A straightforward, easy-to-use reference for home bakers.
A handbook of common (and not-so-common) baking substitutions.
The fourth entry in MacLeod’s (The Waste-Wise Kitchen Companion, 2017, etc.) ongoing series on kitchen tips and tricks focuses on baking. As in previous volumes, she presents an alphabetical list of ingredients both familiar and unusual, from açai to zereshk, with brief explanations of appropriate substitutions. Many entries are quite detailed, with information on which swaps are appropriate for which types of recipes. The entries on flour, sugar, and chocolate and cocoa are particularly comprehensive, with MacLeod dedicating more than a dozen pages to discussing the various types of flour, from the basic all-purpose variety to more specialized variations, such as amaranth, teff, and popcorn flour. Many suggestions will help cooks who want to adapt recipes to be vegan or gluten-free. Other tips could save the day for those who discover that their cupboard is bare of basic items, such as baking powder (use a combination of cream of tartar and baking soda, instead, MacLeod says) or brown sugar (mix granulated sugar with molasses). Egg alternatives include tofu, yogurt, or chia seeds, depending on the recipe. The book also includes a helpful list of food equivalents and yields, which will be especially useful for those who lack a food scale or are unsure of how much of a particular item to buy. For example, one ounce of cocoa powder, she says, is equivalent to five tablespoons plus one teaspoon. A list of baking-pan equivalents is also practical for those whose kitchens aren’t stocked with a wide variety of cake pans, and a list of oven-temperature equivalents will aid those who want to translate recipe instructions from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Finally, the author’s comprehensive bibliography points readers to cookbooks and other references to further assist them in their culinary efforts. Those who are familiar with MacLeod’s previous works will notice some repetition here; the entries for vanilla extract and date paste, for instance, are identical to those in Seasoning Substitutions. However, there’s enough variation between the two texts to make this a worthy stand-alone.
A straightforward, easy-to-use reference for home bakers.Pub Date: July 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9974464-4-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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