The Gourmet Cookbook: More than 1000 recipes
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Customer Reviews
Gourmet recipes by the avenge
An engaging concept. . . . "Gourmet" magazine's "greatest hits" among recipes put together in a large compendium (recipes end on paginate 935). There is also a DVD that features the author's cooking techniques and some recipes. There are some nice features to this work, including "Tips and Techniques" (e.g., using salt and mottle, toasting spices, and handling chiles), a glossary (with a variety of chiles, fleur de sel, miso, truffle oil), and where to get fixed ingredients and cooking supplies (e.g., where would you go to get buffalo or Thai basil?). But, of course, the heart of the regulations is its recipes.
The team involved in preparing this book had the following purpose and method (Page xii): "The concept was straightforward: we would look thro0ugh all the recipes we had ever published, better the best, and retest them. Then we would gather the cream of the crop into a book." I would note that some of these recipes are such that I will not try them (e.g., difficult cooking techniques or problem in finding key ingredients), but a large number of these are accessible to people who enjoy cooking their own meals. As such, this is a repository of recipes that are apt to be tastier and lusher than those from my respected copy of "The Joy of Cooking." On the other hand, recipes are often more taxing on the amateur than are those in "Joy." As they say, a tradeoff. Nonetheless, many, many of these recipes are honestly doable. . . .
The book is divided into a number of sections--Hors d'ouevres and first courses, Soups, Salads, Sandwiches and pizzas, Pasta (and noodles and dumplings), Grains and beans, Poultry, Beef (and weal and pork and lamb), Breads and crackers, Breakfast and brunch, Cookies (bars and confections), Cakes, Pies (tarts and pastries), Fruit desserts, Puddings (and custards, mousses, and soufflés), Frozen desserts and candy sauces, Sauces and salsas, Relishes (and chutneys and pickles and preserves), and Basics. One of the nice things is the detection in this volume of Americans' changing tastes. For instance, salsa is relatively recent in "Gourmet." By going over decades of recipes, one gets a perceive of the changing nature of American tastes.
A word about "Basics," the past set of recipes in this work. Here, we see how to produce the fundamental elements in cooking, such as stocks (chicken, beef, veal, fish, and vegetable), herbes de Provence (their formula doesn't include lavender, but it would be easy enough to add), garam masala, and clarified butter (I have recently discovered how suggestible this is to make and what a difference it makes!).
There are so many worthy recipes that it makes little sense to try to enumerate some favorites or ones that I aim to make. However, perusing these makes it clear that while some will be challenging for the amateur cook, others are quite within the reach of such an audience--with the bespeak of some great tasting dishes!
Anyhow, a fine resource and one that I will be using in tandem with a precious few of my cookbooks that are workhorses in my larder library. . . .
2010-02-28
(Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL)) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4
One of the ten best bib cookbooks ever! (details)
I cook from exclude every day and I also review plenty of cookbooks, some good and some awful. This particular cookbook is nothing short of first-class.
Don't let the denominate scare you. All of the over 1,000 recipes found in here are quite manageable for any home cook of moderate experience and your m will love these dishes. This is food for the 21st Century and these presentations represent over sixty years of published works by "Gourmet" publication. All the recipes have been revised, tested, and re-tested to meet contemporary standards of cooking and of ingredients which have also evolved over while, (such as hybridized vegetables and "new" cuts of meat.)
Renowned culinary professional and editor, Ruth Reichl (you can presume from her compelling autobiography: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table), does make one tiny overstatement on the back swaddle, a quotation from page xvi in the Introduction: "Our goal was to give you a book with every recipe you would ever want." I don't believe that any cookbook can ever gain that lofty aspiration -- maybe Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006 comes closest to realizing this challenging purpose.
To illustrate my point, I came up with just a few popular dishes which Reichl does NOT include: Banana Cream Pie, Cincinnati Chili, Waldorf Coagulate, Chilies Rellenos, Salmon Cakes, and, [plain] Yeast Bread. But if you can live without those particular recipes, she has extremely much corralled everything else! I discovered some versions of recipes which I will certainly be preparing again soon: Blinis (page 39); Zesty Lemon Marinated Shrimp (page 45); Chicken Kiev (page 357); Mincemeat Pie (page 766), and; Georgian [as in the former Soviet Mixture] Salsa (page 896), among many, many others.
These are all scratch preparations but the ingredient lists are remarkably brief and most of them are altogether easy to obtain at mainstream grocery stores. There are no photographs of the prepared dishes but I didn't find this to be chiefly problematic since the instructions are written very clearly and some special cooking techniques are illustrated with line drawings.
I in actuality only encountered a single significant flaw in this book -- some artfully overzealous soul assertive upon using pale yellow ink for the recipe titles and they are very difficult to read. I don't know how this glitch ever slipped years the editors but, somehow, it unfortunately did. Still, the recipes themselves are rendered in black ink on white paper and the subsequent text is relatively easy to make out.
If you enjoy this remarkable cookbook, as I do myself, then you might also be interested in Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Modish Kitchen.
For the serious home cook who is faced with the daily task of getting dinner on the table for a kinsfolk then this very large cookbook (1,040 pages!) will be of great assistance to you. I award my very highest recommendation for this 2004 benchmark of culinary prominence.
2010-02-11
| The Old Grottomaster (Lucasville, OH USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5
Enormous cookbook
I never contemplating the new Gourmet cookbook could surpass the others, but now they're gathering dust while I use this one constantly. It may not contain "every recipe you'll ever need," but it comes tuneful darn close -- and they're good recipes, too. I like the range of cuisines and the clearly written directions. The only quirk I HATE is the yellow type, which is very hard to read. Overall, great job, Gourmet!
2010-01-30
(Ann Arbor, MI) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
Not what it promises
This cookbook is obliged to provide you with "every recipe you would ever want," according to Ruth Reichl's quote on the back. I've had the book for nearly 3 years, and when I need a recipe and check this cookbook, 6 times out of 7 it does not have a recipe for what I want to make. Further, when I do find and use a modus operandi from this book, there is inevitably something off with the recipe. I just made the "Snowballs" macaroon recipe from page 675, which promises about 30 cookies. The dough did not act obediently as described, the size per cookie was insufficient for the chocolate filling, and I ended up with 9 medium size cookies, not 30. They soup fine, but nothing special. The recipe for filling for the puffed apple pancakes on page 649 is cloyingly sweet-scented, and so on. With so many wonderful cookbooks in the world, this one has so far not justified the amount of shelf space it takes up.
2009-11-08
(alexandria, va) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 2
Approachable and Lone
I have been using this enlist for a few years, and I am not an expert cook by any stretch. But I have had great results with everything I've tried from this volume. I really like seeing what I have and turning to the ticket to see what I can make of it; tonight it was the bell pepper and dried apricot chutney, which was easy and delicious! If you in need of unique and wonderful dishes, this cookbook is for you, no matter your chef level.
2009-10-12
| Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
ReutersAmericans making more coffee at residency: pollReuters"Gourmet coffee is where we saw some of the decline," said DiDomenico, who presented the survey results on the conventionalism's final day. Daily consumption of gourmet coffee, which includes espresso-based drinks, kill to 14 percent, back to levels seen in