Feats of Feasts

Hoho…look what arrived in the mail!

My prize for partaking in an online cooking competition back in March. This competition was hosted by Very Good Recipes and the theme for that month was St. Patrick’s. Meaning, you have to cook certain green stuff. I sent in my entry which was this spinach puff (below) and who would’ve thought, I got picked as a 3rd prize winner!

My 3rd prize entry, Spinach Pockets

Mind you, I have won things before but it was all like randomly chosen. This was a proper competition with a panel of judges scrutinizing your creation and they thought my dish was worthy of 3rd prize!! Hehe…I know 3rd is nothing compared to 1st but the prizes were all the same; you spend $30 on any books you wish from Amazon. Tell the organizers your order and they will have it delivered to your house, delivery charges all paid.

Click on photo for link

This book, Martha Stewart’s Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook, is not new on the shelves, it has been around for quite a few years, so why this book then? Why not something more current? There was a time as I was morphing into a SAHM, they were airing Martha Stewart in the mornings and it was probably the only consistent thing I’ll watch on local TV (since I don’t subscribe to any satellite channels). But during that period, they had the Cooking School segment which I thought imparted a lot of great tips and lessons on how to improve your skills in the kitchen. It is quite a heavy book, bout 500 pages total and hardcover. I had my son pose with it for scale. Amazingly, he was very cooperative.

So far I have done a surface browse of the book and I’m really liking what I see/read so far. The book has such a preppy feel (1st impression), it’s like a textbook, which makes sense since it’s called cooking school, but I can imagine myself if I were to attend some preppy culinary school in oxfords and a tie, I would be holding this book around as the basic reference. The content is comprehensive but not too compact. Everything about the book had the typical Martha Stewart features. She’s very particular about labels, measurements and requires systematic neatness to everything.

There’s endless info on ingredients and its varieties (plus, the pictures are gorgeous!);

Step-by-step how tos;

How to make fresh pasta
How to make herb omelette
How to steam fish en papilote

And other useful contents like cooking tools and food prepping methods;

Of course, what would a cooking school book be without some awesome recipes;

The last photo is a lamb tagine….ooooh, looks sooo good.

I don’t buy recipe books very much nowadays, mainly because they are quite costly…unless you’re fortunate enough to spot the current ones at a clearance sale…so I am grateful for this gift. It has somewhat helped me out of this unmotivated limbo and get my butt working again in the kitchen!!