Our Quick Take: Ever since we discovered Gordon Ramsay’s Broccoli Soup recipe, we’ve been on the lookout for more of his recipes. Recently we picked up Sunday Lunch. The premise is great - the book is divided into 25 different Sunday lunches, with recipes for starters, the entree and dessert. Our complaint about the book isn’t so much about the recipes - there were a handful that we definitely have on our "to make" list - but rather, the typography. The book uses type in a number of different colors, and the white type on both the mustard and the sage green background was very difficult to read.
What’s Inside, At a Glance
Sunday Lunch offers the following lunch menus:
- Mediterranean Flavours
- Spring Greens
- Winter Casserole
- Chicken Chic
- Easy Entertaining
- Taste Sensation
- Classic Sunday Lunch
- Keep It Simple
- Easy Barbecue
- Seafood Special
- Roast Lamb
- Malaysian Curry
- Salmon in a Parcel
- Surf ‘n’ Turf
- Essence of Italy
- Wild Food
- Fast Food
- Quick & Easy
- Retro Dining
- Sole Food
- Spring Chicken
- Christmas Dinner
- Pig Roast
- Paella for a Crowd
- Summer Entertaining
Our Complete Review of Sunday Lunch
As I mentioned in our Quick Take above, we’ve been on the lookout for more Gordon Ramsay recipes ever since trying out his Broccoli Soup recipe, which we found courtesy of YouTube.
Sunday Lunch has a great premise - the contents are sorted into 25 different lunch menus, and each menu includes a starter, an entree and a dessert. On the first page of each lunch menu, there’s a short little intro, a list of the recipes, and then a listing of what you can do "A Few Days Ahead", "The Day Before", "Several Hours in Advance", "An Hour Ahead" and "Just Before Serving". Breaking everything down into steps like this helps you to get everything to the table more or less at the same time - a big plus when you’re entertaining, which is the aim of this cookbook.
The lunch menus themselves aren’t particularly inspired, but there were some interesting recipes scattered throughout. As usual, it was my task to go through the cookbook and list all the recipes that sounded good to me. My list includes: Pan Roasted Scallops with Cauliflower Puree (pg. 13), Red Onion and Sweet Potato Rosti (pg. 74), Red Mullet with Sauteed Potatoes and Anchovy Dressing (pg. 105), Malaysian Chicken and Coconut Rice (pg. 116-117), Wild Garlic and Parsley Risotto (pg. 199), Champagne Oysters (pg. 209) and Parma Ham, Sage & Parmesan Puffs (pg. 239).
As you can see, we’ll be cooking for a while through this cookbook.
Recipes aside, we were disappointed that the recipes weren’t more "personalized". We prefer cookbooks that include more of an introduction to the recipe by the author - something personal, or an interesting bit of information about the food. When it comes to celebrity chefs, we expect the chef’s personality to come through. The intros to both the menus in Sunday Lunch and the recipes themselves are bland, much like you would find in a cookbook compiled by a publishing company like "200 Greatest Shortbreads" or the like.
Our main complaint, though, was the formatting of the book. The colourful pages and use of variously coloured type are nice touches, but we found the use of white type on both the mustardy-yellow background and the sage green background challenging to say the least.
All in all, this is an interesting cookbook. We’re not too sure it will go on our Keeper shelf, though.
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