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For Those About to Cook - A Review [Book]

Bruce Moore

by Ffion Davies +, July 23rd, 2011 and has been Read 2835 times.
Last Edited by: Ffion Davies July 25th, 2011.

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What’s better than a home cooked meal and some amazing music? Or going out for tea with some of your nearest and dearest with a few drinks and then off to a club/gig? We Brits absolutely adore food, we love the taste, the smell, the look, cooking, being cooked for, watching chefs on TV, watching complete strangers cook for each other over a week in order to win a £1000 on Come Dine With Me. We just love it. There are a plethora of colourful cookbooks ranging from easy-to-cook student recipes to fancy dinner party cook books. Nearly every TV chef worth his salt has an anthology of mouth watering delights with his/her face on the cover. So, when I got the chance to review a cook book that infused both exciting recipes with delicious bands, I jumped at the chance and thought that the idea was absolutely genius.

Bruce Moore’s For Those About to Cook is not your typical cookbook though. He has compiled a vast selection of taste bud tantalizing meals and snacks by a wide variety of artists from all over the world. Not only do you learn how to make Guns N Roses Blueberry and Choc Chip muffins, but you get a brief introduction to the bands too.

Bruce Moore has been an enthusiastic and successful member of the music industry for over 18 years, working as a sound engineer. Over the years he has gathered a vast amount of connections with some of the crème de la crème of musical artists and well, he called in a favour or two by asking for the recipe to their signature dishes to include in his scrumptious collection. He decided to name the book based on the excellent AC/DC classic ‘For Those About to Rock’, so you can expect the book to be spilling over with rock attitude as well as some scrumptious cooking instructions. So, if you’re in the mood for Mike Farley’s ‘He-Man Fiery Sausage and Peppers’ or Orange Goblin’s ‘Spicy Chicken Enchiladas’, then this is the perfect book to satisfy your cravings.

Every page is jam packed with witty comments, light hearted synopsis about the band and some pages are peppered with quotes from the artists themselves, describing how more-ish their delectable dishes are. I guarantee you that once you’ve skimmed through the book and find the perfect pudding recipe, it’ll leave you hungry for more. The simple instructions are exactly what you expect from music artists, not measuring in hideous scientific measurements, but adding the amount of ingredients that feel right, similar to how you’d expect them to compose a song.

However, although the content is second to none, the formatting lets the book down a massive amount, especially for the price (£25/$35). When I look for a good cook book, what I want to see is colourful glossy pages, with stunning pictures of the dish you’re about to replicate, not only to have an idea of what the finished product should look like, but also to stimulate your senses. How often do you pour through these books, flicking through pages until you land on a page with an image that makes you salivate instantly at the look of the feast in front of your eyes? Quite often I can imagine. Quite right too, as this is the job of a cook book. Tempting you to try something new. This luxury is not available in For Those About to Cook. The pages are black and white, and the fading in in the graphics on the top of the page from black to grey looks like a cheap photocopy your cookery teacher would hand to you in class. This was somewhat disappointing.

Also, when you decide to venture into the unknown and learn to cook a new dish, you need to feel like you’re properly guided and know where to look for that new recipe quickly. There is no organization at all in For Those About to Cook, when you read through the content page, you don’t get a list of the bands and the food, just the band name. How am I meant to remember what Candy Claws or Sister Sin is trying to teach us? I appreciate that the content is organized in alphabetical order, but in a cookbook I expect sections, for example Appetizer, Starter, Main, Dessert, Snacks and Drinks. I find this an obstacle in my journey to a new delectable discovery.

I find this such a shame, as I believe that the idea is gastronomically genius. Intertwining both music and the art of good eating is long overdue, and by asking artists to contribute their favourite dishes was simply stunning. If the pages were in colour and glossy then this would be the perfect coffee table book and the ideal gift to any music and/or food lover.