Official Review: How to Cook Authentic Valencian Paella

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[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "How to Cook Authentic Valencian Paella" by Maria Brull.]

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How to Cook Authentic Valencian Paella by Maria Brull is a step-by-step cookbook written in a friendly and conversational manner that guides you through the process of preparing a traditional valencian paella in a foreign country. Considering that some of the appliances and ingredients might be more difficult to acquire outside of Spain, Brull kindly provides her reader with websites where they can find these items.

As an avid foodie I was exited to read this book, having eaten a lot of paellas myself. The aspect that I appreciated the most is that, unlike those cookbook where they only present the recipe, in this book you will find additional information, for example: types of pans, accessories, how to prepare your station, how to pick the best rice, and so on. Although this might add a level of complexity to the preparation of the recipe, it does help you to become more familiar with the creation of this dish, which attempts to bring a little of the Spanish flavor to a foreign country. The information provided in this book is extremely basic, probably thought for people that are either occasional cooks or beginners. If you are familiar with the utensils and the ingredients you might be able to skip a couple of pages. Nonetheless, is you are a complete newbie to the culinary arts you will find the book very helpful and approachable.

Another characteristic that I found accommodating was that Brull gives the reader options when it comes to the complexity of the dish. For example, she provides all the information to prepare the paella in a more traditional way (cooked outdoors with logs and tripods and more accessories), but she also considers that not everyone might be able or willing to put that much effort into a dish, therefore she also provides the instructions for cooking the paella indoors with modern appliances.

The only thing that I didn’t enjoy was the edition. Although the cover looked appealing the rest of the kindle ebook was lacking a design. Some of the images that were used seem to have come straight from a search engine, therefore the size, color and quality didn’t match from one image to the next. Perhaps in the physical or PDF versions of the book there might be a more appealing design concept; nonetheless, I was not able to get my hands on the other formats to compare.

All in all I give this book 3 out of 4 stars.

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