Offal: The Fifth Quarter Hardcover – April 1, 2012

I was expecting a book that went through various odd cuts and taught techniques for dealing with each piece. Instead, there's a scattershot of recipes and anecdotes about how the author discovered the recipes (often out of other highly praised cookbooks). For example, in recipe for calf's feet, the author volunteers "I am not one for eating feet stew for breakfast. Raw liver perhaps, but not feet stew." Further, the instructions just aren't very helpful or enlightening. It also seem to assume that you're getting your offal ready-prepped from your butcher, so forget DIY.The organization is no better. There is a very short section about various cuts of offal by alphabetical order. Then acceptable offal (what do chicken wings, caviar, foie gras, and ground game variety meats all have in common?). Then soups, salads, starters, mains, feasts, barbeques, sauces and dips, and desserts. Why they didn't organize the book by organ beats me.Then there's the photography. There are no illustrations of how to do things, photographic or otherwise. The photographs are all of finished dishes, all with very thin focal planes so that not even all of the dish is in focus. It's like some photographer got their first DSLR and fast lens and got all crazy. (So if you must get this book, save some money and get the old edition without the color photographs.)

I have only done some of the tripe recipes. They were all very good and were very authentic. The tripe Florentine and Turkish tripe soup were right on the money. The stuffed tripe was very similar to my grandmother's, though I know it by a different name Kroosh. If the rest of the book is like this, it will be remarkable.

A good book with quite wide coverage. Recipes are a bit sparse for the offal that I really enjoy though, or which is readily available. Maybe that is due to their being little experimentation? My favorites are brains, sweetbreads, kidneys, pigs trotters and oxtail, with some nods to tripe, liver. heart.

I think this book very well incorporates a fetish niche into the market of "food-porn". The passion and delicate instructions from the authors is not only educational and thought provoking, but inspirational and joyful. Without a base knowledge in some areas as to the correct preparation of some organs and offcuts, this book will be a little overwhelming. But; for the aspiring home cook who wants robust and inexpensive, entertaining and playful food for choice laid out in direct instruction, this is your only book on the shelf not collecting dust.

The recipies are quite good, but I expected a book on OFFAL.

One of a kind. A subject that needs more addressing. I really enjoy the presentation,and the recipes. Hear, hear for Offal.

as food prices seem to be exponentially rising (80p for a solitary red pepper in my local 'super' market) I have been searching for ways in which to reduce my food costs. offal seemed like a sensible area to explore which is why i bought this book. upon opening it i have to say that i was pretty intimidated; tripe, eyes, brains, lungs... you get the picture. however, that's to be expected from a book which is entitled 'offal' so i pulled myself together. so far i have only ventured so far as a kidneys and liver, both of which were enjoyable. if you're after something completely different to almost all other cook books, one which opens up an entire new area of cooking or if you're adventurous with your food then this is a book that should interest you.

A great book excellent quality and good recipes, but only give this a 4 due to the lack of illustration photos

If you are looking for a book with recipes for offal you can actually source from your supermarket or butcher, as I was, then this is not it. Full of recipes requiring hard to find ingredients such as caul I cannot recommend this book for the everyday cook.

Too Americanised. Not the book expected

An absolute must for Offal lovers