European Peasant Cookery
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £1.95
Trade in European Peasant Cookery for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £1.95, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'...this is one of the great cook books of all time. --Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday
...puts other outpourings in the shade, such is its range, passion, erudition and downright deliciousness. --Matthew Fort, The Guardian Weekend
An awesome collection of recipes ... Luard writes with authoritative enthusiasm. --Colin Spencer, New Statesman
...puts other outpourings in the shade, such is its range, passion, erudition and downright deliciousness. --Matthew Fort, The Guardian Weekend
An awesome collection of recipes ... Luard writes with authoritative enthusiasm. --Colin Spencer, New Statesman
Product Description
Peasant cookery is the foundation on which all subsequent cuisines is based. A rich oral tradition, passed down through generations, the peasant kitchen offers healthy, real food - the antithesis of fast-food catering - and is as relevant now as it was centuries ago.In this remarkable book, Elisabeth Luard sets out to record the principles of European cookery and to rediscover what has been lost in over-refinement. The recipes come from twenty-five countries, ranging from Ireland in the west to Romania in the east, Iceland in the north to Turkey in the south. It is an enormous compendium which covers Vegetables dishes, Potato dishes, Beans, Lentils, Polenta and Cornmeal, Rice, Pasta and Noodles, Eggs, Milk and Cheeses, Fish, Poultry, Small Game, Pork, Shepherd's Meats, Beef, Breads and Yeast Pastries, Sweet Dishes, Herbs, Mushrooms and Fungi, Oils, and Preserves. Written with the scrupulous attention to detail and authenticity that is the hallmark of Elisabeth Luard's cookery writing, the recipes are peppered with hundreds of fascinating anecdotes and little known facts about local history and folklore.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I gave this book to a girlfriend for Christmas when it first came out back in the '80s. When she opened the wrapping and read the title, she was rather sniffy, thinking I make joke [she being the daughter of an Honourable and the niece of a belted earl] but as time went on she couldn't help doing more and more dishes from the book. In fact became her #1 cook-book, plastered with an increasing selection of ingredients, dog-eared and scribbled all through with notes.
This is not surprising really because the greatest dishes in the world are poor-people food: think of paella, traditionally cooked in the vineyard on a fire of vine-trimming twigs the peons have gathered from the morning's work. Or cassoulet, a stew based on the motley collection of the last ingredients the townsfolk of Castelnaudary [S.W. France] could rustle up, as the English seige to starve them out reached its dénouement, during the 100 years war.
With this book, you can take yourself off to anywhere you like, from The Baltic to The Med, from the Arctic Circle to sniffing distance of the Sahara. Whether you wash the results down with vodka, weissbier, raki or vino de mesa, toast the peasants who are the inspiration for this book and all the great food in it.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is not only full of excellent traditional recipes it also has some historical content which makes it an interesting read as well.You can just browse through it and learn something new about food;since I was given this as a christmas present I have refered to it on an almost weekly basis as it has some great suggestions and recipes as well as being very interesting.I would recommmend this as a gift because its not neccesarily something you would buy for yourself although I would suggest you do.Not sure about the fermented fish but may try it one day.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A good, solid book full of traditional recipes, which, by their very nature, should be well within the capabilities of even the least able chef.
The book is weighty, with around 500 pages and probably 600+ recipes. It's broken up into sections based on the principle ingredient (i.e. fish, beef, poultry, potatoes, etc.). Each recipe is introduced with a few lines on its origins, followed by an ingredients and utensils list, the method (in paragraph form, not step-by-step) and finally some suggestions for variations or additions to the principle recipe. There are no pictures or drawings.
The recipes themselves are simple (it is after all peasant cookery) but of the filling and tasty variety. Most of them include ingredients which are readily available in Europe. I've cooked a couple of times from the book and had no problems with the quantities or directions. I would say it's a great book for those night when you don't wish to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, don't want to end up with a pile of washing up to do, but want to eat something wholesome and tasty (particular if you also need to feed a lot of hungry mouths). It would also be a useful book for people wishing to live predominantly off the produce from their garden or allotment. It would even be a good book to gift a student as it has many recipes which would work well for someone on a strict budget looking to get maximum satisfaction with minimum effort and outlay.
The only thing that disappointed me about this book, and the reason for my not giving it full marks, was the lack of a country index. It contains dishes from most European countries and I was particular interested in trying a few meals from countries less well-known for their cuisine, and bought this as a kind of introduction book - if one cuisine takes my fancy as a result, I might end up buying a book just on that country's cuisine. However, although each recipe has the translated name, the original name and the country of origin, a list of recipes by country would have been a simple yet useful addition. I might wish to prepare a meal based on, say, Polish food, but I have to flick through the whole book checking each recipe individually to identify the dishes from Poland.
Overall, it's good and I'm happy with my purchase.
The book is weighty, with around 500 pages and probably 600+ recipes. It's broken up into sections based on the principle ingredient (i.e. fish, beef, poultry, potatoes, etc.). Each recipe is introduced with a few lines on its origins, followed by an ingredients and utensils list, the method (in paragraph form, not step-by-step) and finally some suggestions for variations or additions to the principle recipe. There are no pictures or drawings.
The recipes themselves are simple (it is after all peasant cookery) but of the filling and tasty variety. Most of them include ingredients which are readily available in Europe. I've cooked a couple of times from the book and had no problems with the quantities or directions. I would say it's a great book for those night when you don't wish to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, don't want to end up with a pile of washing up to do, but want to eat something wholesome and tasty (particular if you also need to feed a lot of hungry mouths). It would also be a useful book for people wishing to live predominantly off the produce from their garden or allotment. It would even be a good book to gift a student as it has many recipes which would work well for someone on a strict budget looking to get maximum satisfaction with minimum effort and outlay.
The only thing that disappointed me about this book, and the reason for my not giving it full marks, was the lack of a country index. It contains dishes from most European countries and I was particular interested in trying a few meals from countries less well-known for their cuisine, and bought this as a kind of introduction book - if one cuisine takes my fancy as a result, I might end up buying a book just on that country's cuisine. However, although each recipe has the translated name, the original name and the country of origin, a list of recipes by country would have been a simple yet useful addition. I might wish to prepare a meal based on, say, Polish food, but I have to flick through the whole book checking each recipe individually to identify the dishes from Poland.
Overall, it's good and I'm happy with my purchase.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A reference book for every kitchen
The author is a well-traveled person who has absorbed information like a sponge, understands every aspect of food, and relays that to the reader in a charming, fascinating way. Read more
Published 12 months ago by MH
great basic book
This is a basic, no pictures, but just full of basics from so many countries, very meditarranean, healthy good old fashioned cooking. Elizabeth Luard is a favourite of mine!
Published 23 months ago by Edith Gruss
Useful and fascinating
A very comprehensive book of recipes from across Europe. Being 'peasant' cookery, the ingredients tend to be inexpensive and the recipes quite simple. Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2009 by Ms. D. Oliver
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
