Food Purchasing and Preparation – Roy Briggs

Roy Briggs's Food Purchasing and Preparation provides useful introductory information on a wide range of topics. The opening three chapters provide the reader with good background information - complete with specimen forms - on controlling resources, health and safety, and hygiene, which could easily be adapted for use in the workplace.

The sections on HACCP (Hazard Analysis, Critical Control Points) and COSHH (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health) make easy reading and provide a handy reference for the target audience of NVQ level 3 and 4 students and junior chefs de partie. The book makes an ideal starting point for anyone in the industry looking to expand his or her knowledge with a view to future promotion to a first position of responsibility.

Briggs has managed to demystify topics such as managing stock levels, food safety, and health and safety regulations, successfully tackling difficult subject areas such as deterring staff from stealing and the importance of specialist security procedures.

The remainder dissolves into an incomplete book of commodities. Fish and shellfish, meat, poultry and game are covered in some depth before moving into seemingly pointless recipes for sauces, dressings, hors d'oeuvre, salads and buffets. The chapters on commodities provide information on current purchasing regulations and guidelines, though why Briggs throws in a glossary of French terms within each section is a mystery.

Overall, this makes a handy reference book for caterers studying at NVQ level 3, but I would have liked more emphasis on the purchasing implications on menus and costing of dishes. Many of the recipes make you feel that you are reading a book written in about 1960, but then you stumble on a recipe for guacamole and taramosalata and you realise that this is a new publication presented in an antiquated manner, with poor reproductions of black-and-white photographs.

The author has succeeded in providing the reader with an introduction to purchasing, but not to a great enough depth to warrant making it essential reading. Borrow it rather than buy it.

Stuart Rhodes, lecturer/team leader - catering, Harrogate College, North Yorkshire

Food Preparation and Purchasing - Roy Briggs. Continuum Publishing, £16.99.
ISBN 0-304-338664-4