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Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style: member book reviews

(1 review)

Mario has dedicated this book: "To Americans at leisure. We got it down." Well said and a promise of great recipes contained in the book.

Many of the recipes assume you have a grill on the scene where the food is to be prepared and eaten. This really is a grilling cookbook focusing on easy to moderate recipes with lots of strong flavors. This is largely a collection of recipes for carnivores. All but one of the breakfast recipes - Eggs in Hell (eggs poached in a skillet of spicy tomato sauce) - has meat in it. A few appetizers are meat-free like Speedway Guacamole, and of the few side dishes, three even have meat in them.

Recipes sometimes have racing names and the head notes refer to various tracks or racing references. Each chapter has a short introduction with some tips applicable to those foods.

There are also numerous boxed text stories of various tracks, typical mornings at the track, pit stop information, etc. I found the text entertaining and for a NASCAR fan, this would be a great book to read.

The design of this book is really appealing and beautiful. There are tons of full-color photos throughout of Mario cooking, eating with others or of race drivers and cars. Unfortunately, the photos have no captions so except for Mario, I have no idea who any of the people are. Maybe they thought NASCAR fan readers would recognize most of them.

The recipe ingredients are printed all in one paragraph with two slashes separating each ingredient. I really dislike this style of listing the ingredients. Also, the instruction steps are not separated with a space under each one. Both features, while looking nice on the page, make it a little difficult to keep your place when cooking and referring back to the book. I could have easily skipped an ingredient or two in the recipe because of this.

The selection of recipes for each chapter is really great. They are varied and unique amongst the others. The chapter on chicken and fish doesn't have one recipe I wouldn't make: Cuban-style Chicken Thighs with Grapefruit Mojo; Jerk Chicken; Texas-style Barbecued Chicken; Brickyard Barbecued Game Hens; 5-Spice Chicken; Jambalaya Turkey Burger; Monster Shrimp with Orange Chili Glaze; Shrimp al ajillo; Spicy Beer Shrimp Boil; Salmon Hobo Packs; Soft-shelled Crab Sandwiches with Spicy Tartar Sauce; Grilled Lobsters with Limoncello Vinaigrette.

The book wraps up with a good index and a section of contact information and statistics on each track.

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