For those familiar with the eurodelices books, this book is a bit of a compilation of all of those books into one. However they do not have all the recipes found in the inidividual eurodelies books. The book is broken down into hot appetisers, cold appetisers, fish, meat and poultry, deserts and pastries.
Simply this is high level haute cuisine and some of it very difficult at the best of times. What makes it harder is tha the descriptions are very vague and assume too much of the home cook, it is almost a cookbook for chefs. Some recipes have been lost in translation from say french-german-english and are missing vital steps or referring to ingredients not stated in the recipe list.
The recipes are ranked 1-3 stars based on difficulty, with a lot of 3 star dishes. But even then the consistency is not there with some rather easy recipes ranked 2 stars and harder ones one star. There is a wide enough range of recipes in this book but maybe once you have filtered through the 3 star recipes, ones with lobster and truffle and the ones with an estimated hour plus prep time, not many are left.
It is though an easy way to get a cheap selection of the eurodelices books in one convenient package. The recipes are hard, the ingredients exotic but the results are fabulous when they work! I found the most interesting sections the pastries and deserts, especially for the torts. The least interesting is the appetisers section, which is just full of lobster, caviar and etc dishes. The meat and poultry section is ok with a large focus on expensive and exotic cuts of meats, and the fish and seafood section is probably the simplest and most balanced section.
Overall an interesting read but a bit too high level for most home cooks on a typical household budget.
