When I heard of Gary's new cookbook, I was to say the least a little sceptical.
365 recipes is an incredible number of recipes to pack into one book.
To put it another way I've been writing a weekly recipe column for just over 5 years.
So I have produced around 260. I do a photo shoot of 4 dishes about once a month. To come up with ideas, cook and make notes weighting all the ingredients as I go is a lot of work. Now of coarse Gary has people to help, never the less he put this recipe packed book together in just 12 months.
Gary Rhodes begins his book by singing the praise of his personal assistant Lissanne Kenyon. All serious celebrity chefs have a personal assistant, it's the only way they can co-ordinate their busy schedules. It was nice to see Gary recognise her worth publicly.
He then loosely explains his thoughts behind the book that he wanted create a cookbook that was a source for everyday ideas, and that he does use certain convenience foods to cut the preparation/cooking times, and he wishes the reader to use the book as a starting point for ideas as much as a cookbook.
Next is a useful section called Cook's Notes, which gives the reader about 10 pages of useful cooking, preparing, storing and even buying notes.
Getting to the recipes themselves Gary interestingly breaks the book not into Starters, Seafood, Main course etc. Nor does he segment the book using the seasons.
Instead it broken into the following sections; Breakfast & amp; Brunch,
Midweek Lunch, Afternoon Tea, Simple Midweek Suppers, Weekend Eating and Special Occasions.
The book is nicely rounded off with two other sections one that covers Potatoes and Vegetables and the other section in on sauces.
The book offers a wide range of dishes from a simple macaroni cheese offered in the afternoon tea section all the way to sauted scallops with ginger spring greens and passion fruit hollandaise.
I expected to find mundane and reparation to pad this book and achieve its huge recipe count instead I found Gary's inspiration and thought process constantly offering interesting and intriguing ideas. With a list price of 25 for it 480 pages this cookbook offers more that good value for money.
Kevin Anthony Ashton is an internationally experienced Chef of 30 years who now wants to shares his recipes, culinary advice, opinions on food issues and humorous tales with you.
He writes a weekly column for Birmingham's Sunday Mercury (estimated readership 500,000) and is also a member of The Guild Of Food Writers & the British Culinary Federation. Kevin's food blog www.wannabetvchef.blog.co.uk
continues to grow in popularity. His food articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic including Chicago Sun Times, Hotline Magazine, YesChef, Chef's Magazine, and Reuters.
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