Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful!, 7 Oct 2005
Stellar. This is a must-have book for any serious cook or chef. Top chefs demonstrating their signature dishes. Ferran Adria on foams, Dan Lepard on Bread, Pierre Herme on deserts, the list goes on and on, soup to nuts. 24 chapters each by the master in their field, lavishly illustrated, not just food porn but working pictures of each stage in the process. A book to cook from, not just leave on the coffee table, although it looks good there as well. A book I will keep returning to.My only criticism so far is that the large glossy format is awkward in the kitchen. I wish the publishers would publish it also in electronic form, or have included a DVD so that one can print out just the recipes in use to take into the kitchen.
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51 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
“A truly excellent book”, 17 Jan 2006
The Cook’s Book is quite a tome - in the most positive sense. In size it is large format, over 600 pages and packed with colour. The production standards are extremely high. In scope it has chapters – each penned by a different author – on a wide variety of topics. Some are obvious, being themed around ingredients – Bread, Meat, Fish, but others cover styles of cooking, such as Japanese or Mexican. The length of the chapters are dictated by the use that the authors assume will be made of the topic. Thus the Fish chapter is long, the Mexican chapter short. The authors are an international bunch, many of whom I’d not heard, but others (such as Shaun Hill or Marcus Wareing) are quite well-known in the UK. The standards are excellent throughout irrespective of the author. As well as having recipes this book is also a “how to” manual with many pages on techniques – e.g. for making stocks or filleting types of fish. All processes are well illustrated. There are also many handy tips. So, for how long should I roast my salmon fillet? The answer is quickly found - 10 minutes per inch of thickness. It also scores in having a good mix of “staple” as well as “fancy” recipes, thus making this not just a special occasion book, nor one in which the authors feel they have to show off. For me the test of a good cookbook is whether I enjoy reading it for pleasure and whether I cook from it. Well, it’s a joy to read (although not a narrative in the way of Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries). And within the first week I’d cooked a number of recipes – chicken stock and chicken jus, oatcakes, gravadlax and venison in a walnut, sour cherry and cinnamon sauce. All were straightforward, easy to follow, recipes and provided excellent results. This book has, at a stroke, become my first point of call when I want to cook something or find out how to approach a cooking task. Highly recommended.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Collection of Recipes from 18 Selected Chefs, 6 Nov 2007
:- Ferran Adrià, Rick Bayless, Stephan Franz, Paul Gayler, Peter Gordon, Pierre Hermé, Shaun Hill, Ken Hom, Atul Kochhar, Dan Lepard, Greg Malouf, Christine Manfield, Michael Romano, Hisayuki Takeuchi, David Thompson, Charlie Trotter, Norman van Aken and Marcus Wareing.....
`from various countries of the world who have expressed their tastes and discoveries through the techniques they have used and the signature dishes they have created.....
While some recipes may touch on classical greats, each is enhanced by a modern twist.
The result is a reliable reference book that is equally at home on the shelf of any Chef de Cuisine, and in the kitchen of any one who appreciates the arts of cooking, wants to know more, and is keen to develop cooking skills......The techniques are clearly written and many have step-by-step photographs that give an excellent picture of how to complete each stage - it is so much easier to compare your progress and technique to photographs than to words alone....
A weighty tome with no less than 648 high quality pages, split over chapters, each penned by one of the featured chefs:-
Sauces and Dressings
Foams
Stocks and Soups
Flavourings
Latin American Cooking
Eggs & Dairy Produce
Fish & Shellfish
Japanese Cooking
Poultry & Game Birds
Indian Cooking
Meat
Chinese Cooking
Vegetables
Pasta & Dumplings
Asian Noodles & Dumplings
Thai Cooking
Grains & Pulses
Breads & Batters
Mexican Cooking
Pastry & Sweet Doughs
Middle Eastern Cooking
Desserts
Cakes
Fruit & Nuts
with foreword from Marcus Wareing, `Introducing the Chefs', from Jill Norman -plus a `Useful Information Section', along with a glossary and a full index.
Each chapter opens with relevant text and is followed by basic techniques, such as `preparing fish and shellfish`, which is a particularly good section, spanning from pages 154, with `preparing round fish (gutting through the stomach)' to `removing the meat from a cooked crab', on page 181.
Each recipe is clearly laid out with the title, a description, list of ingredients and a numbered method. Most are enhanced by `Chef's Tips boxes', and `Variations', some have `rescue remedies', such as `rescuing curdled mayonnaise' or in extreme cases...`the ulterior choice' ....such as with 'over whisked egg whites' - `they will have to be discarded`.
The numerous recipes include:-
Prawn & Sea Bass Soup
Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse
Coddling Eggs
Cheese Soufflé
Baked Plaice Fillets
Micro-waved Salmon Steaks
Prawn Tempura with Beer
Making and Hand-shaping Sushi
Southern-Fried Chicken
Chicken Braised in Red Wine
Onion Bhajis
Coconut Curry Sauce
Roast Rib of Beef with Yorkshire Pudding
Roast Leg of Lamb with Rosemary & Garlic
Shepherd's Pie
Beef Wellingtons
Irish Stew
Braised Oxtail
Boiling a Ham Hock
Steak & Kidney Pudding
Stroganoff
Coleslaw
Mushroom & Tofu Skin Pastries
Paella
Semolina
Pasta e Fagioli
Boston Baked Beans
Simple Leaven Bread
Pizza
Pitta Bread
Oatcakes
Pancakes
Pastry
Tarte au Citron
Croissants
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chantilly Tuile Baskets
Hot Apple Sabayon
Sponge Roulade
Cheesecake
FlapJacks
Banana Mousse
Nougat Montelimar
The recipes are interspersed with easy to identify `Signature Dishes', from the relevant chef.
Jill Norman is the editor for the late Elizabeth David, and a cookery writer in her own right, with a number of her own books, so it is no surprise that this is a knowledgeable and concise publication ......on most of the areas it sets out to cover.
However, I think it would be fair to say that although the techniques featured are very useful and detailed, some of the chapters have lost out in favour of this, and could prove to be on the slim side for some readers, particularly those interested in the `foreign' chapters.
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