The Ultimate Cook Book: 900 New Recipes, Thousands of Ideas

I first bought a copy of this book for my Kindle. I then decided I wanted a hardback copy. I have made several things, the latest being chicken salad. The book is very thorough. I can pick something from my kindle while I am at work, make an ingredient list, pick up items on the way home and then prop the hardback copy open to cook from.

I love this Kindle download! I download the sample while sitting in my car at the grocery store and did a quick browse. Wow! Recipe for The Ultimate Granola. Terrific, I only need a few ingredients and cereal was on my list anyway. The authors give you the basic recipe and then offer numerous suggestions of complimentary ingredients to change up the finished product. Nice! And I haven't even bought the book yet! From learning how to make the perfect scrambled eggs for breakfast burritos, sandwiches, and migas, or just to enjoy "plain". Right there in that section I already have twelve suggestions for different breakfasts using scrambled eggs. Cool. I bought the book and glad that I did. Contents include breakfast and brunch section (try out the peanut butter smoothie), Appetizers from dips to pizza, Salads (read up on the ultimate Salad Bar), Soups, Pastas, Cassaroles, Breads, Fowl, fish and shellfish (huge section), to meats, vegetables, grains, beans, tofu, to cakes, puddings, cookies, pies. A huge amount of info and all right there on your Kindle (also available in print) so whenever and where ever you are, you can check out recipes, and stop by the store on the way home and get the ingredients. How great is that!

I have hundreds of cookbooks but none can compare to the delight of the recipes and techniques found here. Bruce and Mark's writing style is as engaging as their recipes are easy and flavorful. I heartily recommend this book to both novice and experienced cooks. It truly is the Ultimate Cookbook.

With only a few weeks of ownership, this cookbook has had lots of use by me with various meritorious food spots to prove it. Evey recipe I've used has been easy to follow and produced a fine product. So many recipes, so little time!

`The Ultimate Cookbook' by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough is a title which figuratively sticks out its chin and invites one to criticize it for overweening pride. I am happy to say that this book lives up to the promise of its title as well as any 692 page book is able to do. For starters, the authors get an initial allowance for having already written ten other `The Ultimate...' this, that, and the other thing cookbooks, all of which (at least those of which I've reviewed) are, I can say, very decent manuals on their respective subjects, even if I did fail to find a good blueberry muffin recipe in their `Ultimate' muffin book. Thus, they are simply enlarging their franchise on this title. They also deserve much credit for pointing out and delivering on their `all new recipes' claim. This means that they have not just `phoned in' this book by reproducing all the material from their other books. So far, this at least makes them eligible for four stars. But there is more. Much, much more. I have always believed that one can detect a very good or a very bad book within two minutes of opening the covers and browsing about in the Table of Contents and the Introduction. The symptoms of quality showed up almost immediately, when I saw two sections in the `Fish and Shellfish' chapter on `Thin White-Fleshed Fish Fillets' and `Thick White-Fleshed Fish Fillets'. These are obviously guys who have browsed the fish counter and wondered if the flounder and haddock fillets (thin and thick respectively) can be cooked in the same way. My mind was made up even before I got past the Introduction, where I read the `Thirty-One Examples of Culinary Shorthand'. This is exactly the kind of section I always thought would be a good idea, but have never seen anyone do it really well, until now! On the one hand, this is a very good general purpose reference cook book, similar to `The Joy of Cooking', Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything', and James Beard's `American Cookery'. It has fifteen (15) chapters on all the essential topics. These are: Breakfast and Brunch Appetizers, Nibbles, and Snacks Salads Soups Pasta and Noodles Bread Chicken, Turkey, and Other Birds Fish and Shellfish Beef, Pork, and Other Meats Vegetables Grains, Beans, Lentils, and Tofu Cakes Cookies Pies, Tarts, and Fruit Desserts Puddings, Custards, Mousses, and Souffles Now the fact that Maida Heatter alone has written about 1200 pages worth of books on cakes demonstrates that there is no way our fair authors can cover every detail of all these subjects. But, they go about each subject which is demonstrably more thoughtful than many, many other cookbook authors. Their ideal audience is one step up from the Rachael Ray 30 minute meal level (note the four chapters on baked goods) where the reader is willing to read through a goodly portion of the book to get the lay of the land before rushing out to the supermarket. On the other hand, the book is not written for the dedicated foodie who follows the a