My rating: 4 of 5 stars

French Country Cooking is a gorgeous cookbook. It is beautiful inside and out and makes you want to curl up and read by a nice fire, and then afterwards head to the kitchen to start cooking. However, there are a couple of issues. This is French country cooking for people who live in France. There are many ingredients that will range anywhere from difficult to practically impossible to find here in the States.

While the recipes for the most part look simply delicious, I will say that this is not the book for a beginner cook. Some recipes are quite complicated and therefore I would have to say intermediate cooks and up might enjoy cooking from this book, but I believe it would just frustrate beginners.

I struggled with how to rate this book waffling between 3 and 4 stars. With the combination of over elaborate recipes at times and hard to source ingredients I was leaning towards a three, but the overall beauty of the book and the lovely writing bumped it up to a 4.

As far as the recipes go, you can find about any kind of French recipe you’d like. There is a very thorough selection from Chanterelle and Garlic Tartlets to Cassoulet, Spring Flan with Zucchini and Mint, Poule-Au-Pot, Dauphine Potatoes, Salted Butter Chocolate Cake, Crepes Suzette and so much more.

This is a beautiful book. If you’re looking for more of a coffee-table type book, or a book that’s great to read, this is for you. If you’re looking for a good, French cookbook and are not already a fairly experienced cook, you might want to look elsewhere.

I received a copy of this book from Clarkson Potter through the Blogging for Books program for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.