[.ca] Sara Moulton Cooks at Home (ISBN 0767907701)

From Amazon.com:
Sara Moulton is a very, very busy woman: Food Network host and personality, executive chef for Gourmet magazine, food editor for Good Morning America, and the mother of two children. Now add to that author of her first cookbook Sara Moulton Cooks at Home, in which Moulton delivers easy-to-prepare recipes as well as plenty of timesaving tips. If you wonder where Moulton draws her inspiration from, this book is all about family, including her extended family of friends and professional associates. Her recipe introductions read like an autobiography. She shows how it is done, and then she challenges the reader to do much the same with his or her own family of recipes. Moulton's 200-some recipes break down into standard sections such as hors d'oeuvres, soups, salads, meat, pasta, and so on. But she also pays homage to vegetarian main courses, light lunches, and breakfast and brunch. Look for Gingery Chicken Broth with Wonton Ravioli, Blasted Chicken (it's about roasting at high temperature), Sautéed Pork Loin with Mustard and Grapes, Roasted Salmon with Warm Lentil Salad, Andrea's Blackberry Crumble, and her own daughter's contribution, Ruthie's Chocolate French Toast with Raspberry Sauce. Sara Moulton Cooks at Home is about real food for real people. Sometimes it's homey, sometimes it's homely, and sometimes it puts on a string of pearls. --Schuyler Ingle

Very good recipes, especially well suited for the home cook:
As the title of her book indicates, Sara Moulton's recipes are aimed precisely at what one would want to cook at home if you enjoy cooking, have the time to spend on longer procedures, and do not wish to chase after a lot of special ingredients. In a way, that sounds like a very retro scenario, predating the current popularity of fast cooking, the renaissance of gourmet cooking of the seventies and eighties, the convenience product / soup can cooking of the fifties, and the dark days of the thirties and forties. If you ignore the cosmopolitan sources of many recipes, this a refurbished look at the kind of cooking your first generation American grandmother or great grandmother did at home. That is not to say these recipes are especially easy. Many are not. However, I have made several dishes from this book and I have gotten more personal favorites from this book than from all my Italian cookbooks combined. That doesn't mean these are the very best recipes either, but they work. When you compare Sara's recipes for chicken stock with those in 'The Best Recipe', you find many differences, but I will bet on Sara's recipe or even James Beard's recipe over the 'Best Recipe'. Sara's book includes several things I love to find in a cookbook. First, it's very chatty and informative about how she arrived at the recipe. Outside of the kitchens of Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio, and Charlie Trotter, for example, there are probably very few genuinely new recipes being created even today. Almost all are variations on traditional classics. How many ways, for example have you seen tomato, basil, and mozarella combined. You will see at least five more variations on this very old theme on the Food Network over the next year. Second, Sara revels in her roots, and she has very interesting roots to celebrate, as her mentors are three of the most distinguished culinary writers of the last fifty years, including Jean Anderson, Jacques Pepin, and the incomparable Julia Child, for which Sara was an assistant for many years. Third, the book begins with a feature which should be manditory in all cookbooks. The notes on how to use this book give the meaning of a large number of common ingredients such as eggs meaning large eggs, flour meaning general purpose flour, and butter meaning unsalted butter. The book includes a wider variety of dishes than you may find in restaurant or speciality cuisine cookbooks. It also contains a lot of classics such as crab cakes, fried green tomatoes, apple strudel, rice pudding and oven fried chicken. While these are classics, there is usually some twist to make them fresh. I would recommend this as a very good second cookbook, after the 'Joy of Cooking', 'James Beard's American Cookery', or Mark Bittman's 'How to Cook Everything'. The recipes will be fresher and have greater cachet by being able to announce that they are from a celebrity chef.One caveat is that this will not teach great technique, so your third book should be the excellent books on cooking technique by Jaques Pepin or James Peterson.

Quite a "Working Mom":
Sara Moulton is the Executive Chef for Gourmet Magazine and Food Editor for Good Morning America. She has hosted several shows on Food Network. She is a graduate of the CIA, has cooked in famous kitchens like La Tulipe, and worked on Julia Childs' televison show. The friends she acknowledges in the book's Introduction are a veritable "Who's Who in Food Today". Her husband is Bill Adler, a very prominent person in the recording industry, and her Mother, Elizabeth, is the former Editor of, ( I believe), Glamour Magazine, so Sara has not only an impressive resume, but very good connections. You might expect such a person to have quite a formidable presence. On television Sara Moulton comes across as one of the most down-to-earth people you would ever hope to meet, and her book seems to confirm this image. She begins one recipe with, "Whenever I have homemade chicken stock in the freezer, I feel happy". And, you have to believe she sincerly means just that. The recipes range from simple to elegant, but are all designed to be cooked and eaten at home. Sara is proud to label herself a "working Mom" to her two children, and her philosophy on food and eating might be summed up in the quote, "A home-cooked meal is always a great gift, as is sitting down to dine." The book is very straightforward in its compilation, with short personal comments to accompany most recipes. The instructions are concise and easy to follow, and the book is full of handy tips such as, "... the best way to store ginger?". There are a few pages of colored photos of dishes, and numerous black and white family album pictures throughout the book. Michael Green, Gourmet's Wine Consultant, provides a chapter on pairing food and wine as well as tips and suggestions throughout the book You could do a lot worse than to own this cookbook.

Not Home Cooking 101, but she is Gourmet's Exec Chef:
This is a terrific cookbook and while I feel that the title might lead some to believe that the food prepared here is more basic than what is prepared on her Food TV shows, the opposite is actually true. That said, it's important to note that these recipes, while not primer-simple are still straight-forward, well written and very user friendly. Menu/accompaniment suggestions are included as well as wine suggestions and from my experience, they work beautifully together. The combination of Tarragon Chicken,Lemon Roasted Potatoes and Provencal Tomatoes is one of my personal favorites. There is a great variety of recipes here that can be used for family meals as well as entertaining. A very "able" book - usable, doable, reasonable recipes. This one will not collect dust on a shelf.

Great Cookbook!:
I purchased this book as a birthday present for my mother. She is a huge fan of Sara Moulton. I had never watched Sara's show on the Food Network, but I paged through this book before giving it to my mom. Wow! Great recipes, easy to follow. I'm hooked. I will have to get my own copy of this book. I highly recommend it!

Excellent cookbook:
One of the things that I've always liked about Sara Moulton's shows was that the recipes used were fairly easy to follow and not too difficult to prepare. I'm not the greatest cook in the world and tend not to bother with a recipe if it's overly long or too difficult. Most of the recipes in this book are suitable for even cooks with limited skills like myself. They are not at all intimidating (much like Sara herself)and don't require ingredients that can only be found in specialty shops in New York or Chicago. The instructions are real easy to follow. The book also has a lot of nice photos. If you like Sara Moulton's style on TV, you'll enjoy this book.