Best Review on Kitchen Coach Weekend Cooking
`Weekend Cooking' by cooking teacher and writer, Jennifer Bushman, is one of a series of books set up under the rubric of `Kitchen Coach'.
This is the kind of book which is most useful to a non-foodie who may have no more than a dog-eared copy of `The Joy of Cooking' and her church's fund raising cookbook in her kitchen. To someone with a collection of twenty or more cookbooks, this book will be a waste of space and money, since such serious or semiserious Food Network addicts will probably know most of the support material in this book already, and they will have more than enough books to supply them with good recipes when they have the time to cook something special.
The `Weekend Cooking' notion of the title is just a bit misleading. The book is actually oriented towards the niches in people's lives where they have a little extra time and inclination to cook something special for some special event. While these situations most commonly happen on the weekend, the book actually has a broader appeal. Unlike some other books which tout the weekend as an opportunity to cook ahead in order to salt away meals in the freezer for weeknights, this book is more oriented to whole, multicourse meals when a family has time to sit down together and spend more than fifteen minutes at the dinner table (although the book does contain brief chapter on cooking for the week ahead).
Part of the reason this book is a waste of time, space, and money for the experienced amateur cook is that it spends a sizable amount of pages on general tips for getting your kitchen organized and stocked for serious cooking. Even the least experienced foodie will have gone through this exercise and be well on their way to working efficiently in the kitchen.
One aspect of the book that enhances it's billing as a `weekend' cookbook is the amount of space dedicated to grilling. The kitchen tune-up introduction includes an inventory of grilling equipment and a relatively large number of the recipes are either specifically designed for the outdoor grill or can easily be done on a grill rather than in a saute pan. One of the best features of the book may be its good selection of burger and sandwich recipes. I'm quite happy with my classic Julia Child recipe, but a family with three kids will probably need some decent variety in their burger lineup. It is also a great addition to have a good recipe for the New Orleans classic Muffoletta sandwich without having to invest in a Cajun cookbook.
In fact, the whole book seems to be oriented towards the well-equipped kitchen, as it recommends, with only a brief nod to the expense, that the well equipped kitchen include a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, a digital kitchen scale, an immersion blender, and electric ice cream maker, and a fondue set. The problem with this lineup is that it may turn off part of the potential audience for this book. That is, those people who want to cook occasionally and need a cookbook which will give them thorough directions without requiring a lot of equipment which may be used once or twice a year. One does not need a digital scale unless you are doing serious baking and you don't need both an immersion blender and a Waring blender. The Waring blender is far more useful than the stick blender unless you make lots of soups and don't make mixed drinks, smoothies, and milk shakes.
With regard to the quality of the individual recipes, I find them very, very good. The recipe for `Hot and Spicy Chili with Beans' matches my favorite from Tom Valenti's `Soups, Stews, and One Pot Meals'. The yeast bread recipes use active dry yeast, which may not be the easiest, but it gives the best quality for the effort. The biscuit recipe seems straight out of Jim Villas' southern home cooking gospel. The grilled London Broil recipe was appropriately simple, but not as simple as what you can find from James Beard. My other arguments with this recipe is that I don't think it really needs a 24 hour marinade to get the appropriate flavor and it is actually better to start searing the meat while it is still cool from the fridge if you want a rare inside. I was especially happy with the number of good vegetable recipes, especially the mushroom and eggplant recipes and the good potato recipes that do not involve a lot of added fat. The international range of recipes is also very respectable, with voices from France, Italy, Mexico and China. I also liked the very good selection of soup recipes.
The most remarkable oversight in this book is that there is very little here about cooking for breakfast. What can be more utterly weekendish than a long, leisurely breakfast with eggs or pancakes, biscuits, sausage, and home fries! I would easily give up the cook ahead, grilling, and fondue chapters for a really good chapter on omelets, French toast, and griddlecakes. There is a recipe for a `country frittata', but it is definitely a dish for entertaining. The recipes for smoothies and scones are good, but it would have been so nice to get more on classic breakfast fare.
My primary message to people interested in this book is the fact that this is called `Weekend Cooking' because it is NOT fast and easy. It is a good book for the novice who wants to do something special, but `Wolfgang Puck Makes It Easy' may be as good or better a choice if you have no interest in grilling or entertaining.
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