The Dancing Gourmet: Recipes to Keep You on Your Toes!

by Linda Hymes

Book Overview

Leap into the kitchen and enter the magical world of the ballet with The Dancing Gourmet, Recipes to Keep You on Your Toes! Professional ballerina and Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef Linda Hymes dispels the myth that dancers don't eat in this elegant and beautifully illustrated cookbook. With dazzling ballet and mouth-watering food photography, this exciting cookbook will broaden your culinary repertoire without expanding your waistline. Including over...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0971978204
• ISBN13: 9780971978201
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Lindergaff Books
• Length: 157 Pages
• Weight: 2.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.9" x 11.1"

Customer Reviews

Surprise!

What a wonderful cookbook! The recipes are a really nice collection of international foods. All are healthy and very delicious. And what a surprise it was for me when I realized that this is a fantastic toddler cookbook! So many recipes in this cookbook are easy to cook, nutritious, and appropriate for adults and small children alike (you must adjust level of spiciness of course.) To name a few, Udon with Tiny Gingered Pork Balls; Asian Noodle Soup with Grilled Chicken; Chicken Sate; and Fresh Spinash, Roasted Eggplant and Mushroom Lasagna. Great for those of us who want to train our little ones to have sophisticated taste buds and to eat healthily.

A Dancer's Delight

This book has won several awards including the Gourmand World Cookbook Award and the ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year. I was shocked at the actual quality of the book. The publishing is excellent.As a dancer, I know that one thing you have to maintain is discipline, and with all the tempting recipes out there, it's hard. Surely one of the most attractive things about this cookbook is its pictures. Almost every other page has a beautiful photo of one of the recipes. At the beginning of each chapter, there's a picture of a dancer, and these alone make the book worth buying. Alright, enough said about the images - let's consider the food.I was really surprised to find that one of my favorite recipes was an appetizer. Edamame, which I'm really not sure how to pronounce, is simply prepared, salted soy beans, which you take out of the pods and eat. They aren't too filling and they make a great replacement for the traditional crackers and cheeseball appetizer.The second section of the book is devoted to soups. While these aren't entirely easy to make, all the preparation is well worthwhile. The Gazpacho Andazul was my favorite; it's basically a really complicated version of tomato soup. It tastes like something that you would get in a cafe in Europe, but maybe that's just me. There are a lot of spices added in, so if you accidentally overdo it a bit, it can taste rather strong. (By the way, there are a ton of adorable cooking quotes scattered throughout the pages, and for this soup the quote is "Only the pure of heart can make a good soup.")Moving on to third chapter, the salad selections are phenomenal. There are recipes for European salads, like the Taboulleh with Shredded Baby Spinach, which is really good and the Panzanella, which includes a recipe for the dressing as well. I don't know if you are anything like I am, but I'm not entirely used to gourmet food. I'm the girl who ends up getting the tossed salad and mixed vegetables in most restaurants, so it takes a bit of getting used to. But if you give them a chance, you won't be sorry.A lot of these recipes are not veg, so you may have to weed through the ones you don't want to try. Lucky for us, there is an entire section devoted to Vegetarian and Meatless Entrees! Many of these recipes took the longest to prepare, especially the Fresh Spinach, Roasted Eggplant, and Mushroom Lasagna. While this took a while, it serves eight and you can easily hang on to the leftovers. There are a lot of other really great meatless recipes including sesame noodles and a really great pizza recipe. But this is one section where some of the more culturally diverse food comes in. The curried banana balls were a bit different, I'll admit, but it doesn't hurt to try them once.Lastly, we have the land of desserts. No complaints here! These were amazing with a couple of great biscotti recipes and Irish soda bread. There is also an applesauce carrot cake that is to die for.In the back of the book is a glossary filled w

Offers lusciously tempting dishes

Written by professional ballet dancer and skilled cook Linda Hymes, The Dancing Gourmet is a celebration of elegant recipes, each presented with extensively detailed instructions, and enhanced with mouth-watering color photographs by Derek Gaffney. From Asian Red Cabbage Slaw; Sea Bass Wrapped In Pancetta; and Miso Sesame Noodles; to Grilled Tuna with Orange and Thyme Scented White Beans; Irish Soda Bread; and Capellini Scampi, The Dancing Gourmet offers lusciously tempting dishes, each of which is meant to be created with a keen sense of balance -- a quality as important to cooking as it is to dance!

Fabulous Recipes and Photos

This book is fantastic! I had read that it won several awards so was interested in checking it out- there are incredible photos on every single page, showing you just how the recipes will look when you make them and the recipes are just the kind I love, simple and easy to make, but really interesting combinations I never would have thought of myself. It is really unique, too, that the author not only was a professional ballerina but is now a Le Cordon Bleu chef! There are appetizers like Shrimp Cocktail with Avocado and Green Apple, Chicken Sate, Crostini with Pesto and Slow-Roasted Tomatoes, Easy Soups for every season including Gazpacho Andaluz, homey French Onion Soup, and Udon with Tiny Gingered Pork Balls, and the salads are fantastic! Vietnamese Chicken Salad and Spinach Salad with Feta, Almonds, and Black Mission Fig Vinaigrette. There are lots of vegetarian recipes, including a lasagna to die for, and even an unusual soup made from bananas and indian lentils that is really amazing! There are great ideas no matter what kind of food you like, from asian to southwestern, to mediterranean- all healthy without heavy sauces.There are beautiful pictures of ballet and lots of stories about life as a ballerina, which makes this book great for dance lovers, too.

Great Cook Books

Along with Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, The Dancing Gourmet makes creating meals for your family and friends not just healthy but fun. The recipies are easy to follow and understand and for me that makes a cook book!!I am a simple kind of guy and I really enjoy my food so it is hard to believe that what I have created from this book isnt going to give me heart trouble in later life. But thats the joy of this book, the recipies (even the deserts) are designed and created to be healthy for you. The main thing though is that the food is fantastic and my friends think I can cook now!! Thanks Linda!