Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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509 of 519 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read, Classic Recipies. Great Fun. Highly Recommended, October 5, 2004
Culinary bad boy Tony Bourdain and his Les Halles owner chefs have written a very, very good cookbook. If you have an ounce of interest in reading good cookbooks, stop reading this and go to the top of the page and order yourself a copy.
If you are still here, I will tell you that this is an excellent cookbook:
1. Tony Bourdain is a very good writer. That means reading this book is very entertaining and worth the price even if you make none of the recipes. There are hundreds of good cookbooks, but Bourdain joins the very select rank, along with Alton Brown and Wayne Harley Brachman of culinary writers who can have you laughing out loud. It also means that he knows how to put things so you understand them and remember them.
2. The book is all about demystifying classic Bistro cooking and in convincing you that with the right attitude and the right directions, you can do as well or better than any newbie professional cook entering Tony's kitchen to work for the first time. Bourdain lays out the reality of this cuisine in a way I have never seen before. If you ever had any reservations about whether you wanted to cook or had the aptitude to cook, this is the book for you.
3. The book presents excellent directions for doing most of the basic preparations for bistro dishes, with special emphasis on preparing stocks. I even think Tony sells himself short when he says that if a chef used his directions at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants, he would be fired on the spot. I personally find Bourdain's stockmaking recipes as good or better than any I have seen short of the CIA textbook. All the right steps are there and all the right culinary reasons for doing them are there.
4. The book explains some kitchen techniques and ways of thinking that I have simply never seen anywhere else explained so well. Recipes for dishes such as bouillabaisse and cassoulet which in most other books seem to be daunting projects are broken down into realistic steps which make them entirely manageable. This is the only place I have seen the very logical distinction between `deep prep' and `prep'. Deep prep is the type of work Beetle Bailey does when he is on KP duty. It is distinctly unskilled labor. Prep work requires culinary training and involves making stocks, glazes, compotes, and the like, and work that requires trained knife skills.
5. The book gives us excellent recipes for all and only classic bistro cooking with wonderfully informative comments and instructions. (I am especially grateful that Bourdain gives both English and Metric measurements for all ingredients. The French, after all, cook entirely in metric.) There is no filler here. There are no recipes which would be more at home in a book by Mario Batali or Ming Tsai. It also means that if you have two or three good French books on `cuisine bourgeois', you will probably already have recipes for many of the dishes presented in this book. But, this book is so entertaining and the recipes are so well written I would not let this give you any pause. Buy it anyway.
6. The book does not make itself out as the wisdom of a single mind. Culinary skill is highly social, done in a world full of influences and people to influence. Bourdain is generous with his being clear about the people and institutions to whom he owes his culinary skill, with special mention being given to Jacques Pepin. Yet, Bourdain has absolutely nothing about which to be modest. He has given us a major addition to useful culinary literature.
Aside from excellent chapters on general principles and glossaries, the chapters are almost all the same you will find in any good English language book of French recipes. These are:
Soups, including excellent comments on which preparations improve with age and which DO NOT!
Salads, including a surprising method for preparing lardons. Boiled, not fried.
Appetizers, especially gratins, snails, and mussels.
Fish and shellfish: Lobster and dry scallops and pike, oh my!
Beef, of course. Note the very important notes on how the French cut up the cow different from us Yanks.
Veal and Lamb. The lamb stew recipe is especially good. Baaaaaa.
Pig, from nose to tail. Bourdain is a great fan of Fergus Henderson and of using everything but the oink.
Poultry and Game, roasted, braised, and rolled chicken, duck, and pheasant.
The big Classics. You know the ones.
Blood and Guts. Recipes for `the fifth quarter' of organ meats.
Potatoes. I love a book that puts potato recipes in a special chapter. Way to go Tony.
Desserts. Everything you expect. Crème Brule, poached pears in wine, and clafoutis.
Even the trivial stuff is done right. The recipe titles are BIG. The recipe text is done in a very easily readable font. The binding is especially well made to take a lot of standing open while you prepare dishes from the recipes. The book is so well put together, I am surprised it was not published by Knopf , Scribners, or Harper Collins. The closest recent book to this volume is from the chefs at Balthazar, also in New York City. This book beats out that effort by a mile. My only complaint that this book shares with the Balthazar book is that some recipes are in French and some in English. Why not consistently give both?
This book is not a classic like Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' or James Peterson's `Sauces', but, I have read several of Bourdain's references by Robuchon and Bocuse on French cuisine and I would recommend Bourdain over these luminaries for the clarity and fun in his writing.
Very highly recommended for both clear recipes of popular dishes and the great support he gives to the confidence of the amateur cook.
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66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warning: you may be laughing too hard to cook, July 6, 2006
The target audience for this book is the dedicated home cook, or "foodie." The introduction, and the comments interspersed, which aim to simplify and demystify professional cuisine, are worth the price of the book: you can get recipes anywhere, but they don't come with the benefit of Anthony Bourdain's years of training and exploration (which wasn't a walk in the park; read _Kitchen Confidential_ if you're curious about the underside).
His passion makes the prose explode off the page. I actually read most of the Introduction out loud to my wife once, as I was finding it just too delicious not to share the humor and deep insight.
I also had to give my first copy to my daughter (who, as a sous-chef at an Atlanta restaurant, is not in the target audience), but she can't get enough of "Uncle Tony"'s writing, either.
The recipes spell out not only ingredients, but what tools are needed. Where else can you be instructed to make cotes du boeuf wearing "novelty apron or vintage Ted Nugent T-shirt," and to serve it with "an outrageously expensive Burgundy in cheap glasses to show [the guests] who's their Daddy"?
All of the funky, sometimes ribald humor (you no like cusswords, you no buy da book, OK, paisan'?) serves to brand certain points into your brain (on using fresh herbs for poulet roti: "keep that dried trash away from my bird").
The emphasis on prep and mise en place, as applied to the home kitchen, will do most cooks a world of good. He makes it clear that by thinking through what you need and what you're going to do ahead of time, and then organizing everything, you reduce mistakes, speed up the process, let go of a ton of stress, and make better food. Resistance is futile. You _will_ go buy a bunch of little stainless pinch bowls for chopped this and minced that. You _will_ sort out what you're doing ahead of time. You will _not_ put dried herbs in a roast chicken or burn the garlic. You _will_ burst out laughing while cooking, before the wine is even open, because you remembered some relevant point from this book.
Perhaps you'll also recognize and incorporate some classic techniques into the making of other dishes, if you hadn't already.
If you are not already a professional chef and this book doesn't improve your cooking, send me your copy and I'll videotape myself eating it with nothing but some _gros sel_ and maybe a little horseradish.
There are lovely sauce and dressing recipes in their own section, and therein I encountered my only problem with the book. I'm not sure it's possible to get an aioli to emulsify with only one egg yolk to a cup of oil, for example; I'm going to have to try that one again. The nice, simple vinaigrette didn't emulsify either, but they're both delicious.
If Anthony Bourdain didn't exist, someone would have to invent him.
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71 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Demystifies French dishes with considerable wit and humor, November 2, 2004
I read B. Marold's amazing review below and immediately bought the book, it must be said. Tony Bourdain's brilliant cookbook is brief history and bootcamp styled self-help. He truly helped me shine with my new in-laws with his book and wile away the hours in-flight.
Went to Ireland to honeymoon with my in-laws on their dairy farm, an American gourmand alien to rural life. Ultimately brought this book with me to give to my Irish sister-in-law who's a fantastic cook. This book has both metric and English/American measurements and temperatures, which is a great help to all cooks stateside and abroad.
Read the first chapter and fell in love with Tony Bourdain all over again, after avidly watching his "A Cook's Tour" series on FoodTV. It makes sense: the best chefs come from the poorest regions of the world. Why? They have to improvise with the 'scraps' made available to them and make the undesirable most delicious. That explains why some of my best dishes were made with paltry remains in the pantry days from payday or years away from real income.
I offered to make my in-laws dinner one night with a recipe from the cookbook. Something basic and not frightfully exotic was the consensus. My intended feast: chicken basquaise. Feeding a family of five hungry adults in Ireland (or anywhere in the EU) is darned expensive. Lucked out at the local supermarket when eight pieces of chicken (thighs with bone and skin) were on sale, as all other options broke my budget.
My wonderful, saintly mother-in-law regards cooking as drudgery and the kitchen reflects this sentiment. I regard cooking as essential therapy, All-Clad as instruments of mental health. I was shocked we spent over $100 on two measly bags of food for the meal. For the considerable expense of groceries and the toll my outsized ego would take, I prayed the meal would be successful.
In the kitchen making the meal, I operated in less than ideal circumstances with limited overhead light (oh!), scant pots and pans (no!), and makeshift utensils (ugh!) on an electric stove (egads!). Kept glancing at Tony Bourdains really simple recipe, insisting it must be harder than it is. It wasn't.
When the meal was done, we all sat around the large table and served them. I nearly cried to see everyone in my new family of simple eaters devour first plates and second helpings. We left the table stuffed and blissfully happy, repeating with newfound eloquence: chicken basquaise, ooh la la.
If this American can impress pastoral people of Ireland with simple tastes and big appetites with one of Tony Bourdain's sophisticated recipes, then I absolutley assure you similar success with anyone. His explanations are sensible and inspire imagination. Following his logic and any of his recipes instills confidence.
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