Sam Stern's Get Cooking

Stern, Sam. Get Cooking. Candlewick Press, 2009. Paperback $17.99, ISBN 978-0-7636-3926-6

What’s it about?

Sam Stern’s latest cookbook features over 100 recipes centered on different types of food, ranging from tomatoes, to cheese, to pastas, to vegetables, to chocolate.  There is a recipe in here for every chef and every palate!

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British teen chef Sam Stern has written a third cookbook for teens. Get Cooking is divided into chapters that focus on seven of his friends (Sam gets a chapter, too!) and their favorite food or food group.  He and his “mates” chose tomatoes, cheese, pasta, vegetables, meat, potatoes, chocolate, and “sweet stuff.”  Eat chapter introduces Sam’s friend and their favorite food. Then Sam talks about the versatility of the chosen food, followed by several scrumptious-looking and sounding recipes. Many of the recipes have variations. There is an extensive index, so don’t worry about thumbing through for a particular recipe!

This is a solid cookbook with a wide range of recipes that will satisfy a wide range of palates. There are recipes that might be best left to experienced chefs, such as the Spanakopita (p. 31) and the Pasta with Sausage Ragu (p. 44). Novice cooks had best stick to recipes like the Chili Pepper and Bean Tortillas (p.65) and the Chocolate Nut Brownies (p. 112). Stern’s book is vegetarian-friendly: even in the chapter devoted to meat, there are vegetarian variations.  There are plenty of ethnic food recipes as well, particularly Italian and Indian foods. This book is overall very appealing, with its large, appetizing photos of the recipes, and the fun photos of Sam and his friends enjoying these culinary creations.  

Genre: Nonfiction, Cookbook

Subjects: Cooking, Cooking for teens

Reading level/ interest level: Grades 6-12

Series information:

Cooking up a Storm: The Teen Survival Cookbook (2005)

Real Food, Real Fast (2008)

Read-alikes:

Carle’s Teens Cook: How to Make What You Want to Eat

The Manga Cookbook

The Manga University Culinary Institute. The Manga Cookbook. Recipes by Yoko Ishihara. Illustrated by Chihiro Hattori. Japanime Co. Ltd, 2007. Paperback $14.95 ISBN-13 978-4-921205-07-2

What’s it about?

Manga characters are often pictured eating cute and curious concoctions. The Manga Cookbook shows manga lovers how to recreate the recipes their favorite characters enjoy.

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Fans of manga might wonder about what their favorite characters are eating, and be interested in creating dishes such as naruto rolls, onigiri, bento boxes, and udon. The Manga Cookbook satisfies readers’ curiosity with several simple recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts and notes about the cultural significance of each recipe.  The recipes are presented in a series of black and white cartoon panels, with instructions written as captions or in dialog bubbles.  The full color illustrations toward the front of the book are enticing, depicting adorable bento boxes (boxes lunches shaped into pictures of trains, gardens, cartoon characters and more),  appetizers including tamago tomodachi (hard boiled eggs designed to look like chicks), California rolls, rice balls, miso soup and more!

This book is informative and entertaining, especially for those whose interest in Japanese cooking developed because of their interest in manga. This book is definitely geared toward these manga fans, and the cartoon mascots and dialog bubbles may fall flat for those who are not into manga and Japanese culture.  I doubt the book would fall into the hands of many non-manga readers, though—the book is pretty clearly written for otaku. The recipes are fairly straightforward, but western readers may not be able to find some ingredients (such as the different types of rice flour and adzuki beans) easily.  The full-color illustrations are the highlight of the book, but the readers will want more than the few pages provided.  Information on Japanese terms and customs appears throughout this slim volume, so even manga fans who don’t do anything in the kitchen harder than microwaving a can of soup will find this an entertaining read.

Genre:  Nonfiction

Subjects: Cooking, Japanese cooking, bento boxes

Reading level/interest level: Grades 5-10

Read-alikes:

Salyer’s Face Food

Ogawa’s Yum-Yum Bento Box: Fresh Recipes for Adorable Lunches

Ito’s The Just Bento Cookbook: Everyday Lunches To Go

Awards: YALSA selected The Manga Cookbook as a “Top 10 Popular Paperback” for 2011

Teens Cook: How to Make What You Want to Eat

 

Carle, Megan & Jill Carle (with Judi Carle). Teens Cook: How to Make What You Want to Eat. Ten Speed Press, 2004. Paperback $19.95 ISBN 9781580085847

What’s it about?

Meet Megan and Jill Carle, sisters and whizzes in the kitchen, pass on 75 recipes to novice cooks in a colorful, easy-to-follow cookbook for and by teens.   

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Sisters Megan and Jill Carle are a kitchen odd couple. One sister (Megan) is a vegetarian, and prefers ethnic foods. The other, Jill, is a meat-eater who favors all-American “comfort food.”  Together, they’ve created a cookbook that serves a variety of tastes and skill levels. Most recipes are easy to follow for tweens, teens, and beyond, but some are more challenging than others.  The Carles explain any mystifying terminology, such as “blanching” in easy to understand language. There is a healthy sprinkling of humor, as well—one sister tells of the time she made cheese ravioli, and when her back was turned, her sister added spinach to the filling. This made the recipe look better, admits the spinach-hating sister, and “it’s worth it just for the shock value of when you ask your mom to buy spinach.”   

This is a good beginner’s cookbook, with plenty of colorful photos, funny anecdotes (kitchen disasters) about recipes gone awry, kitchen tips and text boxes with kitchen math, kitchen safety and kitchen vocabulary. One slight criticism is that there are no “healthy” substitution suggestions for some of the higher-fat recipes. Some young cooks may want lower fat options for themselves and their family members. Also, there is no indication of the difficulty level of the recipes—some, like Strawberries with Marshmallow Dip and Chili Cheese Dip are “embarrassingly simple,” while others, like the foccaccia, look difficult—certainly not recipes for a first-time cook to attempt alone.  Flaws aside, this is a great book to introduce to tweens and teens who are learning to cook.

Interest level: Grades 6 & up

Genre:  Nonfiction--cookbook

Subjects: Cooking, recipes

Read-alikes:

Sam Stern’s Cooking up a Storm (2005), Real Food Real Fast (2008), and Get Cooking (2009)

Other books by the authors:

Teens Cook Dessert (2006)

College Cooking: Feed Yourself and Your Friends (2007)

College Vegetarian Cooking (2009)

The First Real Kitchen Cookbook: 100 Recipes and Tips for New Cooks (2011)