie's steak sandwich and favourite roast chicken are so good that my family repeatedly requests them. The book is organized by principal ingredient with chapters devoted to chestnut, chicken, lettuce etc. I have bought 3 copies - one for myself and one for each of my children to take when they (eventually!) leave home and set up for themselves. This book and a a good market guarantee a life appreciation of great food and confidence in preparing same.

The best companion a cook can have - I use it every day. For tips on storage, types of food, seasons etc. Not to mention the recipes. Handy having recipes listed by ingredient not type. Every cook should have one.

I wish that all 6 billion people on this planet would get this simple beautiful message.

Ground Zero helped me to look at my life in a different way and think as to what direction my life is headed. Comments from Ken Stabler were very meaningful. Ron Cook is definitely on a mission to touch lives and wants people to know God personnally. In this book he accomplishes that goal.

Whether you are "starting over" or just beginning your walk with God, Ground Zero, appropriately titled, is an excellent place to begin. The authors put God on a "friendly" level that we can all relate to. Anyone who picks up this book will be inspired by the message within.

I have been watching this series on PBS and the book is just a delightful. The receipes are pretty easy to follow, ingredients are available in most grocery or gourmet shops. Plus they have done all the testing and we get to prepare the perfect combinations! Highly recommend it, especially as a gift!

This is my third Amerca's Test Kitchen cookbook. In all of the meals that I have cooked using these books, I have never had a flop. As a male and a physician, I really appreciate the "clinical" approach to cooking that ATK applies. Want to make good, gooey chocolate cookies? Then try a dozen different methods and see what works best. They have used this method for all of their recipes, and the reaults are tremendous.

ATK avoids pretentious cuisine. They aim to make the best steak, best french-fries; things that my kids will eat. Yet, some of my favorite meals for guests come from the book as well. (Twice-coked potatoes with pesto...mmmm). Even though I live in a small town in a remote area, I have always been able to find the ingredients they suggest.

They have a "Consumer Reports"-like approach to rating ingredients and equipment. What a delight when Morton's table salt out-performs...sea-salt in blinded taste-testing.

I can't wait for next year's book to come out!

There are three things I love about this book:

1. It's easy to use. So, when you're just starting to learn to cook you think, "I need something short and simple to try". The people at Cook's Illustrated take the opposite approach: They give you more complex recipes with minutely detailed instruction sets. At first, the book appears difficult. But then, you realize that what they've actually done is take all of the guesswork out of making good food. The instructions never say something like "Beat Egg Whites until glossy and firm". They say, "Get out your mixer, turn it on to medium (about a 5 on a KitchenAid) and beat the egg whites for 3 minutes." By providing precise instructions, they help even the most novice cook achieve tasty and predictable results each and every time they cook.

2. Unlike a lot of cookbooks, it's not a coffee table book. Each and every recipe in here is something you can make in your kitchen with ingredients you can get at the Shaw's (Star Market, Ralph's, Food Lion, Kroger, etc.) Market.

3. Each of the recipes is a lesson. By cooking your way through this book, you'll actually learn so many top notch ways to make basics that you'll be able to cook from any other cookbook out there on the market today.

My advice is to give this book to the novice chef in your life and then sit back and enjoy the results. You'll like the food so much you'll buy it for everyone you know.

This cookbook is fantastic! My mom was Italian, and the recipes here are truly authentic. I loved the format of daily recipes, and I spent a week just following along. The stories are wonderful, it is like having a visit back to my old neighborhood of long ago here in Boston. My special recommendations: Joe Red's Chicken Meatball Soup, Bolognese Sauce, BOTH Pasta Puttenescas, Fried Pepper Wet Sandwich, Italian Cheesecake...OH, HECK...JUST TRY THEM ALL !! You will not be disappointed.

I bought this book for my father-in-law who grew up in East New York and loves to cook. He is thrilled with the recipes which he says are simply written and authentic to what he ate growing up there 80 years ago. He also loved the pictures and rememberances of "the old neighborhood." I've never bought him another gift that made him this happy. He's buying a bunch to give to other Brooklyn friends.

I lived across the street from Our Lady of Loretto and went to school with the author, Gerard Renny. This november, my mom Graziella Tirino one of the last true "die hards" finally moved from Pacific St. The recipes and the stories along with the pictures had me thinking back to the old neighborhood and how much fun we used to have. We didn't have much but we had friends, good food and plenty of it. This book and the wonderful receipes are a part of my past and I look forward to sharing it with family and friends. aka Rosetta

It's probably important to know that this isn't the kind of book where there are huge battles in space, with ships blasting away at each other.

Instead, it's a book about tension, about waiting. Actions which may prove meaningless -- and sometimes do. Events incomprehensible even to participants. As such, Passage at Arms is a notably well-written book, but it's not an easy read. There's no break for the characters, and none for the reader either. There's no comic relief whatsoever. You're trapped in a tiny, hot ship with its crew and the narrator, a war correspondent. In first person present tense, the story seems to represent the correspondent's real, uncensored report.

Lessening the impact of this book were some loose ends (a blackmail subplot that never goes anywhere, which might be deliberate nihilism) and characterization which could have been deeper, especially of the narrator. Still, this is a good one.

A intense, hard sci-fi novel of warfare in the equivalent of a submarine corps. The story follows one Climber crew on a single combat mission. Cook writes an incredibly realistic and believable story of claustrophobia, terror, confusion and faith. The narrator, a war correspondent and eternal outsider, struggles to understand the motivations of the men with whom he is serving.

I found this to be an incredibly gripping book. The power of the emotions and the consistency of the details left me wondering about Cook's background. This is a story where you want to know how the author knows so much - did he serve in submarines or is he just that good a researcher?

This is not a cheerful book but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This would be an excellent choice to bring back to market. A fantastic Cook novel about deep space and warfare. Brings to mind many submarine novels and how men in tight spaces deal with pressure, warfare and waiting to die.

A must read if you enjoy legitimate Science Fiction and warfare.

This book is about the relationship between the United States and the Sioux Nation from the signing of the 1851 Ft. Laramie treaty up to the present. The book centers around the efforts of the Wounded Knee Survivors Assoc. and their attorney Mario Gonzalez to obtain a formal apology from the U.S. government for the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and the establishment of a National Tribal park at the massacre site. This book includes:

*Gonzalez' diary entries from 1989-1992--an excellent window to see firsthand how contemporary tribal governments work and how Native Americans on reservations interact with each other on a daily basis.

*Commentary (called chronicles)by Elizabeth Cooke-Lynn explaining events described in the diary entries including Gonzalez' efforts in stopping the payment of $100 million claims commission for the Black Hills in 1980, and his efforst in Europe from 1981 to 1984 to get the World Court to issue an advisory opinion on the illegal confiscation of the Black Hills.

*Appendices that include a complete chronology of Sioux land claims from the signing of the 1851 treaty up to the present--a must for anyone interested in Indian land claims.

*Excellent footnotes with valuable information found no where else including information about Chief Crazy Horse's family members contained in the probate records of Chief Crazy Horse's father.

This book is FASCINATING and should appeal to everyone! IT SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING IN EVERY NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES CLASS!

what elizabeth and mario have done is to create a work that will stand for the test of time! my favorite part of the whole book was when Elizabeth proudly states THAT NATIVE AMERICAN, ABORGIONAL, AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ARE NOT CITIZENS OF THE WHITE MAN'S NATION ! FOR EXAMPLE A PERSON WHO LIVES IN THE DINE NATION IS NOT A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES BECAUSE THEY NEVER ASKED FOR NOR DID WANT TO BE CITZENS OF THIS PATHETIC NATION! THEY ARE CITIZENS IN THEIR TRIBE AND NATION NOT OF THE PATHETIC UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR THE WORLD FOR THAT MATTER! READ THIS BOOK TO LEARN THE REAL HISTORY OF WOUNDED KNEE AND ABOUT A PEOPLE WHO ARE CHANGING HISTORY EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Wonderful workings of writing the whole truth. A must have, must read, must distribute widely!

There are some who think it's weird to tour cemeteries. They're missing the serene tribute to a city's history -- graveyards are neighborhoods and time capsules; art museums and in some cases the final repositories of enduring secrets.

Hucke and Bielski serve as knowledgeable and respectful tour guides for some of the most impressively landscaped, richly historical acres within and adjacent to the city's urban sprawl. It's a field trip through bold headlines and unsung achievements represented by a carved catalog of famous -- and infamous (at Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery, mob boss Sam Giancana's mausoleum is padlocked) -- names.

The book follows Lake Claremont's practical design of dividing interesting sites by sections of the city map. I know from firsthand experience that you can spend the whole day in the Metro North area touring renowned Graceland Cemetery (Chicago's second oldest burial ground, final home to many whose surnames -- Field, Getty, Palmer, Kinzie, Kimball, Goodman, Sears, Armour, and Pullman to drop just a few -- are synonymous with Chicago's growth); or Rosehill, within whose 350 acres lie bicycle king Ignaz Schwinn, water magnates Otis Ward Hinkley and George Schmitt, shoe guru Milton Florsheim, "merchandising arch-enemies" Aaron Montgomery Ward and Richard Warren Sears, and 14-year old Bobby Franks, murdered in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

Hucke and Bielski devote much-deserved attention to the artistic aspect of grave markers and cemetery architecture across a span of more than a century's worth of changing styles. Additional highlights: more unusual burials (attorney Clarence Darrow's ashes scattered in Jackson Park; musician Steve Goodman's cremains under home plate in his beloved Wrigley Field); a nod to necropolises in outlying areas, and a partial directory of Chicagoland cemeteries. This unusual guide is unusually enlightening on many levels fundamental to Chicago's identity.

This well-written and informative book is a must-have for anyone who is interested in Chicago history, cemeteries, or architecture. I read it cover to cover and often refer back to it for various reasons.
From the grave of Al Capone to the graves of lesser-known Chicagoans, this book seems to cover it all.
Great photos, fascinating stories!

Informative and to the point! I just wish they had the actually cemetery data included! Great for us "dark" people or anyone else interested in cemetery analysis!

This is a small book (95 pages) that hits all the important points. It starts with the theory of Ice Cream, why do most recipes for home have eggs, why is it important to chill the mixture before putting it in an ice cream maker.

Most important: how hot must you heat the mixture (as measured with a thermometer, no ambiguous 'until done' instructions here), and how hot is TOO hot.

There aren't a lot of recipes here. A few examples and variations so you can understand the theory and techniques. So if you are looking for a collection of vast numbers of recipes (and you already know the theory and how to make ice cream) then this isn't for you. But if you are new to making ice cream and have yet to learn WHY the things the recipes call for are in there then this is for you.

A book to learn the theory from and apply it to all the recipes you find elsewhere.

As Cook's Illustrated readers would expect, this book deconstructs ice cream making with every detail you could want. I'd get this book first, then get a book with a zillion recipes. You can use the techniques in this book to adapt and perfect recipes from any other source.

I've never been moved to write a review before, but after my first successful batch of ice-cream (following many miserable failures) - I decided that I must share my joy.

First of all, this is a lovely little hard bound book. It will take up a tiny space on your shelves - and, most importantly, it is easy to hold with one hand while you are fastidiously stirring custard with the other.

Texture had been a problem for me since I recieved my Cuisinart ice-cream maker for Christmas. I've had some batches that just wouldn't freeze - some with so much cream that they left a buttery film of fat on the spoon and one unfortunate creation that went directly from machine to garbage disposal. Believe it or not I was following recipes. But some are very general in describing how to know when something is done, like how thick a custard should be. It was actually very liberating to have the very specific and exact temperatures given by this book.

The introduction and Master Vanilla Recipe are priceless. As are the explanations of correct temperatures and proportions.

I have to admit that I've been egg phobic in my recipe hunting. So many recipes call for an obscene amount of eggs and the thought of six to eight eggs in a pint of ice cream gives me the heeby geebies. The authors have tested many milk/cream/egg/sugar proportions to come up with the best flavor and best texture. Early in the book they explain the purpose of egg yolks in ice cream to emulsify the dairy fat. This is especially important to home made ice cream since we won't be using chemical emulsifiers like commercial brands. What was helpful for me was the section on them trying different amounts of eggs to get the right texture - without that eggy taste.

There are also some very nice illlustrations of what the egg yolk and sugar mix should look like after beating them, and some handy tips like how to peel hazelnuts.

I highly recommend this book AND a digital candy/oil thermometer (I got mine from Williams Sonoma - but Amazon.com may have one too). I was literally stunned by the silky texture of my Hazelnut Gellato and how quickly it froze to 'soft-serve' texture - and the flavor! It was all I could do not to eat the entire batch right from the machine!

The receipes are functional, even if you are not a gourmet chef. But the stories behind them are just fun to read! A taste--for the mind and tongue--of what life was like for some of our ancestors. I recommend the story of the orange, and the recipe for cranberry applesauce!

What I love most about this cookbook is how international it is. I've never seen another cookbook with so many great recipes from so many different countries. It makes sense really, if you consider that Jews have come to the U.S. not only from Eastern Europe, but also from Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Cuba, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, etc. Consequently, many of the recipes, such as ceviche and chicken adobo, were a welcome surprise in addition to Jewish favorites such as knishes, hamantashen, and matzoh ball soup. Introducing most of the recipes are fascinating personal stories of the people who've brought their wonderful culinary traditions to America. Any food lover/cook will appreciate the heartfelt style of this excellent cookbook.

This book contains user-friendly recipes, and most of the ingredients called for are easily obtainable. The majority of the recipes appear to be for dishes that are actually eaten by Jews rather than for ones that are definitely not part of Jewish cuisine although they have been passed off as such by some authors. Ms. Nathan is passionate about the food she describes and provides a generous amount of information on the history, lore, and cultural and religious traditions of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews who settled in America. She also includes menus, a helpful glossary of Jewish terms, and many interesting illustrations.

I would also like to recommend "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan," by Sonia Uvezian. This definitive volume offers superb recipes and fascinating text, including information on the region's minorities (particularly Jews and Armenians) that is not found in previous cookbooks.

Monica Dickens, the great-grandaughter of Charles Dickens, fits into the "good sport" type of memoirist, recalling life experiences for which she was quite unprepared. I think of Betty MacDonald's "The Egg and I." Apparently well-to-do, Ms. Dickens decided to work as a Cook General for a couple years during the 1930's. The book is a chronicle of her relationships and experiences with various employers. I fully expected that the various households would blend into each other but was delighted to discover how vividly the personalities were portrayed, and so they remained distinct. Most memorable was the clothing designer with a constant finger on the call button, a mistrust of her spending habits and a penchant for draping her in fabrics to envision his newest creations. Some may have a problem with the fact that Ms. Dickens took on the job as a lark and could return to her comfortable life at any time, but the fact is that she really was up to her elbows in the muck of a 1930's kitchen. All in all, I found it a delightful read, although the final chapter which recounts a lecture on "The Problem of the Servant Today" is tedious and merely restates in an arid manner the "problems" so well-documented in the rest of the book.

This was one of the most delightful books I have read in ages. Monica Dickens (great-granddaughter of Charles), despite her privileged upbringing, despite being presented at Court as a debutante, is bored and has little desire to do the rounds of social events expected of a young upper class girl in the mid 1930s. And so she decides to try her hand at domestic service. If you have ever enjoyed watching the wonderful "Upstairs Downstairs" series or reading other tales which reflect the upstairs downstairs lives of the British class system, this is for you. It is light, entertaining and the author writes so fluidly, it has inspired me to begin reading more of her works.

Looking for a light but well-written book? This is it. Absolutely charming.