I first saw Rachel Allen on PBS’s Create TV. I was impressed with her immediately. She is beautiful, quick, and knows her way around the kitchen. Typically chefs on Create demonstrate how to prepare three dishes. Rachel shows us five in most of her episodes. She makes everything look so easy and she is smiling all the while.
Her cookbook, Favorite Food at Home, has a slightly different take on the subject of cooking. While it is still very family oriented it doesn’t have the highly energetic feel of her TV show. Instead, you get a feeling of warmth, relaxation even. Photos of her two little boys cooking with her or eating or just being boys, fill the pages. It’s easy to see where they get their good looks.
The contents consist of:
Easy Family Food
Sweet Celebrations
Picnics and Days Out
Extended Family
Dining Alfresco
Home Cinema
Big Celebrations
Edible Gifts
Just Like Mum Used to Make
Useful Extras
Some of the recipes are unusual like the Duck, Lentil and Red Cabbage Salad or the Asparagus and Scallion Tart. All have ingredients that are available in your supermarket.
Some recipes are very simple to prepare, like the Cucumber Pickle recipe. I will definitely be trying that one. Also, her Lemon Curd recipe sounds good. I’ve seen her whip this up on one of her TV episodes.
Her children’s recipes are tempting, and not just for children. You’ll want to try her Parmesan Chicken Fingers. I know she likes them because I’ve seen her eat them on her show. She also made a tomato ketchup to go with the chicken fingers. Both are included in the cookbook.
Rachel has several recipes for scones from sweet to savory in the book. She made a recipe for scones on her cooking show but it wasn’t included in this cookbook much to my disappointment.
Irish fans won’t be disappointed at her inclusion of a traditional Irish cake that calls for one 12-oz bottle of porter or stout.
A clever sandwich recipe created by Rachel’s husband’s grandmother is a Chest of Sandwiches. You need a large loaf of white bread, unsliced. You carve it open to make a flap on top then cut out the inside and make little sandwiches out of it and then place the sandwiches inside the “chest.” Unique!
I was happy to observe how health conscious she is but she definitely has a sweet tooth! There are to-die-for sweets recipes in this cookbook. One thing I did not like was that she used corn syrup in some of her recipes. This can easily be omitted and substituted.
Overall, she covers all meals and has a variety of ethnic dishes from Italian to Thai. Each recipe is more mouth-watering than the next. I would eat any dish prepared from this book and I can’t say that about all my cookbooks. It isn’t surprising that she is Ireland’s most famous chef. At the rate she is going, she could soon be America’s most famous chef.
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