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Rating: 
Summary: Great Cook Books
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Really great recipes and fabulous photos!
Review: I bought this book as a gift but when I looked through it the recipes looked so good I kept it and bought another! I've made the lasagna for friends and everyone thought it was the best they had ever tasted. The recipes are simple to make and they actually end up looking just like the photos! And the artistic way they are tied into the ballet with stories and pictures make it a really beautiful book as well. I definitely recommend this very high quality book!
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good ideas,
Review: If your a dancer and like to cook then this is for you. Warning that some of the ingredients aren't easy to find. But basically the food is easy to prepare and very low in fat. Good purchase for those dance enthusiasts.
Rating:
Summary: A Dancer's Delight
Review: 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 with both ballet and cooking terms and more pictures. It's a great ending to a great cookbook. Overall, I would highly suggest adding this to your kitchen. It is a great way to impress any guest that comes along and an even better way to treat yourself.--Courtney Jones
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Recipes and Photos
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Offers lusciously tempting dishes
Review: 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!
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