Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The title, subtitles, and jacket blurbs on this book are grossly misleading. I purchased it thinking it would be the vegetable fermentation equivalent of the excellent book on curing Charcuterie by Ruhlman & Polcyn--wrong. The book does not contain a single accurate tested recipe. Everything is vague with regard to the ratio of salt to vegetable, with the constant refrain: if mold develops, if the upper layers start to rot, if maggots appear just scrap off the top and eat the rest. If you were doing things correctly the mold and maggots would not appear. It is precisely becuase I could not find accurate tested recipes with clearly specified proportions of salt to vegetable that I purchased this book. The salt to vegetable ratio must necessarily vary depending on the water content of the vegetable, the same for the concentration of the brine, otherwise the resulting salinity will be wrong and wrong things will grow. The book also wastes and inordinate amount of time on vague directions for various barely drinkable alcoholic beverages. Who needs this information? And please do not try to do anything with meat based on this book. The failure to understand the clear difference between "curing" and "fermenting" is frightening; the failure to provide tested recipes is irresponsible and DANGEROUS. If you want to try curing see the book refered to above. For Japanese bran pickles find a copy of Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking A Simple Art. The process is far more complicated that Katz indicates. Tsuji provides clear, detailed instructions. The only useful piece of information in this book is that you can order pickling crocks on line from ACE Hardware and avoid the high shipping cost by having them delivered to your local store for pick up. But for everything else (and I could go on longer with the incomplete or dangerous instructions) find another book, one with specific, detailed, tested recipes. Unfortunately that book does not now appear to exist.