Credit crunch cooking (Good Food: 101 Cheap Eats)

Member Name: yackers1

Product:	Good Food: 101 Cheap Eats
Date:	07/04/09 (378 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some great recipes, easy to follow, something for everyone, great photography, a handy size

Disadvantages: Not all the inggredients required for some dishes are 'cheap'

101 Cheap Eats is a handy sized recipe book (ISBN 0-563-48841-7) that was first published by the BBC's Good Food Magazine, in June 2003, that I highly recommend. Whether you are a meat eater or vegetarian, looking for a snack or a main meal or cooking for yourself or a group of friends there is something in this book that will satisfy all but the most finicky eaters.

The back cover boasts this book contains "..... a collection of inexpensive dishes.....", hence the Cheap Eats title, but given that some of the dishes require chicken, lamb or pork, all of which are quite expensive unless you buy the almost out of date, fatty and nasty cuts (and who really wants to buy these?) I would not consider many of the recipes to be cheap. That said, there are many other dishes that do require cheaper ingredients such as tinned tuna, sausage and bacon.

Many cookery books contain a section at the front that describes the origins of many of the recipes, specific details about ingredients contained in the recipes (such as where they come from, how they are grown, when to cultivate them etc.) and other back ground information. Whether this information is really useful in cooking the dish or not (after all most people just buy the ingredients and follow the recipe and the origin of the food doesn't affect the taste in any way) will depend on who you ask since everyone will have their own opinion. Personally, I find some of the background information interesting but not really that useful. 101 Cheap Eats does not contain lavish background information. There is a short introduction, consisting of four small paragraphs, and then it is straight in to the useful stuff.

This book contains conversion tables to ensure you get the correct measures. Like many people in the UK I find that I use both metric and imperial measures (miles for distance and cm or metres in length for example) so I find this conversion table very, very useful. Why the UK cannot either adopt metric or imperial measures is beyond me and this 'mixing and matching' approach is so confusing.

The recipes contained within this book include main meals, snacks/ light bites and deserts. The variety of main meals and snacks/light bites is large and includes different types of salad (such as chick pea and tomato salsa), pasta dishes (such as sausage, mushroom and tuna and two cheese), pork dishes (such as pork and ginger noodles), chicken dishes (such as chicken and red pepper pie), lamb dishes (such as lamb and haricot hotpot), fish dishes (such as orange crumb salmon) and the usual pies, bakes and burger ideas.

The amount of deserts is quite limited and consists of 13 different recipes (such as pecan tart, flap jacks and banana fritters). I have never been one for deserts so the limited choice does not bother me in the slightest, in fact I wouldn't mind if this book didn't have any deserts in it, but if you are the sort of person who likes deserts I can see this will have limitations for you.

Every recipe gives the list and quantity of ingredients required (to serve four people so you have to scale up or down accordingly), the time it takes to prepare and cook the meal, and step-by-step instructions. The text, on the left hand pages, is clearly spaced out, easy to read and follow and uses easily understandable terms. There is no technical jargon here. On the right hand pages there is a photograph of the finished dish.

All finished products are photographed close up and the results are fantastic. The pictures are very clear and every detail can be seen. I have never managed to get my finished dishes looking like they do in the book, although this applies to all meals I have cooked, and I do suspect there is some airbrushing, but at the end of the day does it matter? In my opinion the pictures are there to add to the attractiveness of the book and encourage consumers to buy it. Pictures do not alter or affect the recipes in any way.

According to the back cover the recommended retail price for this book is £4.99. At the time of writing it can be bought new from Amazon for £4.49 or used for as little as £1.10. This is a bargain price for a book that will last ages (there are so many nice recipes to try) and whilst I would recommend shopping around to get it at the right price I think it offers great value for money even if you have to pay the full recommended retail price.

****Conclusion****

Overall this is a good book and one I would definitely recommend. There is a great variety of meals, that would suit meat eaters and vegetarians alike, however I would not recommend it for vegans since virtually every recipe contains an animal or fish product of some description. All recipes are laid out in an easy to understand and follow format making it a doodle to use. The photographs make the book look nice but I don't think they add any real value.

Whilst some of meals may cost a bit to make, which kind of goes against what this book stands for, there are many other meals that use genuinely cheap ingredients, and at a cost of £4.99 (if you are paying the full recommended retail price) it represents great value for money.

Summary: A great book containing great meal recipes that are easy to follow