As an avid fan of cookbooks, one can easily get lost in the sea of new options and want to build a library of just cookbooks to immerse in for inspiration and transport yourself to various beautiful foreign lands through exotic spices and flavors. Mark Bittman, being a vetran of cusines, has curated an amazing summary of options in a single source of foodie delights -- The Kitchen Matrix.
The Kitchen Matrix does for me what I wish I could transfer easily from my thoughts onto paper. It has all the nuances of meals broken down so you can take a base of egg noodles, for example, and transform them into 4 different new dishes, simply by changing up a couple of ingredients, and suddenly the dish takes on an Chinese flair with fish sauce, sesame oil, cilantro and green onions -- or Thai with the infusion of lemongrass, coconut milk and roasted peanuts.
Plenty of stunning snapshots of the permutations of culinary possibilities for simple but tasty ingredients are sprinkled throughout. Flipping through for just a couple of minutes, you get inspired to come up with yet more combinations. This cookbook is excellent for the medium to experienced home cook who needs flexible recipes that are actually not really recipes, but more like the useful tips from a friend who happens to be a chef, shared over a delicious meal shared at home.
This book was received from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for review.
