Cast-Iron Cooking: Recipes & Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Cast-Iron Cookware

Has a food editor ever gone through Cast-Iron Cooking? It doesn’t seem like it. The recipes and instructions are full of ambiguities and downright errors. Home cooks attempting to reproduce the recipes will be scratching their heads in frustration. Rachael Narins did a good job in the introduction on how to buy and season cast-iron ware but failed in her recipe writing skills. There are many problems in the instructions–ambiguous and unclear statements, quantities that will be questionable for the cooks (four sausages, slices of cheese, half an onion without stating sizes), even omissions in steps. Timings given for cooking steps are far too short for a home range–often double or triple is more appropriate. Inconsistently, the ingredient quantities are not given in metric but stove temperature settings are. The recipes range from very simple (mushroom and tofu over rice) to quite complex (two pizzas from scratch), some almost beyond most home cooks’ skill levels. Ingredients called for are readily available. The production and design for this trade paperback is beautiful with professional food photo illustrations. The index is poor, not well cross-referenced, and missing recipes.