Pure Pork Awesomeness: Totally Cookable Recipes from Around the World

If you enjoy cooking with pork, Pure Pork Awesomeness is an excellent addition to your cookbook shelf. Professional chef Kevin Gillespie did an awesome job in every aspect with his cookbook. He presents a large collection of pork recipes choosing from old standards (pan fried pork chops) through an array of selection from the international scene, mostly Asian and Mexican, some Western European and some unusual ones (candied bacon, cooking with Coca-Cola). It even includes sausage making.

Gillespie’s introduction is good, giving us everything we need to know about the seven breeds of pigs and about pork. In the subsequent seven chapters he breaks down recipes according to the pork cut (ham, shoulder, belly/ribs). Recipe writing is very good, and most are not hard to prepare using readily available ingredients. Layout is also friendly; only in a few recipe do instructions flip to overleaf pages. After most recipes, he includes a brief, but useful, Good to Know or Worth Knowing sidebar. The chapter introductions are good and easy-to-read on the subject of that chapter, including such information as buying and decoding labels. His head notes are also very good and worth reading. Professional photo illustrations are excellent. Index is well cross-referenced.