100 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Textbook from Reliable Authority on Cooking. Some lapses, May 13, 2004
This review is from: Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America (Hardcover)
`Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America' aims to arm the amateur cook with many of the tools of the professional and communicate the things which inspire a professional chef and set them apart from the amateur. The book comes to us with the authority of the foremost culinary school in the country and the aura of being a textbook with which it may seem to be sacrilege to take issue. This book does many very good things, but in popularizing it's subject, it does loose some depth and credibility.
The book does several very good things that almost entirely outweigh its few blemishes.
The first valuable lesson from this book is its characterization of the way students of professional cooking come to think about their vocation and its materials. In this way, the book can make you a more successful cook by adapting professional methods. The heart of the matter is to `learn to think critically about cooking' and `learn how to look at, touch, smell, and taste a dish to judge whether it is coming together'. A professional cook knows how to rescue a recipe when a step fails or an ingredient is unavailable. They know what Alton Brown calls the map of culinary facts and techniques, which surround recipes, and explains how they work. That is not to say that this book deals with culinary science a la Shirley Corriher. The terms `acid' and `gluten' don't even appear in the index.
The second valuable type of lesson in this book is the descriptions of general techniques and the explanations for how they work. An example is in the technique for preparing stocks where the book explains that flavors are extracted from vegetables within an hour after adding them to the simmering stock water. This means that if you expect to simmer your veal bones for four hours, you can wait for three hours before adding the vegetables. This measure is irrelevant, of course, for fish stocks, where the fish flesh and bones should be simmered for no more than 30 to 45 minutes. Much of this information is given in easily used tabular form as in the table of best cooking methods for cuts of beef, veal, pork, and lamb. My most useful suggestion regarding this information is to recommend you view this information with a critical eye. In one part of the book, it is said that analogous parts of animals are often best cooked by similar methods. However, the book cites braising as a preferred method for cooking beef chuck (shoulder), but does not give braising as a method for cooking lamb shoulder. While I see many recipes for grilling and broiling lamb shoulder, Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby in `How to Cook Meat' specifically say that lamb shoulder is an excellent cut for braising. Regarding cooking temperature endpoints, the book is typically very conservative, largely following the USDA recommendations for reaching up to 180 degrees in chicken thighs when cooking whole birds. Reliable sources have recommended that reaching 165 degrees is quite enough, with less danger of drying out the white meat in the bird.
The third and possibly most valuable resource in this book is the collection of classic recipes with expert procedures which all but guarantee a satisfactory result. The pasta chapter, for example, begins with a basic tomato marinara sauce followed by such classics as pasta Puttanesca, pasta Primavera, pasta alla Carbonara, spinach and escarole lasagna, and (potato) gnocchi with herbs and butter. The collection does not contain every `classic'. You will not, for example, find coq au vin in the poultry chapter. But, the selection is very good. Each recipe contains a sidebar giving some insight into either an ingredient, technique, or serving suggestion. Each recipe also contains one or more references to other parts of the book where relevant techniques are explained.
One surprising weakness in the book is the cursory coverage of some basic cooking techniques. The chapter on poultry gives a description of how to cut a chicken into serving pieces, with only four steps and four pictures. A similar description in James Peterson's `Essentials of Cooking' takes thirteen steps with thirteen color photographs. The coverage of other basic techniques seems similarly skimpy.
One subtle but surprising lapse is in the description of basic cooking techniques. If you read the descriptions of shallow poaching and pan frying, it is quite unclear what the difference may be between the two methods. Neither method cites the most important fact that poaching is done in water and pan frying is done in oil and the difference in effect is based on the difference between 212 degrees of water cooking and 350 degrees or higher of oil cooking. The description of these methods does have some secrets to offer. I never before saw shallow poaching as an efficient method for creating a sauce by reducing the poaching liquid after the food has been cooked.
If you have no other cookbooks or no cookbooks that discuss general techniques, this is an inspiring introduction to cooking. Even if you have a small cookbook library, this book can be a worthy addition if you have no good books covering egg cookery or what this book calls `Kitchen Desserts'. These are dishes based primarily based of fruits, custards, puddings, cream, and prepared doughs such as puff pastry. The book does not cover breads, pastries, cakes, cookies, or other baked desserts typically done by a pastry chef. If you are interested in thorough discussions of cooking techniques, I recommend Alton Brown's `I'm Only Here for the Food'.
Recommended for sound, straightforward recipes and a great primer on cookspeak. Other books do a better job of explaining basic techniques.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cooking class in a book, December 14, 2003
This review is from: Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America (Hardcover)
Lavishly and instructively illustrated, this teaching book presents, in words and pictures, step-by-step instructions for everything from making spice sachets and pureeing soups to carving a roasted chicken and filleting a fish. It even shows various ways of cutting vegetables, preparing garlic, cleaning leeks and mushrooms.
A thorough primer, it starts with a discussion of tools, techniques and pantry ingredients, advocates an organized mindset, and proceeds in the same patient, simple manner through each course, discussing market choices and preparation, many illustrated. Easy-to-follow recipes build technique and repertoire, from Onion Soup Gratinee and Thai Hot and Sour Soup to Southern Fried Chicken, Roast Goose with Pan Gravy, Grilled Lamb with Mango Chutney and Beef Tenderloin with Mushrooms.
There are stir-fries, curries and classic continental and American dishes, all with painstaking directions. Side notes offer tips and direct the cook to basic cooking instructions elsewhere in the book. A masterful, handsome, endlessly useful and encouraging book for the beginner.
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