Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Homely, earthy and realistic cooking, 16 May 2009
This is a great book for those that love home-style cooking.
So far I am impressed with the recipes that I have made which include: beetroot soup, poached eggs on portobello mushrooms with goats cheese, buttermilk chicken with smashed sweet potatoes and the monkfish with saffron sauce. You can tell the recipes are obviously well-worn favourites of hers, cooked - and tested - over and over again, because they were all a resounding success.
I found the recipes to be easy to follow and the ingredients were easy to find in my local supermarket and (small) village grocery shop! This book is particularly ideal if you are just learning to cook as there are no complicated techniques to master, just good simple recipes that really do taste great. There are a few veggie recipes too.
For those that might be worried about the 'model/celebrity factor', this book is as unpretentious as you can get. The book is written as a type of food memoir. Interspersed with the recipes, there are a few stories that Sophie has written about her background and what lead her to write a cookbook. If this puts you off, then please don't let it... her style of writing is warm, witty and self-deprecating.
Although there are no frills, the book is presented beautifully. The book is divided into seasons, plus a chapter at the back for puddings.
It reminds me of 'Jamie at home' in terms of pictures and style. The food photos are lovely but they don't make you think "Mine will never look like that!"
I would definitely give this as a gift and recommend it, as there are so many easy but delicious recipes in it that even someone who 'doesn't do cooking' would use it regularly!
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52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A top quality cook book - genuinely great recipes and wonderfully written, 3 May 2009
Saw Sophie Dahl on Jonathan Ross last night, and I would presume that many people watching would have wondered what a gorgeous ex-model is doing writing a cookbook. Just because Roald Dahl is your granddad doesn't follow that you should inherit his talent with the written word. Well as it happens I have read quite a few of her featured articles in Men's Vogue, and always admire her graceful eloquence and mots d'esprits, so whilst in Waterstones this morning I sought out and browsed through a copy of Voluptuous Delights. First impressions were that it has been produced to a very high standard (on Ross Sophie did say that she was a control freak and I would imagine is an aesthete); the design is sumptuous, the photography wonderful and the paper feels pleasantly touchable. Even the ink smells good. So being an amateur foodie, I bought the book and spent a very pleasant hour or so with it on the train home.
It's not uncommon these days for cookbooks to be more than a collection of recipes, but I really have enjoyed reading this one. Sophie engages you from the first introductory pages, and makes it easy to warm to her with funny anecdotes and self-deprecatory tales, but most importantly the writer creates a mouth watering anticipation for each and every recipe. So many cookbooks are quickly relegated to dust gathering duties on kitchen shelves but I can see this household using these recipes again and again. I JUST CAN'T WAIT to get to the shops tomorrow to sate the epicurean hunger that this book has created.
The proof as always is in the pudding, and these puddings not only sound and look delicious, but they are healthy too!
(and at this price on amazon, Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights are more that great value for money.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful... but don't want to cook from it!, 20 Jun 2009
When I first got this, I thought it was lovely; it would make a great gift as it's very elegantly put together and looks much more expensive than it is. I enjoyed reading Sophie Dahl's potted biography sections, which separate the seasonal chapters, although I'm not sure I'll ever read those bits again, and the pictures are very stylish.
But... when it came down to it, I struggled to find a single recipe I wanted to eat. Maybe if you're used to being a model on a cabbage soup diet, these meals seem 'voluptous' but to a greedyguts like me they seem the opposite to luxurious. They are mainly vegetarian, with lots of omelette type things, as well as mushrooms and brown rice . Even the flapjacks had no sugar in them. Pshaw!
This book is currently paired up with Fay Ripley's cookbook on Amazon, but I would warn you that they are nothing alike. I much prefered Fay's, which is FULL of things I couldn't wait to eat. This book is not a family cook book at all, almost all the recipes are for 2, and not very child friendly.
Sadly I think this is one of those coffee table cookbooks which is for reading and not for cooking.
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