Cmp Soups Stews

This has to be one of the best books available for soups and stews. We have not found a recipe yet that was not excellent.

I am amazed that at this time , January, 2007 there are only four other reviews for this most excellent soup, stew, and chili recipe book. I have used it almost exclusively for my soup and stew cooking for over ten years, and have given it as a gift to friends and relatives several times (with 100% positive feedback). This is a great source book for all types of cooks. Fledglings, those with limited success or confidence, bachelors or recently-divorced men, folks who delight in one-dish meals, and even soup afficionados like me will benefit from having it in their collection. Clayton gives us an excellent introduction to the craft of soup-making by covering such important basics as stock preparation, use and selection of soup making tools. He is happy to share the difficulties and delights of soup-making with his readers, by supplying helpful information for each recipe; sometimes to explain the source or history of the recipe, or to share information about uncommon ingredients or variations. It's almost like having him in the kitchen looking over your shoulder, gently dispensing his knowledge and advice. He prepared these recipes himself, so the directions are clear and easy to follow, even the complicated ones. But what about the recipes? I've had this cookbook for over ten years. I've prepared over twenty of the recipes and have not yet found a bad or mediocre one yet. In fact, I prepare several of them regularly enough to call them my favorites. Here are the best ones I've made so far: Borscht : I make this at least once a month. In fact, I made it last night. Friends and family have raved at its stew-like quality and robustness. Although I can't get the Russian fellow at work to try it, I brought it for a Boy Scout campout. I was floored when the boys raved about it. The best compliment any soup can receive is from boys whose favorite vegetable is ketchup. I've tried three of Clayton's chili recipes. First up was president Lyndon Johnson's mild, simple, and straightforward Pedernales River Chili made with meat, onions, and spices. I now add the `chili puree' from the Hernandez family chili recipe to every recipe I make because you can customize the spicing for each individual in the house. "Mom Unser's Chili" is a quick one, and made with pork instead of beef. Old Fashioned Cabbage Soup incorporates frankfurters, and I was able to get my then very young children to eat it because I billed it `Hot Dog Soup'. Irish potato soup. Absolutely delicious! I once thought a potato was a potato, but in his tips Clayton explains how using different potatoes brings different flavor to the soup. Shaker Bean Chowder----"Good, smooth, and flavorful. Excellent for the vegetarians among us. Saiman' soup, a Hawaiian pork-bone, sea kelp recipe which both Clayton and my wife insist has curative powers. Pick up this most useful volume and cook up a delicious meal tonight!

We have had this book for over 10 years and can't use it anymore - it's too beat-up! We have tried dozens of these receipes and every one is outstanding. The level of step-by-step is right on for the novice and the more experienced. Can not recommend this book enough.

`The Complete Book of Soups and Stews' by the late blooming culinary writer, Bernard Clayton was very slow in coming to my attention as a reviewer, even though I have owned a copy for several years. Part of my tardiness is due to the fact that I am very sanguine about the ability of a `...Complete...' book to live up to its presumption on just about any culinary subject, especially one so big as soups and stews. Another part of my reluctance to critically read this book is the fact that I did review the author's `The Complete Book of Breads' and found it to be missing an awfully big chunk of bread lore, in that it had very poor coverage of artisinal breads baked using wild yeasts such as the famous San Francisco sourdough yeast. In comparison, Rose Levy Beranbaum's `The Bread Bible' and books from Peter Reinhart are superior on some of the more arcane corners of bread baking. So, I have spent my time reviewing good soup and stew books by such luminaries as Barbara Kafka, James Peterson, and Deborah Madison, plus a passle of `soup Nazi' wannabes who run soup restaurants from one coast to the other. I am paying for my tardiness in my regrets for not cracking open this excellent book much sooner. This is one of those books which makes you wonder why later writers bother to write on a subject, since Master Clayton seems to have covered the subject so well. On the issue of `...Complete...', Clayton addresses this issue head on by saying that the book is not complete in the literal sense, since one can easily write volumes on the subject of onion soups alone. Rather, the book is complete in that it touches on every major genre of soup and stew. The very first thing to impress me about this book was the meticulous detail to which all recipes went in both fact and in useful typographical layout. And, all of this is done in the service of soups, by golly, which the author quite correctly says are certainly a lot easier to make than, for example, breads. The next thing that impressed me was the author's description of stock making. It was not overly fussy, but it managed to leave out no important details about the stock making procedure for the basics such as beef, chicken, fish, and vegetable stocks. I did spot one minor misstatement when he says with no qualification that older meats are better for stocks than flesh and bones from young animals. There is a major counter-example to this statement in the use of veal to make thick stocks with gelatin, since young animal bones have more gelatin in them then older animals. I am also tempted to argue with his identifying genus vegetable stock as `count bouillon'. I strongly suspect that `court bouillon' is simply one species of the very large family of vegetable stocks. I know this from my reading of Deborah Madison on stocks, with whom by great good sense, Clayton concurs in that both state the opinion that a stock should be made to reflect the use to which it will be put. To that end, Clayton makes the exc

I wanted a cookbook to accompany a soup pot as a gift to a new bride. This book is great, as it shows basic how-to's in addition to specific recipes. Now I'm coming back to buy one for me, even though I've been creating soups for decades, to try out some of the terrific recipes in Mr. Bernard's collection.