Classic Home Cooking

by Marlena Spieler, Mary Frances Berry

Featuring updated versions of a variety of favorite dishes as well as exotic specialties from around the world, this colorful cooking reference presents more than one thousand recipes, all using fresh, natural ingredients, for dishes that can be made with a minimum of time and effort and that use less saturated fat, sugar, and salt without sacrificing flavor.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Nonfiction, Cooking

544 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2003

About the author

Marlena Spieler was an American food writer of more than 70 cookbooks.

Reviews

[Dree · Rating 5 out of 5]

My go-to cookbook. Mine is a mess with dribbles and spots and notes and pages the have been wet and then dried.

In addition to the recipes and great layout and photography, this book has wonderful photos of how to do things--boning, straining, etc etc etc. The kind of stuff that you're never sure if you're doing it right--there are pictures.

Favorites:
Chicken Pot Pie
Sunday Roast Chicken (mmmm stuffing)
Sandwich Rolls
French Pancakes
Poultry Stock
Tarragon Chicken with Lime
French Onion Soup


Yummy:
Beef Florentine
Marinated Loin of Pork with Pineapple
Polenta with Grilled Vegetables
Three-Cheese Macaroni
Caribbean Rice and Peas
Yankee Succotash
Fruited Banana Bread
Biscuits
Meat Pie with Potato Topping
Chicken with Sage and Orange

Not Worth Making Again:
Spinach Roulade
Cabbage with Garlic (too garlicky for me)
Spinach Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce (disaster!)

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

My enthusiasm for this one, so far, is as a book to read and browse through for visual inspiration. (Haven't yet cooked anything from it, can't yet comment on the reliability of the recipes.)

Beautiful book, lots of pictures.

There's a cook's notes page detailing important information on things like the typical egg size used, measurements, etc. Definitely give it a look to make sure you and the authors are on the same page.

After getting snared by the Great British Baking show on PBS, and being impressed by Mary Berry's expertise/charm and insightful comments, I decided to hunt down a copy of this title for my very own.


Mary Berry has written lots of cookbooks, especially on baking.
This one has a broader focus than that, which is why it interested me.
(Much as I love baking, there's a limit to the amount of time I can spend baking goodies, mostly because if I bake it, I will eat it.)

The soup section caught my eye in the 'Look Inside' option on Amazon.

I'm definitely looking forward to giving some of these recipes a try.

It's a large, rather heavy book. Bought my copy used for not a lot of money, so was kind of surprised. Such a bargain. :)

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the cookbooks in our collection that we use the most. Good basic recipes and some not so basic recipes. One of the first cookbooks I pull out to look through when I'm in the mood for cooking because the recipes are good AND because it is illustrated exceptionally well.