About book Good Eats: Volume 1, The Early Years (2009)
This is one of my favorite cookbooks. So much so, that I don't even keep it in the book area with all my other books, I keep it in my room or near the kitchen, where I can reach for it easily. So why not a full 5 stars?Simply put, the organization of the content aggravates me a bit. When I first get a cookbook, I look through it a few times on the surface. The first time around, I skim and look at the pictures. The second, I read it for content. After that, I'm looking for something specific, usually while I'm cooking or wanting to try a new food experiment. Here's where I have a problem with how this book is organized. If I'm cooking and suddenly want to look up the recipe for a cocktail, or some side dish, I won't be able to find it in snap, because the table of contents is organized by season not by type of food. So if I'm looking for a casserole, I have to actually sit down and read the TOC as opposed to skimming to the section that I need, opening it up and finding what I need. Now, I understand, this book is based on the show, and it's not like any other cookbook- it reads a lot like the show, and is a cooking textbook of sorts. It reminds me of The Joy of Cooking in this sense. So I get it. But just because I get it doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me. Usually when I use recipes from a cookbook, I'm using it as a basic inspiration since I substitute a lot of ingredients. Sometimes I can't have something or sometimes, I simply don't have all the ingredients, and can't run to the market. As far as content, this book is pretty excellent, and as I mentioned before; I was a big fan of the series. I watched it purely for the science and history information of cooking alone. Information is introduced in a manner that doesn't make me shut down and start daydreaming halfway through the page. I've tried a few recipes, and they've worked out even with substitutions! So while this book really deserves a five; frustrating me while my hands were covered in food, and I needed to find something quickly, convinced me to demote a star. Good Eats Book Review I used to think all cook books were boring. They had too much text and were very boring, but that was before I read Good Eats: The Early Years by Alton Brown. Alton Brown does an excellent job of combining solid facts with humor and great advice. This book isn’t just about recipes; it’s about making the reader enjoy the book.This cookbook has a very wide variety foods and dishes to prepare. It has foods from simple biscuits to dishes like “Burger of the Gods” (Brown 108). These wide varieties is one of the main reasons I enjoyed this book. It always kept me wondering what strange recipe would come next.Another thing I loved about this book was the pictures. Whenever I cook, I’m never sure if the recipe looks the way it supposed. In Good Eats: The Early Years, there was almost step by step to help me see if I was cooking correctlyOne of the books downfalls was that it’s organization was sort of all over the place. It didn’t have certain foods together. Instead, it had each in it’s own section. Although there was a table of contents at the beginning I still had trouble locating some recipes. This book gave me some great recipes and tips on how to cook them. It was witty and interesting and had step by step pictures for recipes. I could tell you about some of these mouth watering recipes, but you’ll just have to read Good Eats: The Early Years for yourself.
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I LOVE Alton Brown. And these books are exactly him. Quirky and science-filled and FUN!
—lennon
This is wonderful because the show is wonderful.
—eurrecho
