Review
Posted in: Books > Cookbooks
20 / 04 / 2007
There are ordinary hotels, then there are hotels like a Peninsula Hotel.
For those that don’t know, Peninsula Hotels are a relatively small group of luxury hotels with properties in both America and Asia that ooze personalized service and are dedicated to providing luxurious comfort for their guests. Their restaurants are among the leading restaurants in their city and are considered “must visit” destinations in their own right. So when I heard the Peninsula Group had published their first cookbook, I had to get my hands on one.
Titled, Naturally Peninsula – Flavours, the cookbook features 76 recipes from The Peninsula’s global team of chefs, with chapters on Appetisers, Soup, Fish, Shellfish, Poultry, Meat, Vegetables & Bean Curd, Rice & Pasta, Desserts and Smoothies.
The book highlights the Peninsula group’s commitment to develop their own cuisine based on the guiding principle that “to live well is to eat well.” which is based on a combination of sourcing fresh quality ingredients together with contemporary cooking techniques. Many of the recipes are prepared naturally, keeping in mind current lifestyle trends towards pristine flavours and natural ingredients. Other recipes are skewed towards healthy, but are grilled, fried and roasted.
As a chef myself, many of the recipes look easy to me, but to non adventurous home cooks some of the recipes might be hard to execute. Some of the recipes that I will be trying include Corn nut crusted short ribs, Lobster Kataifi with Virgin Mojito Shooter as well as Chilled Lemon Myrtle and Mint Soup with Frozen Green Tea Yoghurt.
Apart from the Peninsula chefs themselves, the book was written by well known Singaporean food consultant Violet Oon, who was also responsible for testing all of the recipes from the book.
A photo tells a millions words, especially when reading a recipe and the Naturally Peninsula – Flavours cookbook has a collection of stunning food photographs taken by the award winning Singaporean food photographer, Edmond Ho.
Given that Peninsula Hotels are evenly split between Asia and America, Naturally Peninsula Flavours includes measurements in both imperial and metric, making it easy to use no matter what you’re used to.
Towards the end of the book, a necessary glossary is included to educate readers about unusual ingredients like Ancho Chillies, Chinese Wolfberries and Kohirabi. Each of these ingredients is accompanied by a short description and photo.
One of my only criticisms of Naturally Peninsula – Flavours is that none of the the Peninsula chefs are acknowledged for their recipes, yet they are acknowledged collectively at the end of the book. Although it would age the book ( i.e if the chefs were transferred to other Peninsula Hotels), I would have liked to have know who contributed which recipe.
Naturally Peninsula – Flavours
Marshall Cavendish Cuisine
ISBN 978-9812613752
Full disclosure: I received a review copy of Naturally Peninsula Flavours Cookbook from Peninsula Hotels. .
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