BOOK REVIEW - Easy Home Cooking - Cook and Bake With Ease by Ginia Basu
A cookbook that starts with these lines would definitely
have food for thought, is what I felt when I started reading the recipes. The
introduction given by Ginia Basu struck a chord within me. She started cooking
at the age of ten, I began writing at the age of ten.
Another similarity was that we both had special diaries
that held within them our favourite recipes. What more reason did I need to go
through this culinary trove?
The book has been divided into two sections.
Cookies, Cakes and Bread
Savouries
The recipes in the first section have been chosen with
care. Gina Basu regales her readers with heart-warming anecdotes. Starting with
the Three-Ingredient Cookie, and Healthy Whole Wheat Dark Chocolate Cookies,
she goes on to talk about rarer ingredients like Patali Gur or Date Palm jaggery
and Gondhoraj Lebhu which is a special kind of lime with an out-of-the word
citrusy fragrance.
What is attractive about the recipes in this book are
that they are simple and quick to make. Given that Ginia Basu has a full-time
job, it is appreciable that she makes time for her special hobby, and what is
even better, has written a cookbook to make the lives of others easier as well.
The images are evocative – the Blueberry White Chocolate
Muffins and Whole-wheat Rose Muffins look delicious, and one can almost smell
the citrusy aroma of the Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf Cake and the Orange Cranberry
Loaf Cake.
The savouries are simpler than the desserts above, be it the Mixed Bean Salad, the Savoury Muffins, the 15-Minute Veggie Soup or the Veggie Stir Fry.
The most complicated dish here is the mouth-watering Stuffed
Chicken Roast which the author created after going through many Internet recipes and
tweaking them around – a golden and crispy-skinned chicken dish that she calls “fairly
simple and easy” but one which “requires some pre-planning and loads of
patience”.
This is an easy book to skim through. What stays with the
reader is the fact that the author has gone beyond making this a cookery book
through her accounts of her personal life, and what makes cooking the highlight
of her life.
There are a few tiny errors that crop up now and then, but those can be overlooked, given
the deliciousness of the recipes within.
Verdict: Highly readable with easy, yet effective
recipes!
Thank you so much Deepti for this lovely and encouraging review. It feels good to know that somebody enjoyed my book. Hope you will try some of the recipes.
ReplyDeleteIt was a great read. Plus, I was the lucky one who got the chance to taste them all!! May God bless you Ginia.
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