Buying the Best: How to Shop for and Cook with the World's Best Ingredients Book

It must be true that practically everyone who cares about what they eat knows that the best meats are free-range, probably organic, bred from old strains; that artisanal cheeses are infinitely to be preferred to sweaty supermarket blocks; that you get what you pay for when you buy balsamic vinegar. Yet contemplating the astonishing variety of high-quality foodstuffs available from supermarkets and specialist suppliers can induce a kind of paranoia. Am I really buying the best? Is there some superb, special, little-known estate-grown varietal extra-virgin olive oil that I don't know about? Is this the very best butter? And anyway, how can I tell?Hugo Arnold provides expert guidance in Buying the Best, the subtitle of which, "How to Shop for and Cook with the World's Best Ingredients", indicates the character and scope of his project. Drawing on some 20 years' experience of food buying in the UK and Europe, he makes clear how, in all types of food, quality really does matter. More, he explains how to discriminate between the bland and the good, the merely excellent and the superb. This he does for all the major food types: fish and shellfish, dairy and eggs, meat poultry and game, vegetables, pulses, grains and breads, vinegars, oils, flavourings, not forgetting tea, coffee and chocolate. For each, the basic disciplines of shopping are outlined--where (and when) to buy, what to look for, questions to ask. Basic but pithy preparation instructions are followed by a short selection of recipes for each food group. With these, the muted grey palette of the book explodes into colour in dazzling photographs of the prepared food. The recipes are excellent, simple but bursting with flavour and designed to showcase the excellence of the ingredients. This is man who seriously enjoys his food. --Robin DavidsonRead More