I grew up learning how to cook from three generations of women. I don’t have a problem throwing together a reasonably good meal in the evenings but I’m not too great at following a recipe as I like to experiment, to add and take away, to make something better. What I don’t like about cooking is the time it takes, especially as I now have less of that time than ever.
Cooking With Mrs Simkins holds a variety of recipes focusing on wholesome family meals and cake baking. There book also gives quite a bit of instruction on cooking in general including a cake surgery that has helped me to understand why some of my baking experiments were failing.
For the most part I tried the cakes as we’ve already got a large list of main meals we choose from at dinner time. The recipes were fairly standard but did have the advantage of being made by throwing the ingredients into a mixer and mixing in one. Delia, you can’t beat that for time saving. That said, the cakes were pretty much what I could have made from any cook book. I also tried a few main meals, incorporating the differences in ingredients and methods into my own and with shepherds pie especially, we really noticed the difference.
What did disappoint me was the lack of images in the book. One of the best things about browsing through a cookery book is salivating over the pictures of perfectly made food and deciding what you’re going to try next. Unfortunately the only pictures in Cooking With Mrs Simkins are black and white illustrations. I will admit that had there been photos in the book, I may have been more encouraged to try some of the other recipes. I also would liked to have seen a more kitchen-friendly cover as once ingredients splash on this one, they’re not going to be wiped clean easily.
For someone who already owns a number of cookbooks you won’t find Cooking With Mrs Simkins to be anything that hasn’t been done before. For someone who regularly cooks and has enough of an idea to get by, unless you’re interested in trying new things the book probably won’t be of much use to you. However, if you’re a novice cook and are looking for a good all round book to get you started then you can’t go wrong with Cooking With Mrs Simkins.
Cooking With Mrs Simkins is available from Amazon priced £7.94 (rrp £12.99).
