Pippa Cuthbert

Pizza! from Pippa Cuthbert and Lindsay Cameron Wilson is a great addition to any cooking library, from beginner to seasoned pro.

This is not simply a recipe book, though in that regard it would still be a great book. This is about what pizza is, different things to different people. How to make them, the equipment to use and the variations in that equipment (types of stoves/ovens, utensils, etc), the basics of the base or crust. These differences are not simply listed but explored and show more critiqued so that you can make amazing pizza regardless of what you might have at hand.

The recipes, of course, are what will bring most of us to the book, and you will be very happy with the quality and variety of recipes. From meat lovers to vegetarians and all shades in between. I have managed pizzerias, both chain and privately owned, and this book offered more useful insight than all of my experience combined. I am looking forward to trying many of these variations as well as sharing this with friends and family.

If you like pizza, which means almost everybody, you will find plenty to like in this book. From tips and suggestions, through precautions to wonderful recipes, it is all here.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

(Amy) I love food. Anyone who's ever seen me can offer corroboration of this fact, because I look like I love food, but that's not quite the point I'm going for right now. What I'm trying to say is, I love food, and I love to make food even more than I love to eat it, and I love to have parties and give food to lots of other people. Pretty much any time we invite someone over to dinner, I go entirely overboard and make about eight different things, resulting in an overly full table and a show more collection of leftovers that is just plain ridiculous.

Any of my readers who happen also to be in my family know that I came by this tendency honestly.

The increasing interest in tapas is one obvious way around this problem: It would let me serve a variety of foods without anyone being expected to eat much of any one thing, and the variety becomes an intentional feature rather than evidence of my "feed the world" neurosis. Everyone wins!

This book is an excellent collection of recipes. Despite reading it after dinner one evening, I found myself hungry as I read descriptions of chicken and blue cheese croquettes, pomegranate and yogurt-marinated lamb skewers, assorted empanadas, eggplants stuffed with saffron ground lamb, fried goat's cheese balls with honey... Wow, now I'm hungry again, and I just had lunch. I'm planning to have a party Real Soon Now to have an excuse to make some of these things!

Highly recommended for people who, well, love food.
(http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/zenos-library/2009/01/100_great_tapas_pippa_cuthbert.html) show less

Quick impressions: Good and informative, but it is one of those cookbooks geared to enthusiasts and home cooks/bakers. Also includes some nice photography.

(Full review on my blog later)