ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is a book everyone should have in their book collection. There's a lot of good information about what you should have in your kitchen to make life easier. Alison Walker explains what equipment tools to have and explains why.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Jacqui Small LLP for a copy of The Essential Cook’s Kitchen by Alison Walker. This cookbook is a guidebook to old fashioned cooking. The directions are excellent (and if you follow them, the results are too!). The author continuously reminds you that, especially in baking, the measuring and weighing of ingredients is extremely important and will make or break the recipes. And this is why I am not a good baker; I tend to go with “close enough.”

The book is broken out into sections including baking, dairy, preserving, bottling & liqueurs, and curing & potting. Each section comes with an introduction with gorgeous photographs and then a very helpful page full of information on common ingredients, equipment to use, and some tips, tricks, and techniques. It is a wealth of information. Many of the recipes have variations or multiple options to try. And each recipe has a picture (or several) to go with it, which is one of the most important things a cookbook needs, in my opinion.

Some of my favorite recipes are: cheese and cayenne bread sticks, crumpets, chocolate and banana loaf, dark chocolate truffles, cinnamon butter (including the recipe to make the butter itself!), fresh ricotta, mascarpone and a delicious way to use it as a pasta sauce, all of the ice cream ones, pink grapefruit marmalade, and tomato ketchup.

This book is an excellent resource with lots of detailed instructions and helpful hints. Some recipes have some hard to find ingredients, but there is a resource guide in the back to help you find them, and the results are worth the extra effort.

Picture a Picnic:
The first thing I pictured in my mind when looking through the book, was a picnic in the great outdoors with friends, a bottle of red wine and a basket full of food made from Alison Walker's recipes. Her recipes are simple, yet elegant. They all have in common that they can be prepared with basic cooking equipment and a small number of kitchen staples, easy to find ingredients, and valuable tips. The book starts out with rustic breads, followed by either hearty or sweet pastries that can serve as a meal on their own. Then come cakes and sweets that can casually be served with a coffee or tea at the kitchen table or put into the picnic basket. This is followed by a very informative chapter of how to make your own milk products, like butter, basic cheeses, and yogurt. Also included are recipes for ice cream and sorbets, marmalade, jams, jellies, chutneys, condiments, canned fruit, and various beverages. The book ends with cured and canned meats. I really like the simplicity of this book. Here are some of my recipe highlights: Walnut and Raisin Bread, Sausage and Apple Plait, Lavender and Lemon Madeira Cake, Sticky Gingerbread Loaf, Candied peel, Fresh Ricotta, Soft Goat's Cheese, Raspberry Ripple Parfait, Lemon and Honey Marmalade, Pickled Shallots, Cherries in Brandy, Elder-flower Cordial, Gravadlax, and Creamy Chicken Liver Pate. The only recipes that I probably will not try from this book are the cold smoking recipes because they involve investment in smoking equipment. But I think of the smoking chapter as a nice add-on for anyone interested in smoking meats. This book is a good investment. Just picking one or only a few recipes at a time will add a little extra to simple meals and entertaining.

This book is a great resource, but you have to be a very serious DIY-er to embark on many of these tasks. If you are and if you like to tackle projects, it is a great book. In some cases, it is also good if you currently have more time than money to spend on food (like me). Somethings, however, are cheaper to buy than to make. Still, if you're looking for a fun project or trying to save some money on food, or you have trouble accessing certain artisan products in your neck of the woods, this is a handy book.

This cookbook showcases some old fashioned cooking techniques and recipes. The recipes are clearly written and the photography showcases the food. This book is not for beginners or quick cooking. These recipes are best when you are planning to spend time in the kitchen perfecting the recipes. Enjoy

Thank you Quatro Publishing and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This is a book that you need to buy and enjoy referring to often, it has great techniques, recipes and illustrations,. A valuable inclusion for every kitchen.

With trends gravitating toward simplifying our lives and back to basics, comes this excellent cookbook teaching modern cooks to do just that. The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing is an excellent book that teaches forgotten kitchen skills and includes mouthwatering recipes that almost everyone will want to make.

Although many use auto bread machines and mixers to make bread, this book teaches us to make bread anywhere by hand. It includes step-by-step instructions, so even beginning cooks can master this skill. The bread recipes included are excellent, and most importantly, the finished product turns out picture perfect.

The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing is a British cookbook, and so has dozens of traditional British recipes, such as marmalades, puddings, potted meats, pâtés and terrines, scones and crumpets, cordials, cakes, and sweets. There are also ice creams and sorbets flavored with lavender, honey, and other unexpected ingredients. Who knew that fresh cheeses such as ricotta and soft goat cheese, as well as clotted cream can be made in the home kitchen, and the taste is fabulous.

All told, this excellent cookbook is one that is perfect for anyone who loves to cook and wants to go back to basics. It will teach forgotten skills that are becoming trendy as food tastes go from chemical-laden convenience foods to organic and fresh, as well as healthy and delicious. The Essential Cook's Kitchen: Traditional culinary skills, from breadmaking and dairy to preserving and curing makes an excellent gift for a new bride or young person getting a taste of the joy of cooking from scratch. Highly recommended, this cookbook will hold a special place on any cookbook shelf.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

I needed a tutorial of doing the 'Essential' or what some might consider basic in cooking! This book gives you a foundation of what every cook should have in the kitchen. I now feel more confident in my cooking skills with the fundamentals that I garnered from this book!

I really liked this book. It is an essential book, the basics for cooking and baking. It covers most foods and is fabulous! It is a real motivator to cooking by scratch, rather than fast food or easy things. The book is easy to read, although it is more British but not hard to figure out. You also learn how to make pickles and cheese, along with a few other things that I have never learned how to make. The recipes are not hard to follow at all. The pictures are helpful as well. I also think this book would be a great gift for any cook - an experienced one or a newbie. This book is excellent and I highly recommend it!

Ein bisschen Country Feeling für ihr zuhause:

Ansprechende Fotos und tolle Umsetzung rund um die country kitchen - da steckt viel Liebe drin, was man auf jeder Seite merkt. Basics und mehr für jederman.

Ich habe das Buch über NetGalley erhalten. Lesen und bewerten erfolgte vollkommen freiwillig.

Many cookbooks these days advertise themselves as “Back to Basics”, but this cookbook goes back to the basics as they were done in my grandmother’s day. The preserves, cordials, jams, salted meats, pies and sausages delightfully hark back to a more seasonal kitchen when food was harvested then prepared or “put up” for later use. Some of these recipes are familiar to me; preserved lemons, pickles, seasonal fruit jams, fruit cakes and pies. Plenty others have been flagged for further investigation, including a section on fresh cheeses, candied peel and a delicious looking raspberry ripple parfait.

Some of the ingredients will be challenging for the American kitchen, but with a cooperative grocery store, Amazon, and a bit of translation/substitution aided by the web, the recipes are quite doable.

All in all, this is a cook’s cookbook, with plenty of inspiration for weekend projects.

#TheEssentialCook'sKitchen #NetGalley

This is an encyclopedia of traditional recipes. A sublime collection of bread, sausages from scratch and more delicious recipes. The book contains colorful and easy to follow instructions.

This book is everything anyone needs if they want to cook complex things from scratch but have them explained in an easy way! There are no dinners or lunch recipes here, because the main focus of this book is not cooking, but working on some kitchen skills like breadmaking (which I absolutely loved), dairy making (amazing, right?), making jam and more...

Of course there are going to be chapters that some of the readers might not care for (I know I'd never smoke meat...), but even so it's good to have the knowledge of how things are done. And I am pretty sure there is going to be a category for everyone in this book. My favourite are the bread, cake and ice-cream. I truly enjoyed reading about jams and jellys but the truth is I am way too comfortable to be bothered to make myself... but maybe I will at one point, right?

Anyway, this is a great book when it comes to skills and techniques!

I loved this book! It’s like a cooking crash course. All the recipes are pictured (if you follow me, you know that’s something I need and don’t find that often in cookbooks). Each chapter has an introduction that I summarized to my boyfriend. I loved the information that was in the “A bit of technique” section: I learned a lot.

Thanks to Quarto Publishing for the e-copy of this cookbook through NetGalley.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Essential Cook's Kitchen is a cookbook that encourages the reader to go back to the basics. Bread-making, curing meat, making preserves -- according to Alison Walker, these are all key abilities for a cook.

The chapters devoted to making bread and to baking cakes / making sweets are, in particular, truly superb. I would love to have a whole book of just them (and more recipes of similar kind -- kitchen classics that serve as great dessert). This section of the book just made me want to run to my kitchen and start baking one cake after another. On the other hand, while home-maide dairy looks delicious (and not that difficult to prepare), I doubt I will ever have at hand milk of good enough quality to make cheese out of it. Nonetheless, the book contains enough doable and interesting recipes that it would be a great one to put on one's shelf. Additionally, it is beautifully photographed and designed. Absolutely worth checking out.

This cook book is unique. I will say that this would never be my go to cookbook. But, I could see the amateur gourmet chefs that are in my life drooling at the site of making their own pate or curing their own meats.

The cookbook is broken down into, Baking, Dairy, Preserving, Bottling & Liqueurs, and Curing & Potting. The cookbook starts off with a basic bread recipe and then gives you several ways to make several types of breads starting with the basic recipe. Having a basic bread recipe that you could make into several other types of breads, is nice to have on hand when you want fresh homemade bread.

The illustrations within the book are beautiful. I love cookbooks where you can SEE the recipe as well as demonstrating the techniques. I wish ALL cookbooks would do this.

If you have a garden, or grow fruit, the preserving chapter is nice. The lavender and lemon jelly sounds delicious as well as the Rose-petal jelly. The recipes are unique and fresh.

As much as I enjoyed looking at the beautiful pictures, and reading the recipes, I know I am not the gourmet cook that these recipes are for. But, there are some techniques I am grateful they break down, such as clarifying butter as well as how to make your own butter. Wow!

For the gourmet chef--this book is for you. Especially, if you want to make your own scones and homemade clotted cream. Bon Appetit!

This is not at all a typical cookbook. It's purpose is to pass down traditional techniques and basic recipes for what were once essential items to make, and which now we largely buy pre-made from supermarkets.

There are some very interesting and unusual recipes in this book, along with some classics. I particularly enjoyed the bread section and the jellies. What makes the book stand out from others is that the actual techniques needed to make these things are set out quite simply, making it seem easily achievable for anyone to make their own cheese or even a duck terrine. There are a few recipes, but the main focus is on how to make a basic version, and then to go out and expand on this to suit your own ingredients and tastes.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover, in one sitting. This is most unusual for a cookbook, I'm sure you will agree. The pictures are delightful and the short introductions to each section take you away to an old country kitchen where a cheerful (but expert) cook is baking bread or pies, and a pot of jam is simmering away on the range cooker. Even in this day and age, I think most people would enjoy cooking these recipes and be proud of their achievements; simple as it seems after reading this book, it is very impressive to be able to serve homemade butter or ice-cream.

Great for someone who:
- is new to cooking
- is stepping up their game
- wants to dominate their culinary performance.

I love to cook so I am always looking for books to help me improve my skills. I was excited when I found this book. It has lovely pictures showing how to perform different task in the kitchen such as kneading bread. These are great for a visual learner. I am very interested in the chapter on making your own cheese. With this book you can do anything whether it be make your own ice cream of pate. You can make your own sausages and smoke your own lox. This book has you covered.

I was really looking forward to this book, but I found it rather bizarre. The photos are top notch, but the majority of recipes are really very basic - bread, pastry, baking. There is nothing in there about farmhouse living or organisation, which would have set this book apart from a very basic recipe book. More bizarrely, although in keeping with what they are trying to achieve, the last chapter of the book is on advanced techniques of smoking and preserving, which requires fairly specialised equipment, bulk quantities and advanced techniques. Overall, I think this book has massively missed the mark and it is not something that I would buy or keep.