Le Cordon Bleu at Home [Hardcover]

Le Cordon Bleu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 1991

Here is the first English-language cookbook from the Parisian cooking school whose very name epitomizes excellence. Le Cordon Bleu at Home provides a solid understanding of the philosophy and skills taught for nearly a century in the school's nine-month "Classic Cycle" course. Moving through three stages, from basic to advanced techniques, this in-depth approach to classical French cuisine offers a series of easy-to-follow menus and recipes that correspond to classes at the school. Nearly three hundred beautiful color photographs depict finished dishes, serving ideas, and cooking techniques at each stage through completion.

Learning to cook means mastering the fundamentals. In "Part One: Getting Started," you'll learn how to roast, poach, fry, saute, braise, and stew. You'll learn which cuts of meat are most appropriate for a dish, which utensils to use and how to use them, and preliminary preparations that simplify tasks. The menus focus on basic dishes -- from roast chicken and lamb to pan-fried sole, apple fritters, and poached fruit.

"Part Two: Perfecting Skills" takes you through pastry-making and introduces such preparations as pâtés, soufflés, consommés, and more. This is where you'll find such glorious dishes as Daube d'Agneau Avignonnaise (braised lamb cooked as it is in Avignon), Tournedos Baltimore (tenderloin steaks with Chateaubriand sauce), and Pilaf de Volaille à la Turque (Turkish-style pilaf with zucchini and oranges), created by Henri-Paul Pellaprat, one of the school's most famous instructors.

Ultimately, no one truly "finishes" learning -- the best chefs endlessly hone their skills. For advanced cooks, "Part Three: Finishing Touches" emphasizes the creative aspect of cooking.

Le Cordon Bleu is the crème de la crème of cooking schools, and this is an indispensable volume for everyone interested in learning about the ageless art of French cooking. Combining time-honored traditions with the latest, most sophisticated methods and a variety of recipes ranging from standard at-home fare to classic, regional, and modern dishes, this is the ultimate state-of-the-art book on French cuisine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here is a mother lode of contemporary cooking: lessons from the famed French Cordon Bleu cooking school. Unlike other culinary academies, which train cooking professionals, Le Cordon Bleu strives to educate the home cook in time-honored techniques invented and perfected by the French. And those who master the strategies of roasting, poaching and so on in the book's first section, "Getting Started," will "become familiar with a rich and varied repertoire of dishes that will do them honor and rival the best home cooking in France." Accordingly, the volume is organized by skill level with lessons ranging from French country fare like mussels with wine and cream sauce to more sophisticated creations--scampi bisque and orange mousse--to recipes representing the best (and most contemporary) of French cuisine, e.g., salmon rillettes with buckwheat blini and rum savarin with kiwis and strawberries. While illustrated with four-color photographs of foods and tough-to-master techniques, this is no coffee-table effort. It will be highly useful to serious cooks and novices. Cointreau is president of Le Cordon Bleu. Photos not seen by PW. Advertising; author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This impressive volume is the first collection in English of recipes from the renowned Paris cooking school. Ninety menus incorporating increasingly more difficult dishes are designed to replicate the nine-month course given at Le Cordon Bleu; in addition to color photographs of many dishes, there are 200 technique photos, and informative boxes explain classic preparations and methods. Jacques Pepin and Julia Child have, of course, covered much of this same ground, and some of the dishes are not exactly what most people would choose to serve today--but these are teaching recipes, chosen to demonstrate the essence of classic French cuisine. Recommended for most collections.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1 edition (October 16, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688097502
• ISBN-13: 978-0688097509
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outrageously excellent!, August 1, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Le Cordon Bleu at Home (Hardcover)

I had worked through three lessons and invited friends for the Lesson # 4. They liked the idea so much that my friend's husband bought her the book and we teamed up with a plan to work through all 90 lessons, alternating as hostesses and dividing up the dishes. We invite a couple of friends to act as 'guinea pigs.' We request guest comments and autographs on the menu page. We are now on Lesson # 10. The guests we had for the ninth lesson want to join us in the culinary fun also. So, this order is for yet another copy of the book. Alternating three hostesses, we may finish the next 80 lessons sometime in the coming decade! I recommend the book to anyone who loves to cook. It is NOT a low-calorie cookbook. (Some menus use cream in two or even three dishes.) It is an delicious way to master the classic recipes and techniques and makes a fun Gourmet Club when done with friends.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthwhile addition to any cookbook library, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Le Cordon Bleu at Home (Hardcover)

While I would advise that The Way to Cook is a better learn-to-cook-from-a-book option, this book does offer a good introduction to French cooking techniques. Some of the recieps are heavy on butter and eggs, but c'est la vie -- that's French cuisine. I've prepared a number of the recipes in the book, and found that often they seemed very complicated but the book walked me through them well enough to teach me some new culinary tricks and provide confidence in putting together a multi-course meal that in the past would have seemed like too much work. I've taken classes at Le Cordon Bleu (in London), and avidly studied French cooking and while this isn't the single essential guide you'll need, it's a good introduction to French cooking and if you follow it faithfully, it does reproduce the fundamental lessons taught at the world's most famous cooking school. A good companion book might be the Le Cordon Bleu Practicial Techniques Book, which is more heavily illustrated and thoroughly detailed.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Technique Technique Technique, August 6, 2004

By 

A Doctor and Scholar "J.Q.P., M.D./Ph.D." (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Le Cordon Bleu at Home (Hardcover)

Many think of cuisine as a creative art.
They see their favorite chefs tossing in a bit of this, a bit of that, and voila! A magnificent masterpiece!
Anyone who has put in the hours to learn an art of any kind, be it playing the piano, painting, or yes, cooking, knows: technique comes first.

What is technique? It is the efficient coordination of movements/actions, applied in a consistent way, to produce a desired effect. In cooking, it is trussing a chicken, chopping in various ways, creating a stock, simmering a sauce. It is creating your mise en place, understanding how long each step of a recipe takes.

As an avid home cook (a pure amateur), I heartily recommend this title from The Cordon Bleu. Using a progressive program of instruction, based on their own diploma program, it incorporates technique into a set of classic recipes. Techniques are developed and elaborated where necessary, and in graded steps. For example, a basic white (Bechamel) sauce can be embellished with cheese (Mornay).

The Cordon Bleu is known as a conservative bastion in the world of cooking. As such, I felt that some of the recipes are for dishes better placed in a museum than served at home, much less a restaurant. (A summer salad made with tomatoes, boiled carrots and cauliflower. Not my choice to serve at a dinner party. But the accompanying fresh mayonnaise recipe is fantastic!) And yet, even these add to the charm of the collection as a whole.

Le Cordon Bleu at Home is a one stop volume for classic French cooking, and is a great stepping stone for more advanced cookbooks, many of which assume a thorough knowledge of French techniques (e.g. the Charlie Trotter series).