If you love to cook, love to let your imagination come out to play in the kitchen and love experimenting with new foods, this is the book for you. If on the other hand you feel you must rigidly adhere to recipes, this book is still going to be great but not quite as indispensable.
I enjoy cooking. Friends will tell you that I am a gourmet chef but the fact is that I really am not. I am a foodie who loves to experiment with flavors and also likes the challenge of replicating foods and flavors that I've had in a restaurant. My palate isn't all that sophisticated though. When it comes to cooking I will look online for ideas, I will look at recipes and perhaps start with something I see and then embellish and experiment as I go along. That's where the flavor bible comes in. If I'm in the kitchen the F Bible is never far from my side. I hosted a small plates party recently. I used a couple of mainstay dishes that I always cook but I wanted to branch out... baked egg rolls, hmmmm what vegetables and seasonings would work well together (I didn't want to go for the obvious soy and ginger) -- I ended up with garlic, cumin and soy as a base. It was delish.
My challenge at this small plate feast was that there were people who couldn't handle any level of spice, a person deathly allergic to mushrooms, and a vegetarian. I needed to find substitutions and I did. It was fun figuring out work arounds for everyday flavors and ingredients
There are obvious pairings (garlic and onion) and there are less obvious and more exotic pairings. These folks have so much knowledge. The book is a treasure trove. A great reference for when you want to go with new pairings or if you just have a question about something you'd like to try. You can't imagine the wealth of information packed into this very portable volume. Figs, hmmm what would go well with figs. Crack the book open to page 161 (its arranged alphabetically) and you will find a list of fig info including ways to use it and cook with it.... and then a list of its complementary foods and flavors In this case the fig pairs with; Almonds, anchovies, anise, apples, arugula, bacon, butter, a few cheeses, cherries, chicken, chococate........ All this and I'm only up to the letter C. It goes all the way through to walnuts.
BOTTOM LINE.... Honestly, my review here can't begin to do this book justice. it is well worth double its list price. I've owned my copy almost ten years and I am not sure how I got along without it. You can go online and pretty much find any recipe you desire. But the information in this book just isn't available in any sort of comprehensive way online that I have found. This truly is a flavor bible written by religious food fanatics.... they have left very few stones unturned. Though I see now that they have a vegetarian flavor bible. I might have to check that out as well. If you like to be creative in the kitchen this book is a must. Buy it. Honest. You'll thank me.
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