BOOK REVIEW

THE NESTLE COOKBOOK

(Silverback Books, Inc. - 2005)

If you trust brand name recipes, then you'll enjoy over 300 of them that you'll find in The Nestle Cookbook, a large hardcover book featuring recipes that use the many Nestle brand ingredients.

There are several of the old Nestle favorites from the past like Carnation Fantasy Fudge, Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies and Libby's Famous Pumpkin Pie.

These and other tried-and-true recipes fit right in with the newer contemporary recipes that are likely to become new favorites in your household.

If you're a year-round pumpkin fan, this cookbook will provide you with plenty of ideas as Libby's Pumpkin is under the Nestle umbrella.  There are twenty recipes that feature pumpkin as a main ingredient.  Sweet Pumpkin Dip, Thai-style Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Pork Stew are just a few of the imaginative ways it can be used.

Carnation is another Nestle brand.  If you've never cooked on a regular basis with Carnation Evaporated Milk then you don't know what you're missing!  Sauces, soups and sauce-based dishes are creamier and smoother.  Carnation Mashed Potatoes and Down-Home Sausage Gravy are two basic recipes that are subtly but markedly improved when evaporated milk is used instead of regular milk.   Folks will deem your mashed potatoes the best after they've tried them, and the fun part is that they won't know exactly why.

The Buitoni brand of refrigerated pastas and sauces are also used in these recipes.  There are many creative pasta dishes that use both the prepared Buitoni sauces and those made from scratch.   Refrigerated pasta is a way to increase the elegance of any meal and it's just as easy as using dried.

Innovative uses of Nestle candy bars and candies, as well as the stand-by Nestle flavored morsels, are found in desserts, beverages and snacks.  Bumps on a Log, a variation on the stuffed celery snack for kids, is updated here using Raisinets.  You'll see that Coffee-Mate isn't just for coffee as it's put to good use as a recipe ingredient too.

Stouffer's, Nesquik, Nescafe, Nestea and Maggi are some of the other Nestle brand name products found in the recipes.

The presentation of the recipes is appealing and easy on the eyes.  There are a good number of color photographs illustrating the prepared recipes.  Arial-style fonts used along with the double-spaced text make the recipes and instructions easy to follow.

In addition to the recipes, there are sidebars with information on some of the ingredients, short histories of the Nestle brands and cooking and baking tips.

It's very convenient finding all of these recipes for the different Nestle brands between the covers of one book.  Nothing's as easy as reaching for one cookbook on your shelf that contains plenty of often-used recipes.

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