72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Miniatures, easy to make. Buy it now!, December 3, 2006
This review is from: Bite Size: Elegant Recipes for Entertaining (Hardcover)
`Bite Size' by the renowned pastry chef / restauranteur, Francois Payard is a simply delightful book with enough good ideas for a book twice its size and price.
I'm comparing it specifically of Christopher Styler's oversized and under conceived `Working the Plate', a demonstration of about two dozen plating techniques listing at $40, with poor photography and informative but not instructive biographies of `plating technique' notables. While Styler's opus has several good ideas we don't find in other books, it still does not meet expectations.
Payard's book exceeds normal expectations and almost surpasses my standard for books from nationally known culinary artists. While it has a boatload of nifty ideas for appetizers and cocktail parties and nibbles in general, all it's ideas are easily doable by an amateur with a well-equipped kitchen and a modicum of baking skills. In this regard, the book is much more practical than Rick Tramonto's `Amuse Bouche' while offering far more elegant fare than the usual antipasto / hors d'ourves book such as Penelope Casas' `Tapas', Joan Goldstein's `antipasti', or Carol Field's `Italy in Small Bites'. While these are superior books, and are the books of choice if you are interested in following an ethnic theme, Payard's book is the reference of choice if you want to simply impress big time!
It seems as if everything about the book is well conceived. The introductory chapters on `Equipment' and `Speciality Ingredients' are unpretentious, but offer some important little insights into cooking small. My two most interesting finds are the importance of using fine-mesh sieves in preparing small dishes and the fact that mini-muffin pans are the utensil of choice for making miniature tart shells or `tassie' shells. The most interesting ingredients are the ficelle, which is a shrunken baguette and `truffle juice', sold in small cans. I really like the fact that `The Basics' recipes are put in the front of the book rather than in the back. It is so easy to overlook these utility recipes if they are in the back and you are not inclined to snoop around into all the darker corners of a book before starting to cook. While many of these recipes are pretty standard, there are some surprises, such as the `black bread mini burger rolls' made without rye or buckwheat flour!
The four main recipe chapters combine the height of simplicity with the novelty of making cheese a star performer. These chapters are:
Vegetables, 18 recipes, almost all of which represent some new approach to an old standby. While many of the dishes have familiar names or components such as guacamole, Panna cotta, frittata, Caesar salad, mushroom tarts, Madeleines, polenta, risotto, and gnocchi, each and every dish with these components speak of a new take on the old ideas. The vegetable frittata, for example, looks much more like a strata than a frittata, especially since it's baked in a loaf pan. The value to this is that squares cut from the depanned cake are visually much more interesting than the usual eggy wedges cut from a frittata.
Cheese, 10 recipes of familiar dishes all done with a fresh approach. The Greek salad, for example, is served up on a skewer. And, the Parmesan cups (molded Parmesan frico) are filled with a Lilliputian Ratatouille. I confess the cheese sticks and gougeres (cheese puffs) are simply good versions of old standards.
Fish and Shellfish, 24 recipes with plenty of tartares and ceviches (European answer to sushi). It is not surprising that there are more of these recipes than in any of the other groupings, as fishy dishes are the most popular starters. What is more than usually novel in this chapter is the number of `delivery systems' made from fruits and vegetables, such as dried apple slices and radish cups. This chapter also seems to have the most fun with cone-shaped preparations. I'm also tickled by the recipe encrusting scallops with hazelnut and pear puree. Whee! For a little surprise, we also get a salmon version of `Croques Monsieur' with gruyere (contrasted the classic toasted ham and cheese sandwich). While almost all these dishes are relatively easy to make, they will still tend to the expensive, especially if you get high quality, fresh ingredients.
I generally don't find a strong urge to need good color photographs of finished dishes (step by step procedure picture series are a different matter), but for this subject, they add a big advantage to the instruction on how to prepare the dish. As the tip about the fine mesh strainer should warn us, making things small is no easy task. Material has to be diced with greater precision and cooking times are more fussy. So, every main recipe in this book is accompanied by a superior full color snapshot done at close range. And, since you only really need to see one small finished piece, the fuzzy background detracts nothing from the value of the pic.
Best of all, this little gem lists for less than $20. The only drawback of the modest price is that someone may mistake it for a bargain title. While the price is right, the contents are more than just right. They are, like Payard's earlier book, `Simply Sensational...'. It is a perfect companion to Cindy Pawlcyn's book 'Big Small Plates', but if you can have only one, pick Payard.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What a waste!, December 8, 2010
This review is from: Bite Size: Elegant Recipes for Entertaining (Hardcover)
Let me start by saying that I attended 7 months of pastry courses at Le Cordon Bleu a few years ago, and so am no stranger to making pate a choux. I'm throwing a large cocktail party this Friday and am expecting 50 guests. I've had this book for awhile, but hadn't made anything from it yet. When making the menu for this event, I wanted to make everything in the book! I finally settled on two items: gougeres and cauliflower panna cotta with salmon roe. Gougeres are a great make ahead item that can be frozen and then re-heated just before serving, I've made them several times. Gougeres are, in essence, a pate a choux (unsweetened cream puff dough) with gruyere cheese mixed in. I needed a double recipe. At the front of his book, he advises that all recipes can be easily multiplied. I have to disagree with him there, stirring the dough over low heat to dry it out is very physically demanding. A double batch is difficult, to say the least, and I'm a fairly strong woman. I bought a very nice cave-aged gruyere, and even though the hunk of cheese cost me $35 for my double batch, I knew that it's incredible flavor would make the simple gougeres swoon-worthy food.
So, I put my 2 cups of water and stick and a half of butter in a dutch oven and brought it to a boil. When I looked at the bowl full of 7 cups of flour, I thought, "That's a lot of dry ingredients." And I was right, once mixed together, I had lumps of flour coated in lots of dry loose flour. I stirred and stirred, it wouldn't come together, not enough liquid. It's winter in Montana, and it's very dry here, so that, I'm sure, has something to do with it. I added more water until it came together. Once I transferred the dough to my mixer and began adding the eggs, I heaved a sigh of relief...it was beginning to look like it should. All 10 eggs in, I went for the warm heavy cream (a step I've never seen in a gougere recipe). I incorporated the 1 1/4 cups and immediately regretted it. It loosened up the batter way too much. I hoped the 7 cups of cheese would help bring it back to piping consistency. Nope. I used two teaspoons and dropped small amounts on the baking sheet, threw it in the oven and crossed my fingers.
FAILURE!!! The gougeres are dense, flat pucks (and yes, I folded the cheese in gently...but it was too late, because of the cream I had a bowlful of gougere batter instead of dough). And to top it all off, they are nowhere near salty enough. They're edible, I'm going to add more salt to the remaining batter and serve them...I can't throw away [...] worth of ingredients! But, I'm going to be completely mortified because several of my guests KNOW what a gougere should be like, AND they know that I've gone to pastry school. I'll take Julia Child's advice and serve them as if they are exactly as they should be...never admit to/complain about mistakes in the kitchen! It makes guests uncomfortable.
Now, I'm afraid to make the cauliflower panna cotta. I spent [...] on the salmon roe for that, too, plus had to pay for overnight shipping.
Darn! I should have just stuck with my trusted old gougere recipe. Darn, darn, darn!!!
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