Kitchen Creativity: Unlocking Culinary Genius—with Wisdom, Inspiration, and Ideas from the World’s Most Creative Chefs

Here we have a beautiful book, a high-end production with heavy-weight paper stock, nicely reproduced photographs, and lots of promise for the home cook. Yet Kitchen Creativity by Karen Page is an utter disappointment. For whom was this book written? Not for the average home cook, not even for the more sophisticated home cook, and certainly not for the food professional. The book is in magazine style, with sidebars of different shapes on every page and bolded sentences and paragraphs throughout for emphasis, and is profusely illustrated by photos. This may make a magazine more interesting but not a food reference book. The book is filled with information but hardly anything useful for the home cook. A great number of celebrity chefs from throughout the globe are featured with photos, quotes, and their philosophies. Right at the beginning we find a list of “Leading Chefs’ Top 20 Culinary Books.” Is this significant? And the book goes along in similar fashion. The pages are filled with detailed culinary history. There’s an alphabetic list for choosing the highest quality ingredients, but the list is alphabetic by website instead of ingredient. The second part is not better: it has an alphabetic listing of “culinary possibility” (Like Green Foods, Quality). A flop.