Martha: The Cookbook: 100 Favorite Recipes, with Lessons and Stories from My Kitchen by Martha Stewart
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Web ID: 20312121Great book for the kitchen or the coffee table!
This is a well-rounded book that I enjoyed both reading, and cooking from. It would be equally at home on a coffee table, or a kitchen bookshelf. Even if you don’t cook, it’s so interesting to learn which of her vast collection Martha considers her most essential. The photos are great, and provide a peek into the whole of Martha’s life and trajectory into home keeping. The recipes are varied; some quite simple and some requiring more effort. I particularly enjoyed her short cut hollandaise, her pasta limone, and her method for broiling a steak indoors. I even picked up a trick for baked potatoes that has made a huge difference in their fluffiness! All of the recipes provide the precise instruction Martha is known for, and would be an excellent volume to cook from each week over a period of 2 years to expand one’s skill in the kitchen. There is no one like Martha in this space, and this volume represents her well!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Nice gift for Martha Fans
Things I like: -Martha is good at what she does, and she stays in her lane. -This is a really clever way of making a memoir. The writing and photos about Martha's life experiences and memories interspersed between beautifully photographed recipes would make this a nice coffee table book for long time fans. Things I don't like: -The retrospective aspect makes for a non cohesive recipe book that is more fun to look at than plan a menu from. -Wildly varying portion sizes. This recipes feeds 2; that one feeds 16! -A lot of recipes use local or expensive ingredients that are not widely accessible. Clarkson Potter provided me with a free copy of this book; the opinions are my own.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Great cookbook for Martha Stewart's fans
Martha Stewart celebrates her 100th published book with this anthology of her favorite recipes. Accompanying the recipes are memories of her life as a cook, caterer, gardener, and entertainment influencer. The recipes are organized by type of recipe and prefaced by narrative about Stewart’s memories about the time and place of the dish in her life. The book is organized into chapters about recipes for breakfast and brunch, soups and salads, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, dinner, garden sides, and desserts. Each recipe is accompanied by a clear and attractive photograph by Dana Gallagher. An introduction narrates each recipe, providing its context and origin. A section called My Basic Pantry provides recipes for stocks, pate brisee, whipped cream, and puff pastry. Some recipes I have made with great success: Alexis’s Chopped Salad—Chopped green and yellow beans, scallions, red onion, cucumber, cilantro, plum and cherry tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, colored bell peppers, and corn kernels are dressed with a mixture of rice wine vinegar and olive oil. Mary’s Knees—A cocktail of orange, lemon and lime juices, vodka, and Grand Marnier mixed together and served over ice with citrus slices. Vegetable Flatbread—Very thinly rolled yeast dough is brushed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and covered with thinly sliced tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, red onions, and fresh sage leaves, and baked until golden and crisped. Scalloped Potatoes—Sliced Yukon Gold potatoes are parboiled in milk, combined with cream and garlic, dotted with butter, spread with grated Gruyere cheese, and baked until browned and bubbling. Other recipes I am looking forward to making soon include a baked frittata, orange-scented currant scones, leek and fennel soup, cold mussel salad, kale Caesar salad, fudgy brownies, lemon sugar cookies, and brown butter shortbread, along with many other tempting recipes. This cookbook is well-suited to Martha Stewart fans who would like to complete their collection of her many books, as well as anyone who would like to have an overview of her work. All of the book is an inspiring journey through her culinary world. It would make a great gift for any level of cook. Thanks to Clarkson Potter for the advance copy. I have enjoyed reading and cooking through Martha: The Cookbook!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
it's a hundred good things
After all these years that Martha Stewart has been teaching us how to cook, entertain, bake, decorate, clean, organize, garden, and reinvent ourselves, the time has finally come. It’s time for her 100th cookbook. For Martha: The Cookbook, she has curated 100 of her favorite recipes, a mix of timeless favorites, classic home dishes, menu items from her restaurant The Bedford in Las Vegas, and a few showstoppers perfect for entertaining. With an emphasis on high quality ingredients and the most successful techniques, Martha has written a variety of recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts, including hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. From how to make the perfect omelet to her Paella, from Martha-tinis to Herb Roasted Chickens, from her Tomato Tart to the Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake, these recipes come from generations of cooking and happy experiments in the kitchen. The Beet Soup is based on her Polish mother’s recipes, brought to America. But the Roasted Turkey in Parchment with Brioche Stuffing came from her and her Martha Stewart Living trying new recipes for the holidays. Along with these favorite recipes are old family photos and stories and memories of Martha and her family. She talks about how she first went to Paris at 17 as a model and discovered a multitude of foods she’d never dreamed of. Later, she cooked her way through the entire first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She had a child. She worked on Wall Street, and later opened a small specialty food market that lead to her catering events. Through this book, we get to see and hear about bits and pieces of these moments, as well as her time hosting her television show and creating her magazine. Her recipes span from more recent trends like Green Juice and Kale Caesar Salad, recipes she ;earned from other cooks like the Miso Eggplant from Nobu or the Steamed Eggs from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, to the time-honored Potato Pierogi or a classic Strawberry Shortcake. There is something for everyone in Martha: The Cookbook, and longtime fans of Martha Stewart will definitely appreciate how it’s all packaged together into one beautiful book. That being said, it may not be possible to replicate these recipes as precisely as she does. She is known for sourcing the best possible ingredients, the freshest seafoods, the finest olive oils. She has a large garden with vegetables and herbs grown from seeds she’s been collecting for years. She has her own fruit trees. She has chickens that lay fresh eggs every day, cows that give fresh milk. She can buy expensive cheeses, truffles, caviar. She bought a machine to help her make homemade puff pastry (although she did master it by hand before buying the machine). A lot of readers won’t have the same access or resources. I’m sure the recipes will still create delicious dishes, but they are not all accessible for a home cook. That being said, there are still a lot of recipes that will work well for a home cook. Martha offers ideas for how to make things more flavorful or easier (like how to prep some potato dishes, like her Scalloped Potatoes, early without the potatoes oxidizing). She calls out her favorite kitchen equipment and alcohols by name, and several of the desserts aren’t too difficult but would be perfect for a large family gathering like a holiday. She gives tips preparing eggs to make them easier to peel while cooking them perfectly, and good ideas for preparing seafood and a variety of vegetables. And of course, the photography is beautiful throughout. Martha fans will treasure this cookbook, and those wanting a place to start with her many cookbooks, magazines, and television series will find Martha: The Cookbook the perfect place to find a curated list of her favorite and best recipes along with some of her history and her personality. It’s a good thing. A copy of Martha: The Cookbook was provided by Clarkson Potter, with many thanks, but the opinions are my own.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Elegant Cookbook with Iconic Recipes
I grew up watching Martha Stewart and there are some recipes that are synonymous with her brand. Martha: The Cookbook is a compilation of 100 of her favorite (and famous) recipes. In addition to the recipes, she includes photos of family, friends, and her food as well as anecdotes about memories that connect to the recipes. I was excited to cook with Martha. On the day I received the book, I was planning to make salmon for dinner. Her Honey Mustard Salmon is not only easy to make, but it is delicious. This simple recipe paired with a salad or vegetable is a crowd pleaser. Pierogi is an iconic dish that seemed (at least to me) very intimidating. I read over the recipe many times and also watched a video of Martha preparing them before I attempted to make them. The most difficult part was the dough; mine was very sticky for a long time. But by adding more flour gradually and as you roll them out, the dough took shape. It is an elastic dough and I filled my pierogi with a cookie scoop amount of dough (and used a 2 inch cookie cutter). The amount of filling the recipe makes is probably three to four times the amount you actually need. I was left with a large bowlful of mashed potatoes which was eaten for lunch and dinner over the next few days. Next time I prepare them, I'll make half/quarter the filling and add salt to the dough (as they are a tad bland). The cookbook is comprehensive and contains lots of practical recipes for sweet and savory dishes. I want to try Alexis' Chocolate Chip Cookies next to see if they will make my holiday cookie list this year. Clarkson Potter provided me with a free copy of this book; the opinions are my own.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
How Martha Became Martha
A 100th book is certainly cause for celebration and cookbook icon Martha Stewart has made this milestone volume so lavish that it belongs on devotees' coffee table as much as on their kitchen counter. Martha: The Cookbook is not just a catalog of 100 of her favorite recipes but a look back at her long career as a kitchen and lifestyle celebrity. The legions of Martha (both the icon herself and her publications) fans will devour this tribute to her long career, told through photos of not just the start of her status as a kitchen guru but her previous modeling career and early life. Leafing through the lavish pages of this volume, subtitled Lessons and Stories from My Kitchen, readers will find photos of Martha with her parents and five siblings, scenes from those modeling days while she was in college, and her standing behind the prizes she won at the Weston (Connecticut) Town Fair. Younger readers especially might enjoy these glimpses of just how Marth's career evolved while long-time fans will also treasure this look back. The recipes chosen for this celebratory volume are a mix of both the simple--The Perfect Omelet, Pasta Llimone, and Strawberry Shortcake--as well as more complicated dishes, such as Roasted Turkey in Parchment with Brioche Stuffing. Martha pays tribute to her mother with Big Martha's Mashed Potatoes and Potato Pierogi, the latter famous dish given four pages of photos. Martha's daughter gets credit for Alexis's Chocolate Chip Cookies and Alexis's Chopped Salad, a lavish dish with ten vegetables. Martha tells readers that she wanted from her early days "not to do the ordinary, but to elaborate on the ordinary and create, as best as I could, the extraordinary." The recipes here give tribute to that sentiment with Ciprian Classic Meringue Cake, Duck Breast with Sour Cherry Sauce, and an elaborate Tomato Tart. Disclaimer: Clarkson Potter provided me with a free copy of this book; the opinions are my own.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com