1/3 - 416 pages of Martha Stewart baking prowess. Every recipe pictured, plus bonus 'step-by-step' pictures of some of the more difficult processes - making a lattice top for your pie, using a mini ice cream scoop to portion out cookies, examples of different piping bag nozzles for decorating a special cake, the different stages of proving bread, and so many more that I'd be here all day listing them. Every single recipe looks enticing, even the ones that I wouldn't normally choose to eat due to ingredients that I don't like, like olives or capers (these less agreeable ingredients mostly feature in the breads chapter, so don't worry there aren't any cakes or cookies with olives). As you would assume, all the measurements are imperial (lbs, cups, ozs, etc) but living in Australia and loving American (Ina, and now Martha) and UK (Nigella, Jamie, Tom Kerridge) chefs I have become quite a good translator of imperial measurements into the more easy to understand metric system, so that doesn't bother me in the least. I have yet to bake anything from the book, but as I said, everything looks good so I'm sure it won't be long before I do. Updates when we've had a piece of cake or a cookie.

27/12 - While none of these recipes were used during my cruise and none of the chefs featured were on my cruise this is still a great souvenir to remind me of my time on the river boat. All the recipes are fine dining, so a little complicated and involve more sophisticated ingredients than I'm normally used to, but there are some recipes I definitely want to try. The first recipe in the book, an amuse bouche, Lemon Grass Crème Brulee, which I would up-size to turn into a full size dessert; Pumpernickel Coated Feta Terrine with Red Wine-Pear Chutney; and Sicilian Tomato Soup with Ricotta Quenelles are some of the most promising-looking recipes in the book. I look forward to having a go at creating these pieces of food art.

Some very nice chicken recipes, including a few 'out of the ordinary' that you're not likely to see in all the other chicken recipe books.

I love watching Lidia on her tv show and finally got around to buying one of her books.  This book has a great, authentic Carbonara that I now cook every couple of weeks.

There's so much more than just recipes in Lidia's books.  In this book I've been learning all about the different regions of Italy while learning to cook their food.  It's great!!