The Spice and Herb Bible

I'm glad that I bought two copies, 'though am now in a quandary about the gift recipient for the second copy. I plan to buy at least two more because this will make a great gift. It's a useful reference for cooks and bakers, especially for us enthusiastic amateur chefs. The authors make good use of colored photographs and add recipes that I'm eager to try. They take care to explain why a small addition to spice mixtures can make or break the balance of flavors. I have wanted something like this for many years and am so delighted to have scoured Amazon's cookbook section long enough to find this treasure.

Such a cool book!

A comprehensive spice reference book. It offers a brief history, uses, and recipes. I'm fairly knowledgeable about spices, but I learned things that were informative and that have the potential to enhance my dishes. It's well written and easy to read. One of the more updated (current) versions of spices. I recommend it. I'm pleased with my purchase.

Love this book! It gives you a lot of information about spices, some I’ve never heard of. Pictures and recipes on how to use them in different ways and dishes. I’m learning a lot. Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

Ok. This is a fantastic book with beautiful photos. I already know that I will reference this book most times that I cook. With that being said, this is a HUMUNGOUS and HEAVY book. It WAS damaged when it arrived, but I don't know how it could NOT be damaged in transit, considering the weight and girth. I was able to use library tape to reinforce the outside binding of the spine. This book should not be soft-bound as mishandling it will most certainly cause serious damage...like split-the-book-in-two type damage. I've chosen to keep it because I treat all of my books with great care and feel I will be gentle enough to make it last. I just don't want to return or I could be re-sent the book in worse shape than the one I sent back. I'm not willing to take the chance.

This book is beautiful and HUGE! It’s loaded with interesting information. I bought it as a gift for someone, and I can’t wait to give it to them. The one thing I wish is that Amazon would wrap soft covered books in paper or put them in a plastic bag before boxing them so the edges of the covers won’t get scuffed in shipping. The edges weren’t bad, they just could have been better.

Has every Herb with info on each. Great book for reference searching.

This book is an awesome read and very informative!

Like the recipe suggestions

This books is amazing. It is colourful, well organized and easy to navigate quickly or simply enjoyable to flip through. The pictures are gorgeous too. The herb profiles are detailed with great pictures and anecdotes from the authors as well as the history of the plant. You get tips on how to process your own herb, how to determine freshness of commercial herbs, traditional uses and spice mixes it is used in and other flavours it compliments, recipes that use the herb (and look delicious!), as well as the best dishes to try the flavour on. And then they have an entire section devoted to developing your own herb and spice mixes with a huge selection of spice/herb mix recipes to get you going (they have over 10 curry recipes!!). They have even colour coded their recipe titles so green tiles indicate spice mixes and orange titles are full recipes usually using a spice/herb mix. An overall great purchase for new or experienced cooks. I'm much pleased with the book and am already adjusting how I process certain herbs based on its suggestions.

Malgrado l'ingombro (quasi ottocento pagine) questo catalogo si fa apprezzare soprattutto per l'impostazione grafica razionale e accattivante e per la leggibilità, cosa che lo rende pratico sia per una rapida consultazione in cucina, sia per approfondimenti e ricerca di curiosità e aneddoti (l'autore, australiano, viene da una famiglia pioniera nel commercio delle spezie). Ogni scheda riporta nome botanico, varietà, nomi comuni in altre lingue (europee, asiatiche, arabo, ecc.), usi tradizionali, una tavola di accoppiamenti con altre spezie, una storia del commercio, morfologia coltivazione e sviluppo, trasformazione e processi, dove acquistarla e come conservarla al meglio, pesi e misure, e (quasi sempre) alcune ricette. Tra più esaustivi in commercio, si trova oggi alla sua terza edizione (rimpolpata).

I bought this book a couple of weeks ago. I've been interested in using herbs and spices for years without really having any background knowledge as to their usage, I always took a fairly intuitive approach which was either a hit or miss. However, I got to a stage where I wanted a better grounding to help me to explore the various flavours that one could add to the dish. This book as been wonderful to help me educate myself and to understand better where flavours come from and how an adjustment to the spices used one can travel across whole continents. Spices are somewhat exotic and there are paragraphs that tell little stories of their origins and their journey's across the globe. This book really is a 'bible' for anyone who wants a description of each herb or spice, their usage, a recipe perhaps and a little bit of background knowledge. It covers everything and its such a joy to read.

Great book. Great experience.