I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of traditional cookbooks, I love looking at the glossy pictures and taking inspiration from the recipes but this book is so different and I love it.

Instead of giving you recipes, this book gives you suggestions on how to shop smarter and cook better and I’ve already taken several pages of inspiration for my next cooking experiment.

The fact that there are so many options provided with each idea is great for accounting for allergies and specific preferences.

I would recommend this book for both experienced cooks and those just starting to venture into the kitchen.

A new take on a cookbook. This book shows how to minimise and optimise your cooking over a two-to-three week period. i really like the approach, taking a base ingredient and showing how you can adapt it to make several different dishes. Will definitely be learning from this approach and giving my kids a variety while providing a core menu!
There's a lot of meat and things we don't eat due to allergies so it will probably give me a two-week rotation rather than three, but still a great way to diversify the menu while focusing on some core basics.
I'm not great at planning meals and their variety is much less than during the first lockdown, so i'm pleased that i discovered this n0-recipe book.

I was very excited recently to have access to a no-recipe cookbook where you are taught how to combine a whole host of ingredients without a recipe. This one is not really a cookbook like that. This is more like meal plans with instructions how to cook each of the dishes - actually more or less like a recipe book but written in a narative style.

However, it might be useful for someone who has absolutely no idea what to cook. The recipes included here are for commonly loved dishes which you might not mind cooking over and over again because there are suggestions for alternative ingredients. However, I can't help but feel that this would have made a better book by using the conventional recipe style because that would make it easier to refer to instead of having to be read through.

Some of the ideas were useful. I was quite surprised though that vegetable oils are still being recommended to replace much healthier cooking oils.

This Australian cookbook is not going to be much help for the folks it purports to help -- busy folks who don't know how to cook. While the author's time-saving suggestions and shopping strategies are good, her non-recipes are very detailed but lack important things like amounts of ingredients. Not knowing how much of something to use, even approximate amounts, won't help novice cooks.

And then there is the difficulty for American readers in translating her Australian terms and metric measurements.

I have no doubt these strategies and non-recipes have worked for her, but I don't think they will work well for beginners.

Pass this one up, there are better cookbooks to help you learn to cook.

If you’re someone who enjoys browsing the cooking section of your local bookshop, looking for new inspiration, glossy pictures and recipes… put this book down immediately! It’s not for you. But if you:
- can’t cook
- don’t enjoy cooking
- are too busy to cook
- have never prepared a meal
- would like to save money
- would like to lose weight by eating out less often, or
- just want to be more efficient in the kitchen
Then this book is the answer to all your mealtime prayers.

This is a perfect, easy book that does exactly what it says it is supposed to do above. Take the description literally and you will be fine. The book is heavily meat-based so if you are vegetarian, vegan or don't eat meat then I would not recommend it. Overall, 3.5 stars, would work much better as a hardback rather than E-book.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I will be honest, I normally really dislike cooking. I don't know what to do, whether to add anything different and I end up in a rut of cooking the same boring meals.

This book has changed that.
I really enjoyed reading through and making changes to my cooking habits as well as how I plan my meals and shopping. I am starting to explore different flavours and have realised I do not always need a recipe, I just need ingredients and I can start.

I would especially recommend this book to students going off to university. It is a great way to start your journey learning to cook away from home and would set you up with great skills that will help anyone become confident in the kitchen.

This quick little Australian book reminded me a lot of the information you'd get if you asked a Facebook group for meal ideas or called your grandma and asked how to make pancakes. It's composed of tips for shopping, minimizing time and mess, etc. and then very basic directions for how to make an assortment of things like pancakes and fish dishes. The directions are very minimal and new cooks are likely to be left with unanswered questions, while experienced cooks are likely to find not much that they don't already know. It is very Australian in measurements, ingredients and names of dishes (I'm still not sure what a "slice" is even after reading her directions).

As another reviewer mentioned, it is fairly heavy on the animal products. Pillay also calls for a lot of white flour and there is no information about gluten free baking. Ironically, while the introduction mentions diabetes and food-related health crises, these are pretty carb-heavy meals for the most part. Fats are not really mentioned other than lots of uses of butter. Fish is featured more than any other proteins, with no mention of proteins like beans and little information on cooking meats (though they are used often as ingredient suggestions like sandwich fillings). There was also a notable lack of suggestions in terms of salads or soups for meal ideas, or simple things like fresh fruits. There are no photos. It'll be a helpful guide to those who are pretty new to cooking though, especially parents (kid-friendly tastes and lunchbox options are frequently mentioned) and people who eat what I assume is a standard Australian diet fairly similar to the American one.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

This is a non-cookbook cookbook! Basically it talks you through basic recipes (such as a stir fry) and lets you know all of the ways you can customize it to make it your own and how to cook it. I think this idea is an interesting one. I would have preferred more varieties in font/infographics/photos, but I found this creative nonetheless.

Even though I know how to cook I was still drawn to this. I like the idea of a nontraditional cookbook, that gives you ideas and you just run with what you are given. I still learned a lot and will be putting her strategies into my everyday cooking.

I read this book in one sitting because I just couldn't get enough of it. Everything was sp easy to read, and even though there were no measurements it was still easy to follow a long. I wasn't interested in all of the recipes, but if I ever need to make any of these I will go to this book.

I breezed through this easy read in less than half an hour. I picked up this book despite the description saying it probably wouldn't be for me as I already do enjoy cooking, however I still found it useful.

There are some really handy little recipe ideas and time saving idea in the kitchen, especially for those who would like to cook more at home but find it a challenge. The No Recipe Cookbook makes cooking seem very easy and accessible to those who may be put off by long ingredient lists and multi-step recipes.

I appreciate that no foods were off limits and sensible moderation was key. The tips and tricks provided were really useful to save time in the kitchen.

Overall, I think this is an interesting, easy and useful read for both seasoned home cooks and amateurs alike.

"The No Recipe Cookbook" is the kind of cookbook that immediately attracts me! As a cookbook writer myself, I was very interested to read the advise given by Samantha Pillay.

What makes this cookbook suitable for people who don't have a lot of knowledge about food:
- the quality of the advice, especially for beginners, but also for more advanced cooks (e.g. the order in which to add ingredients in a stir-fry)
- the quick information about nutrition/obesity, etc. at the beginning.
- the adaptability of recipes

However, I found the cookbook lacking in some aspects:
- the lack of illustrations (which is also helpful, even if the recipe can be adapted - for there are recipes in this book, although not the traditional type)
- the lack of information about the environmental impact of the food. There was also not a lot of advice on how to adapt the dishes to vegetarians.
- the lack of healthy recipes. The author explains how home-made food is healthier than processed food - and it is! - but she doesn't provide many healthy recipes: I wish I could have seen more recipes with more vegetables, less meat, more vegan ingredients, more fruit-based desserts, etc.
- the strong voice of the author. While I normally love hearing the Chef's "little voice" and opinion in a cookbook, here, she voices her opinion as if it were the truth (e.g. "“I only eat lunch if I am hungry. This should be true for any meal.” -> this is false! I have some dietary issues and cannot skip a meal nor should I wait to eat until I'm hungry otherwise I'd be severely underweight! Although her advice might suit many people, she phrases it in a way that is not sensitive to people with digestive/health issues). As she is Australian, you also see that her culture comes across quite often (e.g. use of the barbecue, the fact that her family rarely "sit down to a cooked lunch") - as a French who lived in Australia, I do have relatively different eating habits and wish the book was a bit more open to different ways of cooking).

Overall, I like the concept of the book, I love the advice for beginners, but I wish the cookbook was more visual, provided healthier recipes, and were more sensitive to people with difference (cultural, health-wise, etc.). 3.5 stars.

I went into reading this book knowing it was not “for me” per se. I’m a seasoned cook. I looked at it from the perspective of a student or even an adult who has little cooking experience. This book is very useful for them and I really agree with its core message that everyone should have basic cooking skills! The book basically gives ideas for basic concepts, like stir fries, and gives the reader several takes, flavor wise on that dish. There aren’t recipes but there are basic tips to get the reader from here to a meal.

Not a fan, sorry.

I love the idea of this book and there were things I appreciated. For example, the way author Samantha Pillay takes a basic recipe and puts various spins on it for variety and accommodating different tastes. I also appreciated that she gave some guidance regarding the order of cooking during the week to suggest fresh ingredients be used first and longer lasting ones used later.

However, the book is heavy reading, which I find makes it hard to absorb. Recipes aren't broken up into simple steps, they're written into the narrative, which I admit I find tiresome. Call me basic, but a few pictures wouldn't go astray!

I can't see that I'd pick this one up in a hurry to use for my cooking.

The recipes in this book are easy to follow and mostly feature common ingredients I will post more when I have tried more recipes.

This books gives some useful information on cooking and some helpful ideas for dishes without actually listing any recipes. Overall I found the book really well suited for a young person that has no experience cooking and is looking to learn how to batch cook, reduce food waste and save money

#TheNoRecipeCookbook #NetGalley

Special thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with ARC.

This book is good and the idea is new specially that it's not contain recipes, the book learns who's new to the kitchen how to use knife and other tools , how to store things for a lot of time.
I loved this book.

I think generally, as cookbooks go, this was pretty great.
I thought it was something similar to Carla Lalli Music's cookbook 'Where Cooking Begins' and it was kind of like that and i both like and dislike things about that. They both kind of do that thing where they give you more freedom in cooking than more traditional recipes that feel very daunting because they're so set in stone but with this book (and the other one) its more of a work with what you have kind of thing which makes cooking so much easier and it makes me so happy. But unlike where cooking begins, the no recipe cookbook literally has no recipe - where cooking begins has recipes written out in a traditional way but has options fo substitutions and making the recipe your own. there's pros and cons to that - cons: its not like a regular recipe book where i have the recipe saved for the rest of my life and i can kind of flip to it and follow and adjust as i choose to. instead its a lot more reading and i would have to take my own notes within the book or in a separate notebook in order to save the recipe in an accessible and quick way. but pros: its obviously a lot more customisable to your own tastes and whats available to you.
Ok for the rest im just gonna do a positives and negatives of the books -
What I liked:
- the variety of the recipes; im a really picky eater but there really is something for everyone
- the level of detail in some of these recipes were great like the author REALLY thought of everything. at one point she listed in what order you should cook this in a stir fry and WOW i didn't realize i needed that

what i didn't like:
i feel like a lot of these critiques are just about personal preference and may contradict what the author intended for the book but im gonna mention them anyway.
- the tips and tricks in the beginning were a little toooooo beginner for me. im no chef but im an avid baker. i picked this book up bcs im not so good at cooking/hate it and everytime i follow a recipe word for word it takes me forever and still tastes bad somehow. so overall i fount the tips boring cause i knew a lot of them BUT regardless some were new to me and i was taking screenshots. the tips were good regardless so i would possibly get this book to someone whos an absolute beginner - which im pretty sure is the target audience so not really an issue of the book rlly.

While I love to bake, I am a very inexperienced cook! I loved the practical tips this book offered, and how the recipes shared were much more general, allowing for the reader to customized based on what foods they have available. The author also shared good background information on the process of the recipe. And of course I enjoyed the baking section! I'm really excited to try some of these out, especially pasta ragu!

I liked the beginning part of this book as far the tips for how to shop and ideas for throwing meals together. The meals were all very animal based so I didn't care for that and wouldn't recommend this book for vegetarians or vegans. It is surprising to me that a Doctor would recommend so many meals that are so heavily meat centered.

Nice easy read, very practical guide if you're in need of some economical meal ideas. Listed in the format of a 2 week meal plan: the meals in this book are made from affordable everyday ingredients and show how you can stretch out the time between grocery shops with a little logic and planning.

I'm looking forward to trying the 'recipe' for the Chickpea Fritters, but would have really liked to have seen more vegetarian and vegan alternatives listed; it was a very meat heavy menu.