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sarah_taleweaver 's review for:
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
by Samin Nosrat
Ok, here's the thing. I did not actually make any of the recipes in this book. I do not EXPECT to make any of the recipes from this book.
HOWEVER, it gets five stars anyway for breaking down the essential elements of cooking (the ones in the title) so I can actually understand (mostly) what's going on when I'm working with a recipe and why each ingredient is present — and I can more or less figure out what went wrong when something doesn't turn out the way I expected it to. Prior to reading this, I could follow a recipe (mostly), but I had absolutely no idea why anything worked the way it did, which meant I panicked when things went wrong or I needed to make substitutions. Now I'm much more comfortable improvising. (You would think I would've been able to figure that out from my mom, who's a master at combining or modifying recipes to suit our family's tastes, but this is one area where I actually needed to know WHY it works.)
The writing style is fun to read, even if the author clearly lives in a different world from me. It has elements of memoir mixed in with the instruction, which other reviewers don't seem to entirely like, but which I enjoyed. The many charts and illustrations are also helpful — I expect that the "world of food" graphs will be particularly useful as reference.
I'm glad I read this, and I may have to pick up a copy of my own (instead of just borrowing it from the library).
HOWEVER, it gets five stars anyway for breaking down the essential elements of cooking (the ones in the title) so I can actually understand (mostly) what's going on when I'm working with a recipe and why each ingredient is present — and I can more or less figure out what went wrong when something doesn't turn out the way I expected it to. Prior to reading this, I could follow a recipe (mostly), but I had absolutely no idea why anything worked the way it did, which meant I panicked when things went wrong or I needed to make substitutions. Now I'm much more comfortable improvising. (You would think I would've been able to figure that out from my mom, who's a master at combining or modifying recipes to suit our family's tastes, but this is one area where I actually needed to know WHY it works.)
The writing style is fun to read, even if the author clearly lives in a different world from me. It has elements of memoir mixed in with the instruction, which other reviewers don't seem to entirely like, but which I enjoyed. The many charts and illustrations are also helpful — I expect that the "world of food" graphs will be particularly useful as reference.
I'm glad I read this, and I may have to pick up a copy of my own (instead of just borrowing it from the library).