Book Review: SOUP from DK Publishing
Can there be anyone who does not love soup? Easy to prepare, healthy and delicious, soup may well be the ultimate in comfort food. And for cookbook fans, DK Publishing’s SOUP would appear at first glance to be a must-have volume. Bright red, substantial and solid with beautiful photographs of gorgeous bowls of comfort. Sadly, the pages between the bright red covers were rather disappointing.
While I know that some cookbook readers are inexperienced cooks and need to have everything explained in great detail, there are quite a number of beginner and general cookbooks that provide such information very well. The first section of SOUP that focuses on techniques seemed a bit out of place to me. While I suppose that it is possible that some readers might indeed need lessons on such basics as chopping vegetables and making stock, I found myself thinking as I read this section “quit treating me like an idiot and get to the darned recipes already”.
Had I known how disappointing I would find the recipes perhaps I would have been more patient with Cooking 101. The many vegetarian soups seemed to me to combine vegetables that do not go particularly well together. It also seemed to me that many of these vegetarian soups would in fact have been better with a chicken or beef base. The meat and chicken soups also largely failed to attract my interest, and I found myself thinking in several instances that I already know better recipes and methods than those described herein. And the Lettuce and Pea Soup on page 129 (two heads of lettuce, pureed in the food processor and a package of frozen peas, all cooked briefly on top of the stove) struck me as downright disgusting. SOUP from DK Publishing— NOT Recommended.
