Monday, March 07, 2005

Triumph of style over taste

According to Jewsweek, 'Queen of Kosher' Susie Fishbein's new cookbook, Kosher by Design Entertains,
has already exhausted it's (sic) initial printing of 30,000 -- all in only its first week of release. A second printing of an additional 20,000 copies have (sic) already begun.
If so, I find this extremely surprising. Kosher by Design was ambitious, beautiful, modern, and did set new standards for Kosher cookbooks. It didn't, however, do much for Jewish food. Let's be honest -- the recipes didn't hold a candle to the vastly superior Kosher Palette. Too many of them either didn't work very well, took too long to prepare or involved ingredients which were too obscure. I guess when you've already sold 30,000 copies one less won't make much difference, but I for one will not be buying a copy of the new book.

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