Home Cooking with Charlie Trotter (Gourmet Cook Book Club Selection) (Paperback)

by Charlie Trotter (Author), Kipling Swehla (Photographer)
Key Phrases: almond ice cream, meat stock reduction, tartlet rings, Granny Smith, German Chocolate Cake, Cumin-Garlic-Rubbed Cornish Hens (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Charlie Trotter's most approachable cookbook, HOME COOKING WITH CHARLIE TROTTER is designed for casual home cooks who appreciate top-quality cuisine. Trotter begins by discussing classic methods of preparing food, from braising to grilling to sautéing. He then presents a variety of uptown traditional--as well as an assortment of exotic--starters, entrées, and desserts that have been streamlined with an eye for readily available ingredients and straight-forward techniques, while still bearing the master chef's signature style.

From the Publisher
More than 130 recipes that make Charlie Trotter's show-stopping fare accessible to home cooks. * New photography and updated design accompany extraordinary yet approachable recipes for Trotter's award-winning cuisine.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; illustrated edition edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580089348
• ISBN-13: 978-1580089340
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,987 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you Charlie, November 6, 2008

By	Perk4me "Perk4me" (California) - See all my reviews

This book is so fantastic! It's worth the price just for his beet salad recipe, let alone soup, etc. We are vegetarians and are thrilled to have such nice recipes, for non vegetarians there are wonderful meat recipes..Charlie Trotter has brought his wonderful restaurant food to a home cooking level.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beware!, December 25, 2008

By	M. Soble "Mike" (Hawthorn Woods, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book. It has many recipes that you can actually make, some even on a weeknight but it turns out I already had. As I leafed through it, I was struck by a sense of Deja Vu. The appetizer I made for thanksgiving, a roast chicken I know I've had, a chicken dish I've wanted to make and then...last night's dinner! It is basically just "Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home" with a new pictures. A few of the recipes have been altered slightly - blue cheese becomes chevre in ravioli, a veal chop was substituted for pork tenderloin. If you don't have the other, I highly recomend it but If you already own "cooks at home," you will be looking to re-gift it as I am.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Home cooking? Not in my home..., February 6, 2009

By	i4abuy (Accomac, Va.) - See all my reviews

This book claims to be about home cooking, but I don`t think Charlie Trotter cooks all these dishes at his home unless he brings a lot of stuff from his restaurant. Take "Slow Roasted Salmon with Garlic and Thyme Risotto." Before you can make the dish you have to prepare an elaborate meat stock reduction (to "drizzle over" the finished dish) and you have to roast garlic cloves. This is just not week night home cooking and as for preparing it for an elaborate weekend dinner, frankly the finished product didn't justify the work that it took to produce it. For example, no one would have noticed if I had left out the meat stock reduction or the roasted garlic cloves.

Charlie Trotter also has esoteric ingredients lists that include things you probably won't find at the Safeway and maybe not at Whole Foods. 1/2 C orange blossom honey? 2 Tb fresh horseradish? 1 Tb red amaranth sprouts? I don't have the food purveyors that a first class restaurant does, nor the time to run down these ingredients at multiple stores. And do all the herbs have to be fresh? Yes, fresh herbs taste better, but who can afford to buy and store so many of them? Finally, I hope that if I substitute "fresh thyme" for "fresh BABY thyme leaves" that it won't compromise the quality of the food too, too much.

The book does contain some interesting recipes that aren't as involved as the salmon recipe, and you don`t have to be too clever to figure out to use dried herbs, prepared horseradish, and clover honey. (But I don`t know what to do about the amaranth sprouts). You need to read the recipes carefully to decide which are do-able, which are are over the top, and which steps or recipes are simply not worth the time and trouble. The recipes do not offer the helpful (though usually unrealistically optimistic) estimates of cooking time and prep time that are becoming common.

To me, this isn't the best book for home cooking, and I am not convinced it has enough useful recipes to justify the cost. If you're thinking about it, my advice would be to look through it, read a few recipes carefully, and decide whether it would work for you. But be careful to focus on the recipes, because the book -- to its credit -- is seductively packaged with beautiful pictures, layout, and overall feel.

Fortunately, I got another cook book for Christmas -- Jacques Pepin's More Fast Food My Way -- which works for me. I enthusiastically recommend it for imaginative, flavorful, and reasonable home cooking.