Mattwright

Metric units will certainly be added. It is funny though, most people I know back in England still use Imeperial, even though we switched ages ago. I really respect your comments. You are actually the first person to say that they didn't like the book. I would be really interested to hear what kind of recipes you would like to see in this. It should be noted that this book is targetted at relatively new cooks at home, and is meant to be simple prep. of really good ingredients - to show off the food. I would love to put some stuff in there with more formal techniques - confit's, bain-marie etc - but I know a lot of home cooks won't spend 90 minutes making garlic confit for a recipe. Please please please let me know what you would like to see in here in terms of food. Some of the recipes planned for the book are "harder" than you see here. The idea still though is simple prep. of really good ingredients.

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David. One of my favorite cookbooks of all time. Great recipes, amazing stories, and wonderful food. No photographs, no set layout to recipes - reads more like a novel than a cookbook. Never cooked anything bad from this at all.

WOW is all I can say. This is the exact reason I made the decission to post my work here, on eGForums. Both of your comments are intelligent, and well thought out, and the suggestions are really going to help hone this book. I agree with what you say about the Introduction, it could definitely be refined - I never thought about it from the direction you are coming, and yes, you are correct - it is a weak introduction. Good ideas about the Northwest photos, and family stuff. I do plan to have more family photos throughout the book for sure. I don't want to completely section off the rest of the world though - just Northwest inspired I would say. I think I might add a section to each recipe that shows what other dishes pair nicely with it - that should hopefully clear up any problems with the catagories. Thanks again guys, I will keep you updated with how this goes, and keep the comments coming

I hope I am on to something I guess I should ask people of the recipes shown so far, how many would you cook? Also, if you look in the back of the book, there is a list of proposed recipes (now a bit out of date), how many of those sound interesting enough to cook? My idea was that I was trying to create food that would appeal to most - try and cut out some of the crazy ingredients (a turn off for a lot of people when they have to go trecking all over town for 1/4 tsp of something exotic), and take things back to basics. I will certainly get more done, and post as I go. I guess I should step up hunting for a publisher too.

Hi Guys Thanks so much for the comments. Glad that you guys like the photography and recipes. I hope to post more stuff as I get it done. Most new recipes are getting posted to my blog, but only a few of these will make it into the book (most likely refined a great deal). As far as the recipe quanity goes. Before I started writing the book I got thinking about how many recipes from a cookbook I really make. Maybe 5% from some of my more favorite books. This just seemed kinda crazy to me. Which got me thinking more. Perhaps what would be more useful to newer home cooks in a smaller selection of recipes, that is diverse, but yet introduce new techniques to expand confidence, and inspire people to try their own combinations. So, what I thought was that perhaps a good angle would be a selection of really good recipes, that were explained in great depth. I know when I started cooking many moons ago, I found most recipe books completely inadequate in terms of explanation - too much was left to guess work, which made things unessesarily tough - and turned me off some cookbooks. Ironically these are cookbooks that I have revisited and completlely love, now that I have a better understanding of cooking. So, to make a long story longer - I wanted to keep the recipe count down, but be able to offer step by step guides, that really left nothing out. I have never been one for quanity over quality. I just really have to settle on how many recipes is a good amount. Perhaps 40? Suggestions on this would be welcome. Thanks guys. Matt

I run a food blog called Wrightfood - http://www.mattikaarts.com/blog The Wrightfood cookbook has been in the works for quite a while now. I first came up with the idea over a year ago, and have been working on it ever since. The book is far from being done - only about 50% has been written and photographed in fact, but I wanted to get peoples opinions on the food, the photographs, the pacing of the recipes and so forth. Friends have said they love it, but then they would, they are friends. I need as many people as possible to take a look, and to let me know what they think - honestly. So, here it is. The Wrightfood cookbook. The aim of the book is not to have thousands of recipes (this, as you see it here, is about 50% of what it will contain), but rather just a handful of really well documents quality recipes. Every stage in each recipe is documented with photographs, and decent descriptions. The idea is that a new cook and pick this up, and with little practice produce the food in here. No stone is left unturned, nothing is left to guesswork. The food is simple, clean, tasty and fresh. http://www.mattikaarts.com/wrightfood/press/wrightfood.pdf - here it is. You will need Adobe reader to view it. Hope you enjoy it, and let me know what you think. The cookbook website is: http://www.mattikaarts.com/wrightfood - you can find out more about me and the book there.

Hiya all Just thought I would post in here about a cookbook and blog that I have been working on recently. I am a brit, living in Seattle, and have been cooking for years. Family and friends have bugged me to put into writing what I love, so here it is. website: http://www.mattikaarts.com/wrightfood blog: http://www.mattikaarts.com/blog The cookbook is called wrightfood, and features mainly seafood dishes. What is different about this book? A few things: Really detailed explanations and a shed load of photographs for each recipe. Designed so that the novice cook can complete these easily. Filled with great stories of an Englishman living in Seattle. Large topics on buying for your kitchen, organics, naturals, tools. The blog features a "what's for dinner" routine.. Every night I post photos and explanations of what I am cooking, and how. Updates pretty much every day. Anyhow, hope some people here get a kick out of this. Oh, and there is a couple of recipes from the book to download at the website, in PDF form. Cheers! Matt

A cookbook needs pictures in my opinion. And the more the better. The only book I have think is amazing without pictures is Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking" She does such an amazing job of describing things, that the lack of pictures doesn't bug me too much. I am working on a cookbook at the moment that is going to be ladeled with them. Perhaps the most detailed out there so far in terms of explanations and photographs. So far I have had a great response from test-cooks about the amount of photography littered throughout the book. You can see some exerpts at http://www.mattikaarts.com/wrightfood (not trying to plug anything here.. just thought some people might be interested. I would certainly say for new cooks, pictures are a must. Cheers Matt