Oils and Vinegars

Rating:
Summary: Small book -- smaller amount of information
Review: This book promises to educate the reader about oils and vinegars - particularly flavored oils and vinegars. The book includes 10 recipes for flavored oils, and 5 for flavored vinegars. Other than an exhortation to 'user your imagination', there are no general formulas for flavoring either medium. A recipe for 'truffle oil' calls for 3 black truffles. The reader isn't cautioned that this will cost about $270 and will produce 2 cups of this flavored oil.

The balance of the book is color photographs, recipes, and meandering discussions of the history and use of oils and vinegars. The recipes are perfunctory -- apparently the author assumes his audience are skilled cooks. The West Coast cous cous recipe, to accompany chicken breasts, has no instructions for preparation. The Risotto recipe calls for 'browning then sweating onions and garlic'. Sweating and browning are opposed techniques. Elsewhere, the author calls for candied mangoes, grapes, and other fruits, but neither suggests where to get them nor how to prepare them. Jim Tarantino's book 'Marinades' and Irma Rombauer's 'Joy of Cooking' both contain more succinct, helpful information on flavoring oils and vinegars, with less verbal 'fluff'.

About 1/2 the book is devoted to color pictures. Although attractive, only 1/3 of these deal with presentation and a number of these are duplicates. The useful information in this book could have been produced in a 30-page pamphlet.