Customer Reviews

Career Diary of a Pastry Chef: Gardner's Guide Series

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As a person who is not only baking-challenged but kitchen-challenged in general, I was surprised at being caught up in the reading of this delightful non-fiction diary covering 30 days in the life of professional pastry chef Yuko Kitazawa. Kitazawa finds creating a wonderful dessert like doing magic every time she completes the task; this attitude affects the reader, motivating the reader to do some magic of the reader's own in the kitchen.

One of 16 titles in the Career Diary Series, Kitazawa's diary successfully reflects the love and enthusiasm she feels for her profession; her mistakes and successes as she creates desserts for a restaurant in which the last of its clients might be ordering their entres at midnight; her insights and hints into the preparations and cooking of delicious sounding desserts; and how she faces the physical demands of the job on her body through yoga training.

Kitazawa is honest, humorous and personal in her writing, drawing the reader into her life and her work from mid-morning when she gets up to midnight or later when she leaves the restaurant still feeling "high" from the enjoyment of having tried something new or improved upon the process of something she had been doing all along.

Kitazawa's easy and quick-read diary covers entries for 30 days between March 28 and May 20; the format for each 1-2 page entry opens with her predictions of her work assignments; her actual day with the primary focus on her work; and each entry ends with a reflection time called "lessons learned." Kitazawa's book should be required reading in high school Home Economics (where she actually got turned on to the profession) and college Consumer Science classes on food sciences but certainly it is a wonderful piece for anyone interested in food preparation in general. It brings home to the reader that successful food preparation, whether dessert or entree, is both an art and a science.

Kitazawa completed a liberal arts degree in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley and an Associate of Occupational Studies, Culinary Arts degree at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York. After working at restaurants on the East Coast and Chicago, Kitazawa landed her dream position as Pastry Sous Chef in Los Angeles in 2006 "at a restaurant regarded as one of the top fine dining destinations in Los Angeles..." She has published reviews, recipes, short stories and interviews with famous chefs; in addition she was recognized for "Best Desserts in 2007 by CitySearch.com for her original dessert Kabocha Tart and was featured on the MetroMix.com website, a nationwide on-line entertainment guide, for her original dessert Kabocha Crumble Pie.