Eva's Kitchen DiskUs Category:  Cooking/Food/Wine Publisher: DiskUs ISBN-10:  1584952407 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 267 Copyright: Mar 23 1998 EVA'S KITCHEN CONFIDENCE is a cookbook to teach you all the methods needed to become a proficient and creative cook. In today's hurried society, one often finds the meal provider, now days just as often a male, caught in a guilt ridden quandary, trying to balance good nutrition, budget and the constrains of time, bounded by career, children's activities and some semblance of family life. If you recognize your life in the above statement, Eva Kende wrote a cookbook just for you! Male or female meal provider —sounds better than cook— will find a lot of information to learn to create meals  without exact recipes, how to substitute with what's on hand, be creative and shake off the fear of cooking, so that they can prepare a quick nutritious meal with confidence for their family or entertain friends with poise. Eva's Kitchen Confidence is more than a cookbook. — It's a friend in your kitchen that understands your problems, sympathises and gives you the tools to success. — Excerpt - Eyes should be on all the parts of the preparation at the same time with an occasional glance at the recipe to double check. See the color and texture of the food. Remember it as a reference for the next time you are cooking a similar dish. - Nose should work as a radar, scanning for off-odors in the ingredients, warning of early signs of burning, indicating spice blending and with practice it will even signal doneness as well. Smell the food you are preparing. Fresh ingredients vary with the season, growing conditions and freshness, dry ingredients are relatively stable, but spices tend to lose their luster in the cupboard. Adjust your recipe using your nose as a guide. - Ears should be tuned to the sound cooking food makes. For instance: different sounds of sizzling can be distinguished depending on the cooking temperature. The hissing of a simmering pot may indicate that the heat is too high, while the gentle sizzle of frying indicates that the temperature is just right. Listen to the sizzling of the onions in the frying pan. Are they frying, burning or just steaming in their own juice? What did your recipe tell you to do? - Touch so that you can feel how a spoon or fork enters the food to judge doneness, how the texture of a dough feels, how a knife cuts an ingredient to judge freshness and quality. - Taste for flavor. As you get more and more adept at using your other senses this will be limited to tasting near the end of the cooking to adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Eva's Kitchen Confidence
This is not your typical cookbook as the introduction to this book best explains:

"Cooking is not just following recipes: To cook well and enjoy doing it, it is absolutely essential to understand the basic methods, so that you can apply them to those recipes surreptitiously torn from magazines at the doctor's office, collected from friends or contained in the glossy cookbooks on your shelf. Understanding the methods will give your cooking flair and flexibility. Thus you will eventually develop a style of your own."
As the readers are admonished to get their "nose out of the recipe and into the pot," Kende teaches cooking through the senses. The eyes looks for color and texture. The nose must be aware of odors, both for blending of ingredients and for detecting any burning. The ears listen to the food cook, where hissing tells the heat is too high. The sense of touch is needed for texture, while taste is essential to assure the flavor.
Where was this book when I was a newlywed so totally lost and insecure in the kitchen? After 27 years, I have developed the style of my own, yet I still learned new things from "Eva's Kitchen Confidence." This book belongs in every kitchen.
Inscriptions Book Reviews Nov 16, 1999. http://www.inscriptionsmagazine.com/

* * * * Outstanding book, engrossing, a classic


Eva's Kitchen Confidence
Eva's Kitchen Confidence is a gourmet smorgasbord of information. Whether you're a gourmet chef or a neophyte who doesn't know one end of a meat thermometer from another, this user-friendly primer on the fine art of food preparation should have a place in your cookbook collection.
Or perhaps even in place of your cookbook collection, because Eva Kende's emphasis is definitely on the art of food preparation. Cooking, she stresses throughout Eva's Kitchen Confidence, should be fun--an adventure, not a chore limited by rules, regulations and recipes. The trick, she explains, is to know not just how ingredients go together but why. Once you've mastered that, you're free to change the colors, textures and media and create your very own culinary masterpieces.
Starting with a list of the basic equipment needs, Kende goes on to discuss the science of cookery, surrounding the mechanics with words of encouragement, cheerful quotes and helpful reminders. Kende not only wants you to have fun in the kitchen, she wants you to have fun learning how to do it.
Have a wedding coming up? Tuck a copy of this book into a basket of kitchen utensils selected from the clearly described list. Know someone who just moved into their first apartment and who is living on Mickey D's and canned soup? Drop off a box of staples picked from another well-designed list and a copy of Eva's Kitchen Confidence. And don't forget a copy for yourself. --- Elisabeth Burton, Blue Iris Cafe


EVA'S KITCHEN CONFIDENCE
EVA'S KITCHEN CONFIDENCE a basic cookbook perfect for the novice or experienced cook, is the perfect compliment to any electronic bookshelf. With the new found interest in electronic publishing and the numbers of individuals sigining on for the first time every day this reference work is a timely addition to the quality titles offered through Disk Us Publishing. Novice cooks will no doubt appreciate the helpful advice included in part one of this volume as they plan to equip their first kitchen. Author Eva Kende invites her readers to peer into her pantry shelves and freezer in chapters covering staples, spices, frozen foods, fresh fruits and vegetable. Kende's expert advice makes stocking any kitchen a simple affair.
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