Cookbook Watch: lots of news

Ok, so I don't really cook much these days, but I *do* read cookbooks. I have a stack of new books easy to reach when I'm feeding the baby, and it's nice to get some sort of foodie enjoyment, even though it's outside the kitchen. (It's that, and daytime television...) I'm sure I'll be cooking again soon, but for now, this will do nicely. So, expect tons of cookbook reviews coming up. Let's start with a few that are nice, but not exactly for me...

First - a real first, Gordon Ramsay's first book to be published in Swedish. However, they chose "Healthy Appetite" ("Frisk Aptit" in Swedish) for that first, and I'm not super impressed by this. Come to think of it, I'm not a big fan of Gordon's books in general, except for "Fast Food" which I really liked. (And only got from the library - I should buy that one.) However, Gordon has a lot of fans here in Sweden due to the tv shows, and I'm sure many of them will like this book.



Another book which surely will have a lot of you excited is Bobby Flay's latest: "Burgers, Fries & Shakes". I fully expected to love it, but having read through it I realise it's the sort of book I'll never use. It's nicely written, with very thorough information about the food, good recipes, and great photos but... it doesn't make me hungry. Well, except for the shakes. Which I'll never make, since each one seems to have enough calories to last a week. (Slightly exaggerated, but as someone who tries to be fairly moderate, it just won't work.)



I also got a review copy of Trina Hahnemann's "The Scandinavian Cookbook". As always when encountering the term "scandinavian", I'm a bit sceptical. I find that there's a huge difference between Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish cooking and sure enough, this one is mostly Danish. I don't recognize a lot of the dishes, and I'm definitely not interested in cooking most of it. I suppose it's nice if you're curious about Scandinavian food and don't care all that much about the differences between the countries, but for Swedish food I vastly prefer "Very Swedish".



And for something different - an e-book. It's called Simply Summer and is written by Angela Tunner. The e-book is just $1.99and has some great-sounding recipes as well as pretty photos. However, it *is* an e-book, and I'm not super comfortable reading recipes in that format just yet. One would think so, since I'm so used to blogging, but... not really, no. But if you don't mind the format, it's definitely a very nice book.