I’ve always loved being in the kitchen. Since I was a kid I was big on baking and making food for people. I’d spend hours making different types of foods or sweets for my friends and family, but making the same things all the time got boring really fast. So I turned to cookbooks. In case you don’t know what a cookbook is, I’ll give you a brief idea. They’re books full of recipes, usually written by popular chef’s. There’s cookbooks for just about any type of dish you want to make, whether its a breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert kind of food. There’s also themed cookbooks that are strictly a certain culture’s kind of food.
Cookbooks generally have a name for whatever kind of food they’re giving a recipe for. Sometimes the name is plain and simple, and sometimes it’s clever. Following whatever the name of the food is, some cookbooks will offer a small description of what it is. It’s usually to hype up the dish, and make it sound enticing. Not all books have this, but occasionally some do. I’m sure you can guess what comes after these part’s of the text. Recipes. The cookbook will have step by step instructions on how to prep what you're making. Depending on what type of food it is will determine the content of the recipe. Baked goods more so than others contain raw ingredients in specific measurements that you’d mix together. On the other hand if you're cooking something like steak, it might say to tenderize and marinade the meat, and give a list of spices to include in the marinade. Then it’ll say what appliances you’ll have to prep in order to actually cook the food. After the prep part of the recipe, the instructions will give cooking directions on how to cook the food and how long to cook it. For chocolate chip cookies, you’d have to preheat you're oven to 375 degrees, and bake them for 9 to 11 minutes. For steak, you could fry it in a pan on the stove, or grill it on a barbecue until it’s done to your liking. Some cookbooks also might provide ways to check if your dish is finished cooking or not. They also include how many people the amount of ingredients in the recipe will provide for, and how many servings each will get. Cookbooks can also have storage information. If you can’t finish the amount of food you made, it’ll tell you the place, length of time, and dishes/bags in which you can store it.
These are just basic things every cookbook usually has. However, some cookbooks have conventions that other’s do not. You could have one book that’s all about cookies and the different types you can make, but another book might be about all kinds of Thai foods ranging from breakfast to dessert. It all just depends on what you want to make.
I really liked how you went into detail about how even different recipes such as baked goods would have different instructions. You also made it clear how a cookbook should grabs people's attention, as in making something look appetizing enough to make someone want to make it in the first place, and serve simple and easy to follow instructions for the audience (cookers).
ReplyDeleteFirst things first, I liked the title. It was what got me to read your PB1A, and although it was shoehorned in a little, I very much appreciated. Now, moving on to your essay, Your followed the prompt very well, describing the conventions of a cookbook adequately. The tone was a little bit to academic for me, but that it just my slightly biased opinion so you can probably disregard it. However, the structure of your PB1A was impeccable. You had everything fit together extremely well, and I was impressed by that. The felt liked it was part of a story, which made it extremely readable.
ReplyDelete