Recipes for the adventurous home cook looking to take their meal from ordinary to exquisite.
Donovan (Campfire Cuisine: Gourmet Recipes for the Great Outdoors, 2006) and Gallin have a mantra: “Cooking a great meal can be just as easy as cooking a crappy meal!” While their cookbook won’t transform that quick weeknight mac and cheese into a multi-course masterpiece, it will allow wannabe chefs to whip up mouthwatering dishes guaranteed to impress guests. The book is divided into two parts: “The Basics” lists must-have ingredients to keep on-hand and provides simple cooking tips, from softening butter to storing appliances, but “The Recipes” is where the fun begins. Snacks, small plates, soups and desserts are all on offer, ranging from Savory Blue Cheese Shortbread to Pistachio Ice Cream with Strawberries and Balsamic Syrup. The recipes may sound exotic, but each has been tested by volunteers with no culinary training. The language is straightforward and free of confusing cooking terms, and the most complicated piece of equipment required is a food processor. Recipes are often followed by detailed instructions on how to “Make it ahead,” suggestions for side dishes to “Serve it with,” or alternate ingredients for cooks looking to “Change it up.” Some recipes, however, may be too lackadaisical for even the laziest of gourmets—e.g., a recipe for Basil Leaf and Goat Cheese Wraps that instructs readers to set out the ingredients then direct "diners to take a basil leaf and wrap it around some cheese.” A collection of easy-to-follow recipes that demystifies gourmet cooking.
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-57344-653-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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
IN THE NEWS
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
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