Binging with Babish Cookbook Review
I would like to start this off by saying that Babish aka Andrew Rea is the the first inspiration to cooking in my life, without watching his videos on youtube I never would’ve even thought of eventually becoming a chef. With that out of the way, Andrew Rea’s Binging with Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favorite Movies and TV Shows turns “imaginary” food from shows and moviesinto real dishes. This book and Babish in general show how food can be both art and a way to share stories as well.
The purpose of the book is to bring fictional foods to life and some examples are like Disney Pixar’s Ratitouille or Pigeon Pie with Wild Game from “Game of Thrones”.
His ability to consistently bridge the gap between fiction and reality by bringing these recipes to life is remarkable and on top of that somehow making the recipes followable by the general public is no easy feat. Furthermore what sets Rea apart is his self-aware, experimental tone. When he jokes that his first attempt at the Big Night “Il Timpano” collapsed “like a culinary house of cards,” he’s showing his imperfections something that isn’t in a lot of cookbooks. He even uses his failures to show what can be done to avoid them all through humor.
The above images seemed a little out of place to me seeing as they were smack dab in the middle of the book, however I can definately apreciate where he’s comming from as this is another way to tear down the walls of superiority in a sense. He wants to connect with his general audience and show that almost anyone that has patience and time can cook good food. Binging with Babish seems to have struck a rare find: a balance btween accessablity for a general audience/casual fans and those that have multiple years of experience and a way to inspire both groups.