Good to Eat : Flavorful receipes from one of television's best known food and traveljournalists

Rating:
Summary: Interesting,confused presentation of two different subjects
Review: 'Good to Eat' by Burt Wolf has a simple title with a double meaning, as it signifies that the food it presents is both tasty and good for you as well. Tie this together with its being a companion to an 'important' PBS culinary / travel series by someone whose other series have won a lot of awards, and you wonder what can possibly keep this book from being wonderful.

There are several good things about the book. The first is the fourteen-page introduction to nutrition entitled 'You Are What You Eat'. This information appears in dozens of other well-known books, however this discussion is an excellent summary of all this stuff, even if it's visual aids for the discussion of types of fats is not up to an Alton Brown standard of excellence. The best recent other culinary / nutritional combo book I can mention is 'The Healthy Kitchen' by Andrew Weil, M.D. and Rosie Daley. Both books nutritional information seems reasonably up to date; however, Weil does not have to warn us that he is not a doctor.

The first problem I sense with this book is that it is trying to do two very different things, and it ends up so diluting its energy, that it does neither well. After it's impressive opening to a discussion of nutrition, the author seems to drop the subject and launch into a culinary travelogue which has none of the panache of Tony Bourdain a la 'A Cooks Tour' or much of anything else going for it, aside from bits of useful information from all parts of the world, with not much tying it all together. Specifically, the remainder of the book consists of sidebars on semi-exotic locales such as the Bahamas and Belgium, with recipes from posh spots at these locations. Tell me what is so great about that. The recipes do contain incidental comments on the nutritional properties of some of the dishes, but not a thing to tie them all together. There is also nothing whatsoever that tells me how dishes selected from exotic waterholes are necessarily nutritious. I can occasionally get put off by, for example, Kathleen Dalhmann's cheerleader disposition, but she certainly stays on message, and you have faith that all her dishes have something about them which will help you loose weight, as long as you don't eat 5 portions of the dish.

Speaking of Ms. Dahlmanns and Rachael Ray and Sara Moulton and Bobby Flay and Tyler Florence and Mario Batali and Jamie Oliver, none of these Food Network worthies have ever put out a cookbook which is DIRECTLY tied to the content of one of their shows. Many have come close, some so close that they have had books with the same title as one of their TV shows, but, oddly enough, it is often the case that the book came first and the TV show is based on the concept of the book, as with both Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay. A singular exception to this is Bourdain's 'A Cooks Tour', but that is not a cooking show, it is pure travelogue. I have seen more than one PBS Culinary Show / Book tie-in which just didn't seem to work, if you never saw the show. Julia Child is the only principle character in this mold (well, she created the mold, did she not) which works, as with her collaboration with Jaques Pepin. But then we are talking about caviar and truffles here. You could put Julia and Jaques on Nick at Night at 2 AM and print the results on toilet paper and it will come off well. But getting back to Burt Wolf.

One symptom of how this book does not work is the fact that all color plates are located in two special rotogravure sections at the first and second third of the book. These pictures include locations and dishes discussed elsewhere in the text, with little rhyme or reason to their placement. All this leads me to believe that 'you had to be there to enjoy it'. That is, you had to see the TV show to appreciate the content of the book.

I do not want to give the idea that the recipes in this book are bad. Quite the opposite is true. The problem is that the author gives many recipes for classic dishes such as Baked Alaska, Pecan Pie, Peanut Butter Cookies, Blueberry Muffins, Pound Cake, Tiramisu, Zabaglione, Linguine Puttanesca, Rice Pilaf, Beef Stewed in Beer, Chicken Cacciatore, Codfish Cakes, and Fish in Puff Pastry, which are available in dozens of other sources with better reasons for appearing there. If I want to learn how to make Fish in Puff Pastry, I would much rather read how Jaques Pepin does it in his own words. If I want yet another recipe for Puttanesca, I would rather see Marcella Hazan's authentic version or 'Cooks Illustrated's' riff on how to make the BEST pasta Puttanesca rather than see it in a collection like this simply because it is a famous dish.

I also do not want to give the idea that the travelogue sidebars have no substance. Most are interesting and most say something I did not know.

Three stars is my standard rating for books with good content where the buyer must be careful in deciding to lay out cash for the volume. If you loved the TV series and wish to recapture feelings you had when you saw it, get the book. Otherwise, especially if you have the least bit of a cookbook collection, pass it up.