A popular Food Network personality offers detailed recipes to help home chefs rock the kitchen.
Known best for her upbeat persona and edgy look, Burrell has appeared on the Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and battled alongside Mario Batali on Iron Chef America. In her first cookbook, she begins with the twin principles of preparation and comfort, assuring readers that any home chef can "rock out" and prepare delicious meals for family and friends. “Being a rock star in the kitchen means taking control, having fun, and thinking of cooking as entertainment,” she writes. She starts with recipes for piccolini (“Think of them as Italian tapas”), such as Figs Stuffed with Gorgonzola and Walnuts, Oyster Mushroom Chips and Eggplant Cakes with Ricotta. Appetizers like Parmigiano Flan give way to entrees as diverse and exciting as Duck Breast with Dried Fruit and Vin Santo, Seared Crispy-Skin Black Bass and Braised Cabbage Stuffed with Sausage and Fennel. Recipes featured in the chapters on Pasta, Sides and Desserts are equally varied and mouthwatering. Throughout, Burrell adds expertise and advice for both novice and experienced chefs—e.g., her warning about preparing risotto: “Brace yourself and really whip the hell out of the rice—the Italian word for this is mantecare, and this is the step the Italians don't tell you about!" A spirited cookbook that will lead to fun and flavor at home.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-88675-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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