A
Baker’s Life: 100 Fantastic Recipes from childhood bakes to five-star
excellence – Paul Hollywood (Bloomsbury)
Kitchen
Creativity: Unlocking Culinary Genius –with Wisdom, Inspiration, and Ideas from
the World’s Most Creative Chefs – Karen Page (Little Brown)
I think everybody has one of those people on their
Christmas shopping list; you know those people who are impossible to shop for
or impossible to please. Well here are a couple of great ideas to help you
track down the right gift that will check all the boxes for those you know
whos.
No
Such Thing as too Many Cookbooks
Like most people who either tinker around the kitchen
or love to try new things, I am a firm believer that you can never have too
many cookbooks. If you’re like me, while abundance is not an issue, I like to own
cookbooks that are just loaded with great recipes for things I actually like to
eat or that offer up great ideas that will help you hone your skills and come
up with new things to try.
Two great gifts for this holiday season that tick all
the boxes are Paul Hollywood’s, A Baker’s
Life and Karen Page’s new outing Kitchen
Creativity. Both are brimming with great and tasty ideas and are chockfull of
gorgeous photography to enhance the experience.
I admit, I never knew about the British fascination with
baking shows/competitions until the Food Network and other cooking shows,
started to import these kinds of show to our shores. One of the big heroes of
this phenomenon across the pond is Paul Hollywood a stocky guy who caught the
attention of British fans from his role as a judge on the Great British Bake Off program.
Hollywood recounts 100 fantastic recipes, including
many that trace their roots back to his earliest attempts in the kitchen, that
he has practiced and honed over the course of his life and career. The
photography is eye popping good and will have your mouth watering. While I do
fairly well when it comes to cooking, I have always felt that I come up a
little short when it comes to the baking side of skills, but I always willing
to go in and take a swing.
The thing I loved the most about A Baker’s Life is that Hollywood give a great mix of all thing
baked; from the sweet to the savory and a multitude of carb-laden goodness in
between. He gives clear and concise direction and offer little tidbits that
will help you over the bumps. He takes classic things and gives them an
interesting twist, literally in the case of the VERY tasty Baklava Spirals.
The
Search for FLAVOR
When reading Karen Page’s new book, Kitchen Creativity I had the sense that
I was snooping into the very personal journal of a master chef and getting a
peek at the secrets they keep to themselves, the magic if you will, that they
work to create amazing fountains of flavor.
And truth be told, that probably isn’t far off the
mark, as Page taps into a bevy of brilliant, culinary masters and borrows some
their insight into how to develop new flavor profiles and new dishes. It’s also
like getting a free pass on having to do all of the legwork and all of the
heavy lifting that they have done throughout their careers.
Combine all of this gathered insight with the brilliant
photography of Andrew Dorneberg and you end up with, not to sound too much like
a spiky-haired TV chef, a road map to flavor town. Kitchen Creativity feels a bit like a masters level course being
taught by dozens of experts representing the creative process behind some of
the highest profile eateries in the country.
If you have a person who takes the efforts in the kitchen seriously, this is a great choice. They will thank you again and again for gifting them with this wonderful book.
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