Verdict: Marie Claire Taste 101

This seems to be the first of a series of newsagent cookbooks, selling for $19.95. Perhaps they are intended to be a sort of course (“Taste 101”?) or perhaps they are to be themed in future editions, and this one is a kind of broad starter pack. This first edition was a gift, and so far nothing from it has been made. But I am going to review it anyway (after several readings) and send down the judgement.

Most-cooked recipe: None so far.

Recipe I haven't tried, but it was one of the reasons I bought the book: Pilaf (p.88). This will be the first thing to be made. Quite legit-looking pilaf, not too culturally bastardised, and containing blanched almonds, pine nuts, cardamon pods, cinnamon stick, currants, cloves and chicken stock. The pictured dish has a nice dry finish to it and doesn’t look soggy. I will be making this to serve with moroccan lamb chops and a cucumber salad.


Rejected recipe: Fish and chips (see below). Also, Red wine risotto (looks very wet and the colour seems to be too pale- and go easy on the sage leaves), Yellow pumpkin curry (so chunky, and one look at the picture at left: blerk) and Potato and truffle pizza. Seems like an excuse to cheapify a truffle if you ask me. Is this how to get the truffle some mass appeal?


General good things: This follows the Marie Claire general pattern: food in sections based around main ingredients and employing a clutterless minimal style. This is of course a good thing, and allows the book to be navigated cleanly and easily. The book also contains desserts, which are varied and interesting (prune cake, anyone?) and has an emphasis on international style (carpaccio of hiramasa kingfish with neil perry’s ginger and shallot oil, paella, tramezzini, black sticky rice pudding).

General bad things: The above internationalising may contribute slightly to its lameness factor. I feel that sometimes with the Marie Claires, national cuisines and tendencies become sterilised and beaten into submission, to become palatable to western appetites. This has the effect of making new food more approachable, breaking down borders, accessing new cultures blah blah, but also implicitly saying that if we are to cook a Spanish paella or make Vietnamese nuoc cham, then we can do it any way we please. I’m not sure if we should look at the food of other cultures this way.

Lameness factor: Medium. What’s the point of telling your target audience of young, hip, aware kitchen freaks to use frozen commercial chips when making fish and chips at home? You can go out for that crap anytime.
I kept looking for a disclaimer (something like: “Of course, handmade and fresh are always best in a hot chip. We specify frozen only for the sake of convenience”) but…no. No, apparently, your soggy par-fried-in-advance white composite vegetable flesh sticks are the ones to go with your gorgeous fresh soda-batter whiting or flathead.
Don’t patronise us, Marie Claire. We know what we’re on about, and you only lameify yourself by doing so.

Overall rating(from 20): 10