Illustrated Kitchen Bible

Illustrated Kitchen Bible – 1000 family recipes from around the world
Published at DK Canada

About the book

The Illustrated Kitchen Bible is all quality content—a tremendous resource of over 1,000 delicious, achievable, and international recipes, with sumptuous photography, precise text, and innovative ideas.
This book takes recipes and techniques and puts them under the microscope. How to get the best when shopping? What the preparation and cooking stages are? What to look for? What should it feel and smell like? How to save the day if something isn't right? What to serve with it? What to do with the leftovers (if there are any)? The result is home cooking at its most perfect.
Victoria Blashford-Snell trained at Le Cordon Bleu, runs a highly successful catering company in London, and is a regular cooking teacher and demonstrator in Italy, Somerset, and at London's Books for Cooks. She has co-authored DK’s Hors d’Oeuvres.
Austrialia chef Brigitte Hafner writes the weekly recipes for The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living and Melbourne Age’s Epicure sections and with partner James Broadway, runs a popular wine bar and eatery in Melbourne’s Fitzroy called The Gertrude Street Enoteca

My Thoughts

I love recipe books – don’t ask me why though.   Maybe it is because my mom would buy some while I was growing up.  Problem is even though you buy recipe books because of the pictures in it, it is rare that you make more than one or two recipes from it.

Recently, my husband and I watched Julie and Julia which we loved (my in-laws started it when they babysat for our anniversary and couldn’t stand it… *grin*  funny how a movie could be captivating for some and totally annoying for others!).  It made us think about trying new recipes on a regular basis.   This time, I’ve decided to try a recipe from The Illustrated Kitchen Bible.

This cookbook is packed with over one thousand family recipes and lots of pictures.   Each and every recipe in this book has a picture showed the end result of the recipe.

I had decided to do the Honey Mustard Barbecued Chicken even though I didn’t had all the ingredients.   I improvised a bit I will admit.   The recipe is asking for balsamic vinegar to marinate the chicken but unfortunately my bottle was almost empty.    So I compensated with cider vinegar.  Both were vinegar, both were tangy and sweet at the same time.  Perfect!

The chicken marinated for about 24 hours – give or take – in the fridge in a container that I regularly flipped to make sure that all the chicken thighs would be soaked in thoroughly.

On Father’s Day, my in-laws came over for supper and we cooked the chicken on the BBQ.   During the afternoon, there has been lots of commotion on my street as a house was burning.   About ten fire trucks came not counting the police cars and paramedics.    Fortunately, nobody was hurt as the family and their pets were not present at the time.  

But because of the events on our normally quiet neighborhood, I had forgotten that I needed a glaze for the recipe.   OUPS!

Nevertheless, the chicken was delicious and very tasty.   Everyone agreed that the recipe was a success. *grin*

The Illustrated Kitchen Bible will cover every type of recipes you can hope to find in a recipe book.

• Starters and Lights Bites
• Breads, Sandwiches, and Pizza
• Soups and Salads
• Eggs, Cheese, Pickles, and Chutneys
• Pasta, Legumes, Rice, and Grains
• Vegetables
• Fish and Shellfish
• Poultry and Feathered Game
• Meats
• Desserts and Ice Cream
• Cakes and Pastries
• Fruits and Jellies

Also at the various mains sections you will have a recipe choosers which present you various recipes in that section with mouth-watering pictures accompanied with the title of the recipe, the time needed to make it as well as the page where the recipe is located.   If you are in a rush, these pages are life savers for you.  If you are more like me, you will prefer to sit down and flip through the pages of this huge recipe book to find the recipe that will grab your heart.

The book also contains a section titled techniques in which you can learn various techniques in cooking.   You can learn to poach an egg properly, how steam, chop, prepare fruits and vegetables and so much more.  

My favourite part of the book is that I can find recipes from around the world and be able to do it for my family.    Some recipes do have the information of the country included but not all of them.   It is a little bit disappointing not to know where a recipe comes from.   For example, the recipe I made over the week-end didn’t tell me where this recipe originated.   I would have loved to know that.   I also think that including the flag of the country next to the recipe would be a nice added touch to the cookbook seeing that it contains international recipes.

To be honest, I think this book is the perfect gift for a bride-to-be, a child leaving home for college/university or to teach your kids about cooking.  It is a wonderful book to have in your own kitchen.

As for us, we will continue to explore our taste-buds and try new recipes using this cookbook as well as other ones we have at home.  You won’t be disappointed with the quality and the quantities of recipes in this cookbook!

The Illustrated Kitchen Bible is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca.

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned product for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.