Gourmet

Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours

The French Laundry Cookbook

To eat at Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, is to experience a peak culinary experience. In The French Laundry Cookbook, Keller articulates his passions and offers home cooks a means to duplicate the level of perfection that makes him one of the best chefs in the U.S. and, arguably, the world.

This cookbook provides 150 recipes exactly as they are used at Keller's restaurant. It is also his culinary manifesto, in which he shares the unique creative processes that led him to invent Peas and Carrots--a succulent pillow of a lobster paired with pea shoots and creamy ginger-carrot sauce--and other high-wire culinary acts. It offers unimagined experiences, from extracting chlorophyll to use in coloring sauces to a recipe for chocolate cake accompanied by red beet ice cream and a walnut sauce. You are urged to follow Keller's recipes precisely and also to view them as blueprints. To keep them alive, they must be infused with your own commitment to perfection and pleasure, as you define those terms.

Keller's story, shared through the writing of Michael Ruhlman, shows how this chef was both born and made. After winning rave reviews when he was still in his 20s, it took a more experienced chef throwing a knife at him because he did not know how to truss a chicken to open his eyes to the importance of the discipline and techniques of classical French cooking. To acquire these fundamental skills, he apprenticed at eight of the finest restaurants in France.

Grounded in classic technique, Keller's cooking is characterized by traditional marriages of ingredients, assembled in breathtakingly daring new ways, such as Pearls and Oyster, glistening caviar and oysters served on a bed of creamy pearl tapioca. Continually piquing the palate, his meals are a procession of 5 to 10 dishes, all small portions vibrantly composed. For example, Pan Roasted Breast of Squab with Swiss Chard, Seared Foie Gras, and Oven-Dried Black Figs require just three birds to serve six. The result: you are never sated, always stimulated.

The 200 photographs by Deborah Jones include more than just beauty shots: they show how to prepare various dishes; how Keller, shown stroking a whole salmon, respects his ingredients; and how the perfection of baby fava beans still nestled in the downy lining of their succulent pod, or the seduction of an abundance of fresh caviar, calls out the best from the chef. --Dana Jacobi

Thomas Keller, chef/proprieter of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley—"the most exciting place to eat in the United States," wrote Ruth Reichl in The New York Times—is a wizard, a purist, a man obsessed with getting it right. And this, his first cookbook, is every bit as satisfying as a French Laundry meal itself: a series of small, impeccable, highly refined, intensely focused courses.

Most dazzling is how simple Keller's methods are: squeegeeing the moisture from the skin on fish so it sautées beautifully; poaching eggs in a deep pot of water for perfect shape; the initial steeping in the shell that makes cooking raw lobster out of the shell a cinch; using vinegar as a flavor enhancer; the repeated washing of bones for stock for the cleanest, clearest tastes.

From innovative soup techniques, to the proper way to cook green vegetables, to secrets of great fish cookery, to the creation of breathtaking desserts; from beurre monté to foie gras au torchon, to a wild and thoroughly unexpected take on coffee and doughnuts, The French Laundry Cookbook captures, through recipes, essays, profiles, and extraordinary photography, one of America's great restaurants, its great chef, and the food that makes both unique.

One hundred and fifty superlative recipes are exact recipes from the French Laundry kitchen—no shortcuts have been taken, no critical steps ignored, all have been thoroughly tested in home kitchens. If you can't get to the French Laundry, you can now re-create at home the very experience the Wine Spectator described as "as close to dining perfection as it gets."

Thomas Keller, chef/propietor of the French Laundry—"the most exciting place to eat in the United States," writes Ruth Reichl in The New York Times—is a wizard, a purist, a man obsessed with getting it right. His flavors have clarity and intensity. His methods dazzle. Every mouthful is an explosion of taste. This cookbook, Keller's first, is as satisfying as a French Laundry meal, a series of small, highly refined, intensely focused courses. One hundred fifty recipes and more than two hundred photographs capture the impact of this extraordinary food. Keller's wit and whimsy find expression in unique recipes (and titles) such as lobster-filled crepes with a carrot emulsion sauce, topped with a pea shoot salad dressed lightly with lemon-infused oil ("Peas and Carrots"), or sauteed monkfish tail with braised oxtails, salsify, and cepes ("Surf and Turf"). This is a book to cook from, to learn from, to savor.

Perfect One-Dish Dinners: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers

Product Description
In Perfect One-Dish Dinners, the New York Times best-selling author Pam Anderson shares her secret for having people over without breaking stride: Make just one dish. Instead of a parade of offerings, she focuses attention on a single main course--a rustic tart, paella, grilled platter, or homey stew. Perfect One-Dish Dinners showcases about forty such meals, perfect for every season and occasion, all designed to wow guests, calm the cook, and relieve the dishwasher at the end of the night.

Stews for All Seasons
Worldly Casseroles
Roasting Pan Complete
Big Summer Salads and Grilled Platters.

But that's not all. If the cook wants to make something extra, Pam provides a compatible appetizer, salad, and dessert for every one dish. And as a special bonus, she throws in "nearly instant" alternatives for each--more than 200 mixable, matchable recipes. Whether for a book group, church get together, birthday party, or family supper, Perfect One-Dish Dinners makes easy, shareable meals perfectly doable. More than 200 recipes in all.

Recipe Excerpts from Perfect One-Dish Dinners

Salsa Verde Chicken with Herbed Cornmeal Dumplings

Baby Spinach Salad with Mangoes, Toasted Almonds, and Red Onions

Miniature Lemon-Raspberry Cakes

Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More

Pot stickers, gyoza, spring rolls, samosas--whether wrapped or rolled, steamed or fried, Asian dumplings are surprisingly easy to prepare, as Andrea Nguyen demonstrates in ASIAN DUMPLINGS. Her crystal-clear recipes for more than 75 of Asia's most popular savory and sweet parcels, pockets, packages, and pastries range from Spicy Potato Samosas to Shanghai Wonton Soup. Organized according to type (wheat pastas, skins, buns, and pastries; translucent wheat and tapioca preparations; legumes and tubers; sweet dumplings), ASIAN DUMPLINGS also contains everything anyone needs to know about equipment and ingredients; techniques for shaping, filling, and cooking; plating and serving; and ordering in restaurants.

Bouchon

Bouchon, chef Thomas Keller's bistro cookbook, offers 180-plus recipes from his eponymous restaurants--there are two. Readers perusing the near-prosciutto-size book will be dazzled, first, by its great looks (there are many beautiful photos), then, perhaps, wonder why so many of its typically homey bistro dishes are so fussy to prepare. Why, for example, must the onions for onion soup be caramelized for five hours, or the muscles of a leg of lamb separated so that each can be cooked to an exact, presumably optimal, temperature.

They should, however, trust this justly celebrated chef, whose sometimes-painstaking refinements reflect a better way. Apart from the excellence of the dishes, the reason to own Bouchon is to discover the richness of Keller's technical understanding. Readers learn, for example, not to baste chicken while it roasts, which creates skin-softening moisture, and to allow the base for crème caramel to sit before baking, thus permitting its flavors to deepen. Keller's sensitivity to ingredients and their composition is profound; and he and his collaborators have presented it so deftly that one finds oneself engrossed again and again. Whether Keller is talking about vinaigrettes (in their balance of fat, acid, and saltines, the perfect sauce) vegetable glazing, or the creation of brown butter, his insights are fascinating.

The dishes cover a wide range of courses, and include the traditional--poule au pot, veal roast, pommes frites, and so on--and the "new," such as Gnocchi with Summer Vegetables, Skate with Fennel-Onion Confit and Tapenade Sauce, and Grandma Sheila's Cheesecake Tart with Huckleberries. All are, as the French might say, impeccable--and can be accomplished by anyone willing to take the time to do so. Like his cooking, Bouchon is a sui generis treat. --Arthur Boehm

Thomas Keller, chef/proprieter of Napa Valley's French Laundry, is passionate about bistro cooking. He believes fervently that the real art of cooking lies in elevating to excellence the simplest ingredients; that bistro cooking embodies at once a culinary ethos of generosity, economy, and simplicity; that the techniques at its foundation are profound, and the recipes at its heart have a powerful ability to nourish and please.

So enamored is he of this older, more casual type of cooking that he opened the restaurant Bouchon, right next door to the French Laundry, so he could satisfy a craving for a perfectly made quiche, or a gratinéed onion soup, or a simple but irresistible roasted chicken. Now Bouchon, the cookbook, embodies this cuisine in all its sublime simplicity.

But let's begin at the real beginning. For Keller, great cooking is all about the virtue of process and attention to detail. Even in the humblest dish, the extra thought is evident, which is why this food tastes so amazing: The onions for the onion soup are caramelized for five hours; lamb cheeks are used for the navarin; basic but essential refinements every step of the way make for the cleanest flavors, the brightest vegetables, the perfect balance—whether of fat to acid for a vinaigrette, of egg to liquid for a custard, of salt to meat for a duck confit.

Because versatility as a cook is achieved through learning foundations, Keller and Bouchon executive chef Jeff Cerciello illuminate all the key points of technique along the way: how a two-inch ring makes for a perfect quiche; how to recognize the right hazelnut brown for a brown butter sauce; how far to caramelize sugar for different uses.

But learning and refinement aside—oh those recipes! Steamed mussels with saffron, bourride, trout grenobloise with its parsley, lemon, and croutons; steak frites, beef bourguignon, chicken in the pot—all exquisitely crafted. And those immortal desserts: the tarte Tatin, the chocolate mousse, the lemon tart, the profiteroles with chocolate sauce. In Bouchon, you get to experience them in impeccably realized form.

This is a book to cherish, with its alluring mix of recipes and the author's knowledge, warmth, and wit: "I find this a hopeful time for the pig," says Keller about our yearning for the flavor that has been bred out of pork. So let your imagination transport you back to the burnished warmth of an old-fashioned French bistro, pull up a stool to the zinc bar or slide into a banquette, and treat yourself to truly great preparations that have not just withstood the vagaries of fashion, but have improved with time. Welcome to Bouchon.

When Thomas Keller imagined opening a second restaurant in Napa Valley, next door to his French Laundry, he envisioned a place serving food that excited him in a different way from the food at the French Laundry. He craved food that was less complicated, and a place that was more casual, where he could go every night after work. And that was how Bouchon was born.

Bouchon cooking is about elevating to elegance the simplest ingredients, because the best food isn't necessarily what is served at white-tablecloth restaurants, and the best meals--as most chefs will tell you--don't require the most expensive ingredients or lots of them or lots of steps. The only thing that's required is that you care about all the stages of the process--the slow browning of sliced onion for an onion soup, the proper cutting of the potatoes for a gratin, the right amount of salt on a raw chicken, how long you cook a pot de crème.

All the emblematic bistro dishes are here, interpreted and executed as they've never been before. The confit of duck, country-style pâtés, soupe à l'oignon gratinée, steamed mussels, steak frites, gigot d'agneau, all achieve the impossible: they get even better.

Professional Cooking, College Version

This is the best-selling undergraduate food preparation textbook in the marketplace. It has a long standing reputation for being comprehensive, yet easy for students to understand and follow. Wayne Gisslen's reputation for being able to simply, yet comprehensively, communicate information to beginning chefs is unsurpassed. This new edition includes videos on the CD in the back of the book that will help further illustrate the correct techniques in the kitchen. On top of that there are over 100 new recipes, some with particular emphasis on international cooking. Enhanced visual program of this title includes over 220 new colour photos, including plated dishes, procedures, and products. Approximately 100 new recipes have been added to this book, for a total of 650 recipes plus another 600 variations. It features more focus on international recipes and variations. It includes enhanced topical coverage on such things as: food science, molecular gastronomy, international recipes, and culinary maths. Chapter 10, Understanding Meats, now includes all information on meat fabrication in one convenient place. This title contains up-to-date nutrition guidelines. It is thoroughly revised and enhanced. CulinarE-Companion(trademark) Recipe Management software contains all recipes from the book - and 90 bonus recipes.

This is the best-selling undergraduate food preparation textbook in the marketplace. It has a long standing reputation for being comprehensive, yet easy for students to understand and follow. Wayne Gisslen's reputation for being able to simply, yet comprehensively, communicate information to beginning chefs is unsurpassed.

Professional Cooking, Seventh Edition includes videos that will help further illustrate the correct techniques in the kitchen. On top of that there are over 100 new recipes, some with particular emphasis on international cooking.

• Enhanced visual program includes over 220 new color photos, including plated dishes, procedures, and products.
• Approximately 100 new recipes have been added, for a total of 650 recipes plus another 600 variations.
• More focus on international recipes and variations.
• Enhanced topical coverage on such things as: food science, molecular gastronomy, international recipes, and culinary maths.
• Chapter 10, Understanding Meats, now includes all information on meat fabrication in one convenient place.
• Up-to-date nutrition guidelines.
• Thoroughly revised and enhanced CulinarE-Companion Recipe Management software contains all recipes from the book – and 90 bonus recipes. The software is available through download with the registration code in the back of the book.

Test Your Culinary Knowledge

True/False

1. Food containing disease-causing bacteria is likely to smell or taste spoiled.
2. After curing, foods are air-dried for a short time before being smoked
3. Steam is a better conductor of heat than air is.
4. If both raw and cooked meats must be in the same refrigerator, store the cooked meats on the higher shelves and raw meats on the lower shelves.

Short Answer

1. How do you carry a knife safely?
2. The starch used to thicken cream pie fillings is ______________________________.

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following source-->food-borne disease combinations is correct?

   (a) shellfish-->trichinosis
   (b) pork-->infectious hepatitis
   (c) poultry-->streptococcal infections
   (d) food workers-->staphylococcus food poisoning

2. Frozen foods are best defrosted_______________________.

   (a) at room temperature
   (b) under refrigeration
   (c) in the microwave at least a day in advance
   (d) in a warm place

3. A cake formula calls for emulsified shortening, but you have run out. Which of the following can you substitute?

   (a) regular shortening
   (b) butter
   (c) half margarine and half regular shortening
   (d) none of the above

4. Which of the following is not a good technique for keeping the breast moist while roasting turkey?

   (a) Barding the breast
   (b) Roasting the turkey breast down
   (c) Basting with stock instead of fat
   (d) Cooking the breast and leg sections separately

Answer Key

True/False

1. F
2. T
3. T
4. T

Short Answer

1. Hold it beside you, point down, with the sharp edge back and away from you. Don't swing your arm. Whenever possible, carry knives in a sheath. Warn other workers when you are carrying a knife past them.
2. Cornstarch

Multiple Choice

1. D
2. B
3. B
4. C

Japanese Hot Pots: Comforting One-Pot Meals

Wholesome, delicious Japanese comfort food, hot pot cooking satisfies the universal desire for steaming, gratifying and hearty meals the whole family can enjoy. In Japanese Hot Pots, chef Tadashi Ono and food journalist Harris Salat demystify this communal eating tradition for American home cooks with belly-warming dishes from all corners of Japan. Using savory broths and healthy, easy-to-find ingredients such as seafood, poultry, greens, roots, mushrooms, and noodles, these classic one-pot dishes require minimal fuss and preparation, and no special equipment—they’re simple, fast recipes to whip up either on the stove or on a tableside portable burner, like they do in Japan.

Gourmet Today: More than 1000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen

Product Description
In no other period of our country's history has the food scene changed so rapidly. Exciting new ingredients are available everywhere, expanding our culinary horizons. Even casual meals have globe-trotting flavors. We want memorable dishes, and we want them to be healthy for our families and our planet. And with our busy schedules, we want them on the table faster than ever. A new culinary world calls for a new cookbook. Gourmet Today responds to our changing foodscape with more vegetarian recipes, more recipes for popular dishes from every corner of the world, more recipes for stunning meals ready in 30 minutes or less, more simple ways to prepare all the vegetables in the farmers' market, advice on choosing sustainable fish, chicken, and beef, tips on throwing an easy cocktail party, more recipes for flavorful techniques like grilling, and more recipes for the new ingredients flooding our market.

Each of the over 1,000 recipes was selected by editor in chief Ruth Reichl, a best-selling author in her own right, who wrote the introductions to each chapter. Every recipe has been tested and cross-tested in the Gourmet test kitchen so every cook, whether a first-timer or a veteran, gets impeccable results. With menus for holidays and other seasonal occasions, an authoritative glossary of ingredients (plus mail-order sources), and hundreds of sidebars on ingredients and handy techniques from the test kitchen, Gourmet Today is the indispensable book for today's cook.

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Ruth Reichl

These days you hear a lot of gloom and doom about the state of American food. It's certainly true that if you want to focus on the negative, there's a lot to despair about.

On the other hand, the opposite is also true. I wrote my first cookbook in 1971, and when I see the difference between what was available then and the food that now fills my supermarket, it makes me want to go dancing down the aisles.

Back then things were so different that my editor insisted that I call for ground beef instead of lamb in a classic Greek moussaka; she said not many grocers actually sold lamb. She also worried about the recipe for handmade pasta (too esoteric) and a simple Chinese stir-fry of chicken (what on earth was a wok). She worried when I called for freshly grated Parmesan cheese (most people still used the stuff that came in the green can), fresh garlic (frowned upon in many places) and chiles (too hot, too hot, too hot).

What a difference a few years make! The American supermarket has turned into an international bazaar, offering us all the best flavors of the world. Whether you want to cook the foods of Asia, the Americas, India or Europe, the ingredients are there. And that's only part of the good news; the other is that the era of mindless eating is over. Good cooks everywhere are now aware of the consequences of their choices, and when they walk through the aisles, they think about sustainability.

It's a wonderful time for people who care about food. But it requires a new kind of cookbook, one that takes advantage of the great modern marketplace. Gourmet's twelve test cooks spent five years exploring all the new ingredients available in the supermarkets--from frozen pizza dough to Thai chili pastes and eggroll wrappers--figuring out the best ways to use them. They haunted farmers markets too, so we could offer advice on cooking everything from ramps to celery root. They spent time in fish markets, snapping up new offerings like Arctic char and tilapia. Then they cooked each dish again and again and again, taking out unnecessary steps and ensuring that each was absolutely foolproof. The result is more than a thousand recipes that are absolutely guaranteed to work. I couldn't live without this book. I love cooking from it. I hope you will too.

Best wishes,

Ruth Reichl

(Photo © Brigitte Lacombe)

Recipe Excerpts from Gourmet Today

• Raspberry Lime Rickey
• Grilled Ceasar Salad
• Grilled Cumin Chicken Breasts with Avocado Salsa
• Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Coconut Cookies

The Gourmet Slow Cooker: Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World

The Gourmet Slow Cooker Simple and Sophisticated Meals from around the WorldBy Lynn Alley"Although the slow cooker has experienced a renaissance over the past several years, the discriminating cook is still hard-pressed to find slow cooker recipes worthy

Silver Palate Cookbook 25th Anniversary Edition

Silver Palate Cookbook 25th Anniversary Edition By Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins, with Michael McLaughlinNow hereÆs the Silver Anniversary edition, with a feast of 100 full-color photographs throughout and a vibrant new cover. This edition is the perfect gif

First published in 1982, The Silver Palate Cookbook was an instant smash. It offered 350 stylish but easy recipes that reflected and helped cement America's burgeoning interest in quality cooking. It acquainted cooks with "gourmet" ingredients, just beginning to appear in our markets. And it helped many a host to shine.

The collection, whose recipes range from hors d'oeuvres to sweets, now arrives in a 25th-anniversary edition, which reproduces the original text and adds color photos throughout, often dropped into the text pages. All the old favorites, including Marinated Eggplant Livia, Chicken Marbella, Blanquette de Vaeu, and Blackberry Mousse are present, along with information about ingredients, menus, quotes, and other asides--all the things that help make the book such a pleasure. It's hard to imagine a cook--and especially one who entertains--not owning Silver Palate. This printing, which includes a retrospective foreword, offers more satisfaction still while reiterating the reasons for the book's enduring appeal. --Arthur Boehm

Twenty five years ago seems like the distant past but we still make ratatouille the same way and who would have ever dreamed that so many people would say to us, "I had Chicken Marbella at a dinner party last week and I just loved it." It took slight madness to open our little store in 1977. Florence Fabricant was writing an article on the renaissance of Columbus Avenue, where our shop was opening, we needed a name, she was on a deadline and called and said, "What are you calling your store?" We didn't know. "Why don't you call it The Silver Palate," she said. We loved it. It took sheer bravery in 1982 to write our book--who would need to buy food in our store any longer once they had all of our recipes? But that never happened for one hour. In fact, it helped us go national even further. Here we are, 25 years later, celebrating with a brand new edition of our book that finally highlights our recipes with vibrant color photographs. I once picked up the phone and someone on the other end said, "Sheila, I just baked the Decadent Chocolate Cake and my cake doesn't look like the drawing." I didn't know how to reply. I assured them the taste made up for the looks. It's bittersweet, but those problems are solved forever. While different, the color adds an exciting new dimension to the cookbook that has been a treasure to so many cooks for two and a half decades. Julee and I had a fantasy food partnership and the publication of this book has given us the opportunity to spend some wonderful time together.

Continue Reading A Brief History of The Silver Palate Cookbook

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A Springtime Menu for Amazon.com
When the weather warms us up, there is no more welcome beginning to a meal that a light swirl of noodles tangled up with crisp spring vegetables. Follow this amusing starter with a succulent roast leg of lamb, the meat we all long for in the spring. Serve our Swiss Gratin Potatoes and some haricots verts alongside. A delightful finale to this springtime luncheon is a moist carrot cake with cream cheese frosting or a delicate strawberry mousse. --Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso Miller

Pasta Primavera Gregory

Roast Lamb with Peppercorn Crust

Carrot Cake

Strawberry Mousse

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