Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road [Hardcover]

Paul Prudhomme (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 1993

A Different Direction in Cooking from America's Favorite Chef

Chef Paul Prudhomme, America's most innovative chef, invites you to take a Fork in the Road, a journey toward a different way of cooking. If your goal is to produce great-tasting, flavorful dishes that everyone will enjoy, yet are still good for you, then this is the cookbook for you!

Chef Paul's new book offers not only recipes but a model for anyone who wants to modify his or her cooking to minimize the use of less healthful ingredients, yet retain the rich taste and texture that make them so delicious.

For instance, he uses puréed dried beans and reduced fruit juices to create viscosity and enhance flavors. Both add an enormous amount of richness with virtually no fat. Chef Paul provides you with specific recipes to show you how these ingredients work, and encourages you to try them with all your favorite dishes.

To make rich, flavorful sauces and gravies for great-tasting meat, poultry, or fish--without a drop of oil, butter, shortening, or other fat--he has developed recipes in which dry flour is browned before adding it to the dish. And he always tells you to start with a hot pan, so you can "bronze," or "caramelize," an ingredient without any added fat. These techniques will make all your food taste better--new recipes as well as your favorite standbys.

Perhaps the most exciting portion of this book is the chapter on Magic Brightening Broths. These delicious broths are based upon defatted stocks, and get extra goodness from carefully balanced seasonings that enhance but don't overwhelm the flavors of foods cooked in them. Chef Paul envisions that once you've discovered how easy and enjoyable Magic Brightening is, you and your friends and family will want to cook this way several times a month.

From breads and breakfasts, through main and side dishes, to desserts and snacks, Chef Paul has streamlined his favorite recipes. He's taken out as much fat as possible, leaving the texture, the richness, and the taste for which he's famous. This is not a diet book, but one dedicated to healthful ways to cook.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What fork for the New Orleans chef and food entrepreneur? The one with health on one side and high fat and calorie content on the other. In his latest book, which will complement a television series slated for release in early 1994, Prudhomme ( Seasoned America ) thins his roux of sin without, he believes, imposing sacrifices on the tastebuds. In his rather paltry dessert section, the chilled "Spiced Apple Cream" contains skim milk and cottage cheese; "Chocolate Yum Stuff," a cake, calls for skim milk and egg substitute. And one wonders: Can the defatted seafood stock in "Shrimp and Hot Curry Cream Soup" carry the day? (But then, calories per one-cup serving come to only 339, with very few deriving from fat content.) And won't crawfish mushroom omelet suffer, no matter the great list of spices, from the dominance of egg substitute? It seems likely, though not certain. Still, Prudhomme's intentions are noble, and said straight: "If it doesn't taste good, I don't want to eat it, and I don't think you want to either." Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Prudhomme, the popular New Orleans chef and cookbook author, is famous for rich, flavorful dishes dripping with cream and butter. Now he has taken a different turn, and his new book is his version of low-fat cooking. Unfortunately, Prudhomme's many fans are likely to be disappointed by such dishes as Freed Egg Salad made from egg substitute, scrambled and combined with vegetables, nonfat mayonnaise, and artificial sweetener, or No-Bake Cheesecake concocted from four different nonfat dairy products, sugar-free instant pudding, and more artificial sweetener. Most dishes are seasoned with the author's signature mixes of dried herbs and spices; many recipes call for 20 to 30 ingredients. Nevertheless, Prudhomme's name guarantees demand.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 281 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1st edition (October 19, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688121659
• ISBN-13: 978-0688121655
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #514,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chef Paul Prudhomme is the owner of K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen and Magic Seasoning Blends, both in New Orleans. Chef Paul is one of America's best-known chefs, having appeared on most major TV networks. He is currently the host of three cooking series on cable television and PBS. Chef Paul is the author of seven other cookbooks and has been featured in numerous publications. He lives in New Orleans.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your nutritionist is going to beg, November 12, 2004

By 

Christopher I. Lehrich (Quincy, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road (Hardcover)

My wife was sent to the nutritionist recently by her doctor, and this nice lady asks her, "So what did you eat last night?" My wife says, "Well, baked acorn squash with apples, shrimp, leafy greens, lots of spices, a little bread crumbs, and a pinch of Parmesan on top." The nutritionist's jaw drops. "How much fat?" "Oh, well, just the cheese, really." The nutritionist now asks if it was tasty? "Oh yes, excellent. It's a Paul Prudhomme recipe, you see." The nutritionist now begs for a copy of this recipe. I should note that I had eaten this dish (and I hate squash) and thought it was delightfully full of fat. Oops!

Okay, not every recipe in here is spectacular. But most of them are incredible. Your pantry will fill with things like apple juice, evaporated skim milk, and the like, but you will eat very well and not look like Paul Prudhomme (I'm sure he'd think this funny, and you know what he looks like).

The baked squash with shrimp is worth the price of admission right there, because you'd think it was seriously bad for you. You can taste the butter, you see, and the cheese. Of course, there isn't any, and it's amazingly healthy. If you ate this every day, you'd probably lose weight, but people would be begging to come eat with you. The guy's a genius.

Let's face it, if you mastered all these recipes you could open a health-food restaurant and make a mint. Serve up a lot of hard-core fattening food that just happens to have no fat at all. And they'd line up.

A couple hints.

You really do need a bunch of non-stick pans. The insane heat with no fat thing doesn't work so well without non-stick. Get the best quality you can. For an extra-special treat, put a tablespoon of olive oil in the bottom instead. That's the kind of non-fat we're talking about: a tablespoon of olive oil is a big jump.

If you're making the browned flour to produce fat-free roux, go very slow and don't expect really dark colors. It works, but it's definitely a halfway measure.

Magic Brightening is surprisingly effective. Don't knock it until you try it.

Remember that this is way pre-Atkins, so it's low fat but not low-carb. If you're a carb [...], go eat a steak and shut up. If you're into delicious food with very low fat, buy this book.

About 50% of the recipes here are brilliant, absolute genius. About 25% are very good indeed. The rest are a mixed bag, but I must mention that I don't have a dehydrator so the whole "turkey jerky" thing just passed me by.

So what you do is you buy this and you buy "Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen" and you alternate. You have "Fork in the Road" health food for two days, which is no hardship, then you have something totally evil and decadent from "Louisiana Kitchen" for a night, and then, feeling guilty but full, you start again on the "Fork in the Road" health food.

There are other Cajun cookbooks, of course, but what for? Eat 'em and weep.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, fabulous tasting low-fat foods, January 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road (Hardcover)

This book's recipes are the best tasting low-fat foods I've ever eaten. The cooking techniques are what make it happen. I wouldn't suggest this to cooking newbies either, and the recipes do take awhile to prepare, but if you are serious about *delicious* low-fat eating, this is your book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spicy, tasty, easy to follow but lengthy to prepare., July 30, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road (Hardcover)

This is the most beautifully written cookbook I have ever read. The recipes were detailed, easy to follow but all the dishes I made took 3-4 hours to prepare. The end result was delicious and well worth the lengthy preparation times. I thoroughly enjoyed re-creating Prudhomme's original recipes. This was my first purchase in his series and I am definitely going to collect more of his books. My husband lived in south Louisiana for several years and was wild about the all the spicy delicacies I created from this book. I would recommend this for mid-level chefs; not for the novice.