What if Mozart or Einstein handed you their notebook and said, “Here, go have fun.” Such a gift would be overwhelming in generosity as well as challenge. When Paco Torreblanca offers this gift in Paco Torreblanca 2, he adds, “Now let’s see what we can do together.” A serious, no-nonsense book for people who take pastry seriously, Paco Torreblanca 2 focuses on integrating natural ingredients into microcosmic eye candy.
Giada at Home presents recipes from Giada’s Italian and American traditions, all with her signature style. She shares classic Italian recipes passed down through the years and new family favorites, all bursting with fresh, vibrant flavors.
Once upon a time, the marking point of a chef’s success was the awarding of a Michelin star or equivalent. The professional recognition and a dining room full of satisfied diners was all that was needed to make your mark on the culinary landscape. But chefs and restaurants have now evolved to a stage where global brand recognition has become a part of the game. Cookbooks featuring the flagship restaurant are a part of that marketing strategy.
Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road is the flagship of Ramsay’s empire, and “Three Star Chef” is his homage to it. As you’d expect, it is a beautiful book that will draw attention whether you keep it in the kitchen or on the coffee table.
The photography is of a high quality and the dishes presented are remarkable in terms of the skills behind them and their presentation. Given the time, skill, and ingredients, this is food that would impress at a dinner party. Ramsay’s words display his customary bluntness when discussing restaurant life in the first half of the book, but change to a more encouraging tone in the recipe section. Does this book, like the restaurant, stand alongside corresponding works by the likes of Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, and Michel Bras? While the Ramsay book matches these others in terms of recipe content and production values, it falls short in that you never truly get a sense of what drives him, his food, and his restaurant.
An exciting new book by a renowned and pioneering master chocolatier for anyone serious about their chocolate, filled with innovative and unusual recipes that will challenge, intrigue, and delight the tastebuds in equal measure.
In the world of the celebrity chef, where books are churned out every year along with the television show and the newly endorsed kitchen products, it can be easy to forget that at some point there was a reason why these people became famous in the first place. Nigella Lawson is a case in point – the same flirtatious looks to the television camera, the coquettishness of her manner, and the double entendre laden words. The constant mining of a new angle – quick food, summer food, baking, this fashion, that trend – a battle to keep the personality fresh and the profits flowing.
Lawson started her career in food as a columnist, and the quality of her work led to her writing a book. “How To Eat” was first published in 1998 and it became a bestseller. The two keys to its success were the high quality of Lawson’s writing and the common sense she offers about cooking. The first sign of a practical mind is the way she arranged this book. Chapters devoted to cooking for one or two, weekend lunches, and feeding babies and small children, shows someone who understands modern life. The recipes she provides use ingredients that are easy to find and use reasonably straightforward techniques. Ten years down the track and “How To Eat” is as joyful a read as ever. I suspect that in fifty years’ time, people will still be reading it.
In the last installment of our feature on year-end releases, we’re taking a look at cookbooks from famous chefs and restaurants, as well as the un-cookbooks: books with essays on food, food issues, and guidebooks on specific subjects.
Heston Blumenthal is known as a gastro-wizard. Not only does he helm the Fat Duck, once considered the top restaurant in the world, but he also has popular notoriety through his In Search of Perfection television series on the BBC. In Search of Total Perfection is the culmination of the TV series put in print (combining his two previous books from the series into one volume), and offers not only the recipes and exploratory work leading to the recipes, but also the behind-the-scenes tales from the studio. And whereas a movie can drop a book’s plot, story lines and even characters to help the story fit into a two-hour reel, this book flips a page and gathers all of the information presented in the series and expands on the shows with useful and fun details. The reader is left as plump and saturated as Blumenthal’s roast chicken. And that’s where we’ll peck away at this book – roast chicken.
Marco Pierre White’s publishers took advantage of his re-emergence on television in the mid-2000s by reprinting “White Heat”. First published in 1990, this book proved that the public had an interest in recipes that were not intended to be made in a home kitchen.
“White Heat” has been a book sought by collectors, professionals and foodies since its original release. Justin North, the owner/chef of Sydney’s Becasse restaurant commented recently that “This changed the way I saw food. I was an apprentice in New Zealand and it gave me an insight to the manic life of a chef; it made me hungry for knowledge about Michelin chefs.” Its impact in terms of kitchen skills, as a source of inspiration for chefs and cooks, and on the design of cookbooks, is still being felt twenty years later.
“White Heat” also set standards in other areas. The stark black and white photographs are so integral to the feel of the book that the photographer, Bob Carlos Clarke, received a prominent credit on the cover. The layout with its blocks of white space and oversized quotes by White owes more to cutting edge magazines like “The Face” than to the cookbooks of years gone by. Finally, there is the no-holds-barred commentary by White about the many aspects of the life of a chef. “White Heat” was an extraordinary book in its time, and it remains so today.
Spring in Sicily, the fourth book in Manuela Darling-Gansser’s series of seasonal recipe books, is a medium-sized hardback book of 260 pages filled with recipes, photographs, commentary, brief chats with chefs, market stall holders, bakers and café owners, fishermen, artisan makers of cheese and wine, and a brief overview of the rich history of Sicily and some of the nearby islands.
The text is brief, informative and a pleasure to read, while the recipes are simple but different enough from the more usual regional Southern/Northern Italian cooking of mainland Italy to be interesting.
In an era when pastry chefs are whisking unpronounceable ingredients into batters, creating neon floating effervescent micro cookie espumas, this collection of Alain Ducasse recipes anchors pastry artists with solid and glorious fundamentals. With little fuss or fanfare Ducasse Pastry Chef, Frédéric Robert, offers 250 fine-tuned dessert and pastry recipes that are a sure success. But this volume is not for everyone. A solid foundation in pastry arts is necessary. And that sparse, focused writing style is what I find most appealing. Reading three page recipes for cookies wears on my patience, and here, we find recipes that take lines, not pages, but they assume you know your basics.
Jamie’s America sees Jamie on a personal journey throughout the United States as he digs beneath the surface and discovers what real American food is all about. He has looked beyond the American stereotypes to discover the real food, the classics that make this country tick.
In Carrément Chocolat, master patissier Pierre Hermé takes you on a journey through chocolate. He presents his beliefs and desires, reveals his sources of inspiration, and shakes up accepted beliefs.
Part cookbook, part guide to the world’s best new restaurants, and part who’s who of the international food scene, Coco showcases the cooking of today’s best new chefs, as chosen by today’s culinary icons.
It’s 43cm long, 33cm wide, 8cm thick, weighs about five kilograms, has 534 pages, and was one of the most anticipated cookbooks in 2008. From the silver embossed slipcase to the photography and artwork, the writing and the feel of the paper, it would be hard not to notice and admire the Big Fat Duck Cookbook on the shelves of a bookstore.
On initial impressions, perhaps like the restaurant itself, the book appears to be an intimidating creature. Open it and you will be hit by Heston Blumenthal’s passion. Inside is the story of Blumenthal and his restaurant, the recipes and stories behind many of the dishes from the Fat Duck, and a series of essays explaining the science behind the food. Beyond the science, there are journeys into food history, philosophy, personal anecdotes, humour, and the sheer dumb luck that can trigger a great idea. It is a dizzying amount of information in one book. But for those who have read Blumenthal’s previous books, his newspaper columns, or seen his TV show will know that he has a gift for explaining complicated concepts in terms that the layman can understand.
Feed Me Now!, Australian chef Bill Granger’s latest book, promises a “joyful, practical collection of recipes that cater to the day-to-day food dilemmas of busy modern families” that use few ingredients and require minimum fuss. While the recipe difficulty varies, they are easy to follow. However, the book still contains quite a few not-so-instant recipes, and the photography, while beautiful, appears at odds with Granger’s laid-back style.
Walk into any chef’s kitchen, and dig around long enough, and you’ll find a buried treasure of recipes. Mine is a humble stack of tattered, splattered papers sitting on a shelf in unruly fashion. A more experienced chef will have a file cabinet, a binder with sheets neatly tucked into plastic protectors, or laminated sheets clipped on a wall. The Complete Robuchon is that treasure chest for Joel Robuchon and his army of cooks. “French home cooking for the way we live now” is the apt subtitle and this book, and deserves its place next to the other fat books in your kitchen. In fact, I suggest placing it right next to Bittman and between the two you really could cook anything.
Everyone who has ever tried to make macarons will know that it is not as simple as it might look. Like Pierre Hermé’s famous macarons, it would be difficult for any macaron book to surpass this one. There are 57 macaron recipes, each one very detailed. Something which is extremely helpful for both macaron newcomers and veterans: photo-illustrated step-by-step instructions for making shells and fillings. Although this book is in French, the recipes and instructions are clear enough that most macaron lovers would find a solution to the language barrier.
FRENCH TRANSLATION
Si vous avez déjà essayé de faire des macarons, vous savez sans doute que la tâche est bien plus difficile qu’elle n’en a l’air. Tout comme les macarons célèbres de Pierre Hermé, son livre sur ces petits délices est sans égal. Cette œuvre contient pas moins de 57 recettes pour macarons, chacune bien détaillée pour aider tant ceux qui savent déjà en faire, que ceux sans aucune expérience. Les photos illustrent chaque étape dans la préparation des coquilles et des garnitures. Bien que ce livre soit rédigé en langue française, les recettes sont suffisamment claires d’ailleurs, même les amateurs de macarons non-francophones pourraient surmonter la barrière de la langue.
This enormous volume inspires awe and some moments of disappointment. James Peterson presents an amazingly rich collection of recipes (600) and information about techniques in his book titled very simply “Cooking”. Just opening to the table of contents, spanning six pages, is enough to convince you that this could be the one, the book that covers all the bases you might need for a strong standard repertoire of dishes. The table of contents lists every major recipe in the book. Wonderful. Not only a wealth of classics, but a long list of technical explanations with photographs (1500), tips and recommendations turn this into a book which many owners would be satisfied with. It’s aimed at a USAmerican audience and is probably of most use to cooks with some confidence in approaching cooking, even if they aren’t experienced cooks.
The 2008-2009 class of modernist cookbooks was stellar. It seems that chefs and authors have recognized that a growing class of home cooks has filled their pantry with calcium lactate, agar agar, gelatin sheets and lecithin. The days of flashy coffee table books filled with out-of-reach food porn have been pushed aside for star studded cook books filled with National Geographic worthy photos and accessible (albeit challenging) recipes. Among this class we can find Johnny Iuzinni, Grant Achatz, Joel Robuchon and Thomas Keller. The latter leads the class in its yawp to cooks and chefs across the globe that its time to look forward while keeping your roots solid and well honed.
At just shy of 300 pages with high quality color pictures on half of the pages, and more recipes than my vacuum packer can handle, this cookbook packs a wallop. Consider sous vide’s espoused virtues – “Fruits, which are especially susceptible to rapid oxidation and discoloration, remain bright when cooked sous vide rather than becoming dull and brown,” or “Fish, perhaps more than any protein, has such a small window of doneness that it requires the most finesse on the part of the cook. Sous vide makes cooking fish easier and more consistent, especially in a busy kitchen.” These are tidbits that welcome the home cook into the industrial kitchen with open arms.
If you’re interested in rolling up your sleeves, plugging in the circulator, and cranking out some amazing foods, then this is a great option for you.
It seems like we’re forever being told to eat healthier, lighter food yet at the same time there aren’t exactly a mountain of attractive food books that really focus on interesting healthy options. Too many healthy-eating books make food much less fun than it needs to be. To my surprise, Jill Dupleix successfully combines the ideas of lighter eating without making you feel like you’re launching into a 100% fat-free nightmare. Lighten Up offers a welcome diversity of good, appetising recipes in an attractive package. The tone won’t suit everyone, and the trendy ingredients might put some people off at first, but this is a book well worth looking at. I was surprised at how interesting I found the range of recipes.
In the public imagination, the leading light of what has commonly been called the Molecular Gastronomy movement is the restaurant elBulli and its head chef, Ferran Adrià. For many years, elBulli has produced large, beautiful volumes of innovative dishes, techniques and the philosophy of their creation, first in Spanish and then, with some delay, in English. Unattainably expensive for many chefs and non-chefs alike, these books have provided one of the few clear insights into what Ferran Adrià and his restaurant is about, minus the breathless enthusiasm of food critics or hyped “weird-shit” descriptions of lesser food writers. At last there is a book that is aimed at the public, perhaps leading to better understanding of what this approach to cooking and eating is about. Sceptics might not make it through to the interesting bits, however, as this book is a vanity work of many pages and photos that only becomes interesting the further you look. In many ways this is little more than a coffee table book, yet fails in that form. It is simultaneously dull, unwieldy, informative and complex. The “potted guide” to elBulli, to use a slightly old fashioned term, just without the brevity!
The Barefoot Contessa’s new cookbook retains the same qualities of reliability, versatility, and simplicity consistent throughout the Barefoot Contessa series, but it has enough flaws (expense, a few obviously throwaway recipes and sections, over-the-top richness) and references earlier books in the series too much to be truly friendly to new readers of Ina Garten.
Cook With Jamie, released by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2007, is a bestseller and was awarded the 2007 IACP award for best cookbook under the General category. While the photographs are breathtaking and Oliver works his magic and makes simple food beautiful and inspired, it still has it flaws—but it may very well still be one of the best Jamie Oliver cookbooks around, and worthy of an award even.
David Lebovitz moved to Paris in 2002 to start a new life. After cramming all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment near the Bastille. But as this career pastry chef and cookbook author would soon learn, it’s a different world en France.
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New release: Bake and Decorate If you thought cake decorating was costly and difficult, this is the book that will change your mind forever. Fiona Cairns is bursting with new ideas for making delicious, visually stunning cakes and biscuits easy – even for the least experienced cook – and for far less money than you thought. |
Coming: Cake: A Global History Cake: A Global History explores the origin of modern cake and its development from sweet bread to architectural flight of fancy, with the meanings, legends and rituals attached to cake throughout the world, while relating the food’s place in literature, art, and symbolism. |
New release: Giada at HomeGiada at Home presents recipes from Giada’s Italian and American traditions, all with her signature style. She shares classic Italian recipes passed down through the years and new family favorites, all bursting with fresh, vibrant flavors. |
New release: Canteen: Great British Food Canteen took the London restaurant scene by storm in 2005 – a restaurant serving proper British foodwith passion and pride. Unapologetically nostalgic, their first, much-anticipated cookbook is a splendidly comforting collection of 120 British dishes. |
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New release: Ham Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter takes readers on a globetrotting tour of the whole wide wonderful world of ham in 100 recipes, from the Philippines to Spain, the Caribbean, the American South, and the authors’ home corner of rural Connecticut. |
New edition: Food for Fifty Now in its thirteenth edition, this classic text is the resource for learning how to prepare and serve quality food in quantity. This book provides reliable quantity recipes and methods for planning, selecting and preparing menus for all types of food services. |
New release: The Big Book of Noodles This exciting new book talks you through the essentials of making a delicious bowl of noodles and gives plenty of helpful tips on ingredients and cooking techniques, with over 100 inviting and varied recipes from China, Thailand, Singapore, Laos and Cambodia. |
New release: The Ministry of Food This book tells the story of how people coped with wartime food shortages and became healthier than ever before, with step-by-step illustrations showing how to grow your own vegetables, baking, preserving and lots of thrifty family recipes. |
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