PROS: The meals in the book are healthy.
CONS: Be forewarned, this cookbook has nothing to do with Chinese food – who’d have thought! Though you think I would have been tipped off by the falafels and tacos on the cover, but alas, I received this book for free to review and had not paid a whole of attention to the cover until it was time to cook.
PROS: The book is written to give easy directions to teach not only recipes, but also techniques that can be carried over to all types of cooking. The flavors are daring, but easily accessible at the same time.
CONS: If you want to make truly authentic Indian recipes, this might not be the book for you. This book has Indian flavors and Indian dishes, but it is not a cookbook to teach you to cook as if you would in an Indian kitchen.
PROS: The recipes are compiled from locals in the Gilroy area which is sweet and a good shout out to Gilroy, home of garlic.
CONS: I didn’t find any of the recipes I made particularly garlicky. Some of the recipes were boring, nothing was cohesive, and frankly, I don’t believe using one clove in a recipe makes a recipe belong in a garlic lovers’ cookbook. I love garlic and wanted that tang.
PROS: All of the recipes I tried from the book were packed with flavor. Also, I don’t know if I was just lucky or if this is true of all the recipes, but nothing was incredibly hard to make. The book is clear and the recipes are easy to follow.
CONS: Gordon Ramsay has given himself a name in the entertainment world as being a dick – he’s so mean on some of his shows. That’s actually my only con and has nothing to do with the book itself.
PROS: The recipes are hearty Middle Eastern recipes. The flavors are delicious in the dishes I made. There’s many pictures in the book and interesting stories.
CONS: I did not have luck with all the recipes. The pictures would have looked nicer if they had been glossy. The recipes take a lot of prep time and are time consuming.
PROS: The book is effective. From the one reset I’ve tried so far, it was effective. My dislike of salad has changed using the salad reset. The salad recipes I tried were tasty but simple. The methodology of immersing yourself in something for three days is a great technique.
CONS: Some of the ingredients in the recipes are hard to find or expensive to buy.
PROS: The cover of the book is representative of how the pictures look throughout the book. I love a cookbook with photos. The dishes were hearty and felt wholesome. The flavors were great. The recipes were easy to follow.
CONS: Make sure you look and see how long the recipes take to make. These are not all quick recipes. They do take time. This isn’t truly a con, but a warning.
PROS: There is a lot of variety in this cookbook. The dishes I tried truly took 30 minutes to make. For being 30 minute meals, they were very flavorful!
CONS: Do I have any? Perhaps I can complain that I don’t like quinoa, but that’s a personal problem.
PROS: The recipes are easy to follow. The recipes are broken into meals as opposed to just separate recipes, so you can easily meal plan. The book makes the timing very easy, as it gives advice on the order to cook the separate recipes for each meal. The food tastes delicious.
CONS: So many dirty dishes!
PROS: There’s a ton of recipes in this cookbook. There’s a wide variety of different types of recipes to try. The narrative in the book is interesting to read.
CONS: The instructions aren’t entirely clear. Not all of the recipes work as expected. Some of the recipes seem generic as opposed to what I expected Cuban to be.
