Bonnie Benwick

As a collector of recipes for over 50 years, I obviously love cookbooks. I love them for the new dishes to try and I love them just to read. The Washington Post Cookbook is great for both.

This is a beautiful book with beautiful pictures. I would be nice to have a picture of every recipe, but then the book would be more expensive and there would be fewer recipes. Give and take, I guess, but I’m more likely to try something if I can see a picture of the completed product.

There is a great variety of recipes in ease of preparation, ethnicity, and ingredients. There are many recipes that I would never want to try but there are there are many that sound delicious and I look forward to preparing. I think everyone would find this to be true. Most of the ingredients can be found in a medium to large supermarket. There are recipes for beginners but most are for intermediate and skilled cooks.

One of the things I enjoyed about this book, other than the recipes, is the vignettes, the stories behind them. I liked the fact that these were culled from the most requested recipes in their archives. I find that recipes that are tried and proven by the everyday cooks generally are best, rather than recipes published only by a chef.

The short tip section at the end was also interesting.

The index is comprehensive, which is always helpful.

The Washington Post has done a good job in preparing this cookbook, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes to experiment with new recipes or just to read.… (meer)