My shelf full of cookbooks is like a team of football players. There are the books I pull out every day, my workhorses, I depend on them for every play to get a good meal on the table. Then, there are the ones I hold off on because they’re a little newer and I watch them, flip through the pages, earmark them for an upcoming dinner and pull them out at the perfect moment to spice up mealtime. There are cookbooks I reach for based on the season and others I shelve until their prime time comes up again.
With all my prime bookshelf real estate taken, buying a new one requires careful assessment. The opportunity to review a cookbook comes up now and again and I also choose carefully thinking about what makes it stand out from the bookshelf. Sometimes it is the cookbook author that draws me in, other times it is the focus of the cookbook, and then again sometimes it is the beautiful photography. I have bought cookbooks from local chefs that I admire and whose food I love, but then not been that successful with the recipes in it. I have bought cookbooks, vintage and new, that intrigue me for the recipes alone and I know nothing about the authors. Some have so much promise and fall short while others are pleasant surprises.
Most recently, I was asked to take a look at a cookbook from authors who I don’t know at all, apparently they are well known, but what intrigued me most about the cookbook was the way the recipes are done. When you are watching your calories, which is a necessary evil, more often than not, you have to buy those 100 calorie packs of junk food, or you’re buying pre-made frozen meals full of junk simply because the calories and points are all laid out for you and you don’t have to measure the size of your chequebook (for portion control on proteins they say a chequebook size portion) or take out the kitchen scale.
The Perfect Portion Cookbook uses the 100 calorie counting system so each recipe is broken down into calorie counts and portion size suggestions. The book is written by Anson Williams, Bob Warden and Mona Dolgov. Just in time for the Super Bowl, I picked out this simple, football-worthy recipe for you to try.
Great review, Leah… thanks for exploring this new cookbook!