Rating: 
Summary: Potatorama
Review: Every recipe you could possibly want, for all varieties of potatoes. A great gift book for a potato-loving friend, for yourself, for homesteaders with a root cellar full of potatos and a long winter ahead. The recipes are easy to follow and delicious.
Rating:
Summary: Book is a Winner
Review: Finamore's "Potato" is a winner by any measure, a beautiful, comprehensive presentation of hundreds of practical ideas. I am thrilled to have gotten a copy. And my wife and I plan to try some of his recipes.
Rating:
Summary: Book is a Winner
Review: Finamore's "Potato" is a winner by any measure, a beautiful, comprehensive presentation of hundreds of practical ideas. I am thrilled to have gotten a copy. And my wife and I plan to try some of his recipes.
Rating: 
Summary: Not just for spud lovers
Review: I suspect that the die-hard potato lovers of the world will take this book to heart. I hope the not-so-committed will also want to pick it up because it contains a wealth of fantastic recipes which show just how versatile the potato (in all its incarnations) really is.How difficult are the recipes? They vary, but I can tell you that you can get some spectacular results even with some of the easiest. The Gratin Dauphinoise, for example, is a simple dish of sliced potatoes, cream, milk and cheese, but the look and taste of it suggests that it took you hours to prepare. And there really is nothing quite so good as cold gratin the morning after. Unless you're a potato fanatic, I don't know that you'll use the majority of the recipes here, but I do think that unless you hate potatoes (In which case why even read this review?) you'll find at least a few new recipes that you and your family really enjoy. Give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for spud lovers
Review: I suspect that the die-hard potato lovers of the world will take this book to heart. I hope the not-so-committed will also want to pick it up because it contains a wealth of fantastic recipes which show just how versatile the potato (in all its incarnations) really is. How difficult are the recipes? They vary, but I can tell you that you can get some spectacular results even with some of the easiest. The Gratin Dauphinoise, for example, is a simple dish of sliced potatoes, cream, milk and cheese, but the look and taste of it suggests that it took you hours to prepare. And there really is nothing quite so good as cold gratin the morning after. Unless you're a potato fanatic, I don't know that you'll use the majority of the recipes here, but I do think that unless you hate potatoes (In which case why even read this review?) you'll find at least a few new recipes that you and your family really enjoy. Give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: The starting point for any potato
Review: I will not cook a potato without consulting Finamore and Stevens. Why? Because I started as a pretty good spud cook and Finamore and Stevens have made me an expert. If I have a potato in hand, I look to ONE POTATO. The result is always excellent.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have cookbook
Review: I'm not one of those who collect cookbooks, although I do love foodie-reading. When cooking, I usually rely on a few stand-bys - The Silver Palate cookbooks, for example. I rarely buy or read specialty (one food, one ethnicity) cookbooks. But I made an exception for "One Potato, Two Potato". Initially drawn in by the fact that I'm of Irish heritage and like my "taties", I was also attracted to the book because I have celiac sprue, which means I'm allergic to gluten, which means I can't eat wheat, barley, oats, millet, rye, blah, blah blah. Huge drag. Consequently, I am always looking for alternative dishes that I CAN eat - and, luckily for me, potatoes are okay. (I'm also deeply grateful that grapes made the cut, which means I can enjoy wine. Don't miss beer at all.) "One Potato, Two Potato" has an astounding number of potato recipes. Reading the recipes , I raced to put four russets in to bake, to satisfy the craving the recipes and photos induced. And I loved the authors' writing style, in one recipe admonishing: "Listen to me on this - do NOT remove the fat from the proscuitto!" I'll be giving this cookbook as a gift to my foodie and Irish tatie-loving friends. Great find!
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have cookbook
Review: I'm not one of those who collect cookbooks, although I do love foodie-reading. When cooking, I usually rely on a few stand-bys - The Silver Palate cookbooks, for example. I rarely buy or read specialty (one food, one ethnicity) cookbooks. But I made an exception for "One Potato, Two Potato". Initially drawn in by the fact that I'm of Irish heritage and like my "taties", I was also attracted to the book because I have celiac sprue, which means I'm allergic to gluten, which means I can't eat wheat, barley, oats, millet, rye, blah, blah blah. Huge drag. Consequently, I am always looking for alternative dishes that I CAN eat - and, luckily for me, potatoes are okay. (I'm also deeply grateful that grapes made the cut, which means I can enjoy wine. Don't miss beer at all.) "One Potato, Two Potato" has an astounding number of potato recipes. Reading the recipes , I raced to put four russets in to bake, to satisfy the craving the recipes and photos induced. And I loved the authors' writing style, in one recipe admonishing: "Listen to me on this - do NOT remove the fat from the proscuitto!" I'll be giving this cookbook as a gift to my foodie and Irish tatie-loving friends. Great find!
Rating:
Summary: Colcannon, Pierogies, Vichysoisse, and Samosas oh my
Review: If this is the kind of book an editor of other food writers can give us, then I wish more of these largely invisible literary yeomen would take up the pen to do their own material more often. This is an excellent example of my favorite kind of book. It deals exclusively with recipes based on a single main ingredient. This makes it the book to go to when you have that last pound of spuds in a ten pound bag or you need some starch recipe to round out a meal and you can't face another rice dish, or you just want to do something a little different for mashed potatoes. Therefore, I am always inclined to give a good rating to this kind of book as long as the authors don't drop the ball between the kitchen and the word processor. These authors, Roy Finamore and Molly Stevens, have kept a firm grasp on the ball throughout the game. It is not entirely true that the book deals exclusively with recipes containing potatoes, as it also contains recipes for sauces, dips, and fillings for potatoes. One way or another, every recipe supports a course with a potato dish. The book is divided up into chapters which suit it's star player and the list of chapter titles shows just how versatile our little spud can be. The chapters are: Appetizers and First Courses with roasted and dressed potato skins with appropriate fillings, dips, spreads, and sauces. It also includes the famous Spanish tapas called tortillas plus potato stuffed pastries such as knishes, samosas, and pierogies. Soups with all the usual potato and leek soups and recipes for various stocks. It also contains several chowders and potato soups with other root vegetables. Salads include just about every kind of potato salad you can dream of. As one of my favorite types of spud dishes, salads are one of the things potatoes do well which simply can't be matched by it's starchy competitor, rice. Main Dishes includes potatoes joined up with some form of protein. Some dishes are famous such as corned beef hash and shepherd's pie and gnocchi. Some dishes are obscure, but no less interesting. Mashed Potatoes contains 29 recipes for mashed white and sweet potatoes, but other chapters include additional recipes for mashed potatoes such as Colcannon, which is listed under baked and roasted recipes. Fried Potatoes gives another host of recipes, which cannot be matched by rice. All the favorites such as French Fries, Home Fries, Hash Browns, Potato Pancakes, and potato chips are here. Baked and Roasted Potatoes contains all the usual classics for both white and sweet potatoes, including oven fries, pommes Anna, candied sweet potatoes, and roasted potatoes with other root vegetables. Gratins and Scalloped Potatoes is another of my favorite spud styles. This is one of the few corners of the book where I find a recipe missing. There is nothing similar to the Sicilian potato gratin made with chicken stock and olive oil rather than with cream. Boiled Potatoes includes a lot of sauces to 'kick up' the bland boiled spuds and includes German Potato Dumplings. Breads and Rolls includes the famous use of potato in foccacia plus all sorts of breads where the gluten free potato starch makes the breads more tender. Desserts is a rather short chapter wherein potatoes are primarily used as a starch addition to pastry doughs. As suggested by some of the contents above, the book covers both white and sweet 'potatoes' even though the two plants are not closely related biologically. They are closely related in their culinary applications, since you can do to a sweet potato almost everything you can do to a russet. It should be no surprise that the book deals with the three main types of potatoes in great detail and is very careful to specify which type of potato is best with each dish. The chatter in the headnotes and introductory sections to each chapter are engagingly written. They are informative without being cluttered with gushing emotions about beautiful vegetables. These are spuds after all. One of my favorite sidebar sections discusses the 'Art and Craft of Tourner', a nearly forgotten technique which rounds the 'sharp' edges and corners of sliced potatoes to create shapes which will cook more evenly. Burning the edges of potatoes just once when you roast sliced potatoes is enough to convince you that this synonym for tedium may just have a point. The photographs are few, but of very good quality. As I would expect from a house like Houghton Mifflen, the simple, straightforward layout and fonts are very easy on the eyes. This is not a classic and will probably go out of print in five years, which is all the more reason to get your copy now. A worthy addition to the library of anyone who cooks often and needs good sources of variety in inexpensive ingredients. Good recipes which are cheap. That's a winner.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: There were allot of typical potato recipes in here; pancakes, mashed etc. but many ethnic ones were not. I think you could do allot better just getting Fannie Farmet and reading her potato section than wasting your money on this. Few pictures round this out and the pages are potatoey coloured.
Rather uninspired book.
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