I'm pretty critical of cookbooks, and there's much here to criticize.
In making chicken soup, it calls for a "skinned" and diced potato. If a potato has been *boiled*, it's fairly easy to slip off the jacket, but dicing it afterwards, and then tossing it in soup? It'll cook thoroughly in a feew minutes anyway, and starting with a cooked potato seems like you'd end up with mush. I'll assumed that she meant a peeled potato.
Another recipe calls for a cup of butternut squash. It made me think of the joke about the guy who goes into a "we cook anything" restaurant, and orders am elephant sandwich. He waits forever, then asks the waiter where it is. "We're waiting for someone else to order elephant; it'd be wasteful yo slaughter an entire elephant for one sandwich, don't you suppose? A squash should yield five or six cups of flesh, I'd suppose.
Another recipe calls for a can of chopped tomatoes. I buy the big cans, about a quart, but many people buy the little cans, about a pint. But you knowe what? This isn't rocket science. I you toss in a quart of 'maters instead of a pint, it isn't going to ruin the soup, not by any means.
Ms Grey says these are family recipes that she's cooked, every one of them, and I believe her. It has that kind of "feel" to it. For instance, one recipe calls for lowfat hamburger, which is cooked and the fat drained off and discarded, then broth is added. Beef broth is fat fat and water; it'd make more sense to just add water and retain a bit of the hamburger fat. That's the sort of illogic that screams out "these are family recipes."
She opens a can of white beans for her Tuscan Bean Soup, and declares it done in 15 minutes. I'd start with dried beans, and let them bathe in the warmth of a crock pot, starting them one night to eat the following night. And they get even better if you cook them for a second day, and better still with three days cooking. I can't tell you about the effects of a fourth day; we've never had a container large enough that the beans weren't gone long before that. And cornbread really goes well with it, buut dare you put a recipr for cornbread in a soup cook book.
Both the "artishoke" soup and the parsnip soup call for parsnips, and that's another thing that screams "family recipes". Most home cooks have never cooked a parsnip in their lives, and many have never tasted them - but they are a wonderful addition to a winter soup.
The Italian Vegetable Soup calls for 2 "stalks" of celery. That seems wrong to me. Two ribs of celery ain't hardly going to be noticed in a pot with a quarter head of cabbage (unless she buys AWFULLY small cabbages), and two heads are going to overwhelm everything. The is a recipe that calls for a can of tomatoes, size unspecified, so I imagine there are going to be a lot of different soups cooked by those who scrupulously follow this recipe, but this being a "family recipe", my bet is that everyone in the family already does this. Recipes are there to be the cook's servant, not the cook's master, and anyone who makes the same recipe over and over without cariation simply lacks any gumption. This is a recipe that would be very forgiving of innovation.
Cookbooks should inspire, and I want to try Spiced Beet and Carrot Soup this week. I rarely cook beets except for steamed, buttered fresh "baby beets", and I don't use ginger, but it sounds like it could be a really great soup. Or perhaps something I'd hate, but great foods make bold statements, and aren't going to please everybody - but that's better than eating pablum.
Uncle Sam has finally admitted that dietary cholesterol is not a villain. My late first wife was a wonderful soup maker, and when she made a pot of cream soup, it'd be 50% Half and Half, and she'd add butter besides. This soup cookbook specifies using "milk" instead, and I can just imagine some mother making these recipes with skim milk, so her kids end up eating little of it, and filling up on junk from the fast-food store. It's better, both for your body and your soul, to eat a little food that is extremely satisfying, than to deprive yourself by eating greater quantities of what doesn't really match what you yearn for. But being a decent cook, you know that already, don't you?
I was surprised to find soups with hamburger, chick and milk in this cookbook, as Ms Gray has written a cookbook for vegans. She DOES end the book with a half-dozen recipes calling for quinoa. I tend to be somewhat disappointed with cookbooks that proclaim themselves to be healthy-cooking, call for frozen spinach or canned green beans when both are readily available year-around. (Pink balls purported to be tomatoes are also available year-around, but they don't have the flavor or texture of God's Favorite Produce, while canned tomatoes come fairly close.)
There's no cheese soup here, no chili, and instead of potato soup, there are potato-ey soups with leeks or with broccoli. Those are serious deficiencies. I've compiled quite a list of deficiencies in this cookbook, but despite all my beefing, this is STILL a quite useful addition to you Kindle. You know, most of us, in making soup, tend to use what's on hand, and that can be somewhat repetitious. Sit in the car, glancing through the recipes before you go into Fresh Thyme or Kroger, and you can bring home the produce to make soups that will delight and satisfy, especially if you have the sense to make your own version of these recipes, as a family member ought to. This is markedly better than Ms. Grey's other cookbooks, and she's a good writer. I recommend you keep this one on your Kindle instead of retrieving it in the Amazon Cloud when you need it..
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- Brenda*Leigh*JohnsonReviewed in Australia on January 17, 2015
Tinned soup is the pits so...
