Cook This Book: Techniques That Teach and Recipes to Repeat

I don't usually leave reviews for cookbooks, but I feel like the truth about this one needs to be put out there. The graphics are interesting and appealing... and that's about all that is appealing about this cookbook.

The cutesy titles, the wet and messy food photos, the strange combinations of ingredients... some of them actually made my stomach churn. (Chicken soup with six stalks of celery and prunes? Tomato soup loaded up with soggy bread? Soft-boiled eggs over greek yogurt topped with browned butter? What!?)

Not to mention, this cookbook claims to be a guide for the beginner home cook, but the recipes call for many expensive and (where I live) hard to find ingredients. For example: salmon roe, broccolini, burrata, mortadella, scallops, and more. If I had and could afford these lovely ingredients, I wouldn't dare waste them on these recipes. Mortadella used to flavor a pot of beans? I don't think so.

I suspect also this cookbook may have been sponsored by the Celery Council, because the author uses celery often in her recipes—and in large quantities. Most of the recipes center on meat and bread, but if there's going to be a vegetable, it's celery. If you love celery and think, “Why not make Ants on a Log into a salad?”, then this may be the book you've been waiting for.

For the record, I knew nothing about the author going in. I saw a review that said someone had cooked a ton of the recipes and loved them, which is always a good sign, but I now find that doubtful. (Or else we must have very different tastes.) It feels like the author said, “Let's take a basic recipe and add one ingredient that makes it strange and unaccessible” for almost every recipe in this cookbook.