BBC books has published a whole host of these GoodFood Magazine 101 recipe books. This 101 best ever chicken recipe book, is the second I currently own of these. I brought mine from a Bookclub where I work for £3 but I have seen them since in WH Smith for £4.99 which is the RRP or Amazon for approx £3.43. At 215 pages and 101 recipes a bargain I thought.

Not being a big lover of red meat my family does eat a lot of chicken dishes each week, hence why I decided to purchase this book and as I found the 101 pot recipe book so useful I would be happy to purchase more of this range at £3 or just over. Not sure I would pay the full price of £4.99 though.

The book is separated into 6 chapters after an quick introduction and 2 pages of notes and conversion tables.

Chapter 1 :
Suppers for one, two and more.

I cook from this chapter when hubby is out for the evening at football and I want a decent meal rather than an uninspiring microwave meal. I would highly recommend tangy chicken breasts which is basically grilled chicken with barbeque sauce brushed on it with a rasher or 2 or streaky bacon topped with grated cheddar cheese then I do half a plate full of different vegetables. The recipes in this chapter do exactly what it says, you can take one chicken breast out of the packet and cook or several and the recipes aren't just for dinners but lunches also such as chicken Caesar sandwich.


Chapter 2:
Light and healthy

The chapters aren't separated very well as you can only tell when you stray into another section by the chapter title written in small at the bottom of the page, hence I have cooked meals from this section without realising they are meant to be healthy. The recipe I did was pesto chicken which is frying a chicken breast then adding cherry tomatoes, crème fraiche and pesto, doesn't particularly sound healthy to me just a nice quick easy meal. Each recipes comes with nutritional guidelines but I would treat as a very basic guide as surely the book doesn't know exactly which cream you will buy from the supermarket? If on a diet I don't think this will be accurate enough for you if counting calories etc. The recipes do lend themselves well to putting on your twist on them tweaking the ingredients here and there either to make them healthier or just take out something you don't like. So in summery I think just use your common sense.


Chapter 3:
Hot and spicy

To be honest I have only made one dish from this chapter. All the recipes seem to have a very long ingredients list and look for complicated or time consuming than the rest of the book. Confident and accomplished cooks would probably enjoy this section. The only quick recipe in this part is chicken nacho grills but as I'm not keen on tomatoes salsa and soured cream I haven't tried it but it looks incredible easy and quick to do. As the name suggests there is a lot of Indian and Chinese inspired dishes in this chapter.


Chapter 4:
Suppers in 20 minutes or less

This chapter is the biggest let down. Not because of the actual recipes but the fact you are meant to be able to prepare and cook in 20minutes. Just like Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meal cook book it can take me 20-30 minutes to do all the prep work! On the positive side there is a gorgeous sticky chicken with mango couscous I do from this section but I tweak it by adding a variety of vegetables and on one occasion did with boiled rice instead as a friend came over who doesn't like couscous.


Chapter 5:
Dinners to impress

No less than 6 roast chicken recipes in this section I think it would be better suited to call this chapter family dinners instead. Saying that there is a nice chicken skewer recipe that I tweaked for the barbeque last summer that turned out well but I won't say it was actually a dish to impress.


Chapter 6:
Classics from around the world

Includes dishes from Ghana, Russia, France, America, China, Japan the list goes on....
Attempted the chicken Kiev dish and decided to stick to shop brought Kiev's as the hassle wasn't worth it but certainly some interesting recipes included such as Jewish soup and Persian chicken pulao!



Then to finish of the obligatory index of recipes to help quickly find a repeat recipe, I use indexes quite a bit as I can never remember which cook book has which of my favourites in and I have a lot of cook books.


The size of the book is quite small compared to all my other recipe books as this is less than half the size of an A4 piece of paper (less than A5 I think the next size down is called) but it is reasonably thick. I don't find it stays open on the page we need which is a little bit of a nuisance but as they are easy to cook recipes this isn't a major problem. It's a paperback which is possibly why it doesn't stay open but the cover does wipe clean when my dirty mitts have got flour etc over it!


The recipes themselves are all accompanied with a colour photo, a must for me I need to see a dish before I will attempt it! The instructions are quite short but detailed enough for me to follow, nothing overly complicated is included so a good book for novices and intermediates but not for those looking to be challenged. Overall fantastic value for money even if book is a little small.