Cookbook Review: The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper

published Jul 10, 2008
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

So many cookbooks leave us in the dark wondering why do we have to add salt here or why does this need to sit overnight.

Not this one!

This is a cookbook for the people. It’s written with the Splendid Table’s characteristic wit and down-home language, which is always inviting and never offended when you have a question.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift, hosts of public radio’s Splendid Table, have crafted a cookbook that mirrors their radio show so perfectly in form and voice that we can practically hear them speaking from the page.

Read on for our full review!

The recipes seem solid, combining straight forward preparations with fresh, mouth-watering ingredients. We’re given recipes from across the culinary spectrum, from Vietnamese noodle dishes to Italian peasant food. These recipes build and cross-reference each other, creating a sense of how interconnected the world cuisines really are.

Interspersed between, around, and within the recipes are all the extras! On one page you’ll find a guide to

buying olive oils

cooking with vinegar. These “oh-by-the-way” tidbits tossed nonchalantly into the conversation are where you’ll find the real teaching moments in the book.

One negative note: There’s a lot of information packed between these covers–good information!–but we felt a bit overwhelmed at times. As we turned the pages, our eyes were constantly pulled from picture to recipe to tip to quote to story. Maybe we just have short attention spans, but we found it hard to focus and really absorb everything on the page.

The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper is a meandering conversation of recipes, friendly advice, insider’s scoops, and cooking tips you don’t know how you lived without. You can learn a lot from this book and still come back for more!

Curious to try a few recipes from this book? Those for iced cantaloupe soup, tart of red onions, greens, and grapes, and Sally’s coconut macaroons are available courtesy of Leite’s Culinaria.

The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift is available for $23.10 on Amazon.com.

(Image: Amazon.com)