Customer Reviews

Dessert: Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage

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Disclosure: I have yet to prepare a single recipe or component from this book. I'm publishing this review before doing so because there are no other reviews on Amazon US and I found information about this book very scarce before purchasing it. As a rule I'm not a fan of people who review cookbooks without having actually COOKED from them.

The first thing you need to know about Dessert: Recipes from Le Champignon Sauvage is that you will not be able to make every recipe in it as written...at least without breaking the law.

Really? Really.

Chef Everitt-Matthias is pushing the known boundaries of dessert flavor profiles, and it's exciting to watch, but in the process he's using several very obscure ingredients, some of which are legally unobtainable in the United States (and I believe even in the UK...one wonders where he got them...though they may have been legal last year when the book was published).

And when I say obscure, let me be clear, I'm saying so as someone whose pantry ALREADY included such ingredients as mahlab cherrystones, pandan leaves, tonka beans, agar agar, kappa & iota carrageenans, Greek mastic and all the varieties of sugar he discusses. I've made a hobby out of tracking down obscure dessert ingredients from around the world, and have been able to do so in part due to my geographical location and work supplier connections.

If you're a person uninterested in adding pastry chef favorites like glucose, gelatin leaves (although you could convert to powdered, I suspect you'll wish you had the higher quality of leaves), isomalt, and cacao nibs to your pantry, than this, quite frankly, is NOT the cook book for you...and they're among the more common items. I suspect 90-95% of home chefs would be unhappy with having purchased this book because they'd feel like they can't actually make anything from it. If you're a pro pastry chef, or an experienced and highly-ambitious amateur, there's great stuff here for you.

Even with that said, there are certain ingredients in here that are likely unobtainable in the US by even those with the most advanced supply chains. The sahlep flour he praises is illegal to export from Turkey as it's from a variety of wild orchid being horribly over-harvested just to meet local demand. You'll have a very hard time finding the lime leaves he uses as well, they've been locked down by the USDA for a while due to what I believe is an agricultural quarantine (although hopefully that'll be lifted at some point). They're currently illegal to sell fresh in the US, and are in very short supply dried as chefs snap up what's left to fill their product needs.

Several of the wild plants he uses in the last chapter of the book are either not found in the US or are somewhat hard to come by without personally foraging, though there are sources for some of them if you know where to look. It is for these reasons I have guiltily reduced the rating of this book by one star. I'm still very happy I bought it, and I wish Amazon used a ten star system, or even a five star system broken into halves, so I could give it the nine/4.5 it deserves (again, please remember that at this point the review is based solely on a read through, no practical experience yet).

What sort of recipes are in this book?

Chef Everitt-Matthias is doing cutting edge work here. He flirts with molecular gastronomy with a minor hydrocolloid obsession (mostly gelatin leaves, though he uses a fair amount of agar agar and occasionally some carrageenan), but spends most of his time focusing on discovering unusual new flavor profiles rather than bending food into unusual shapes and textures. His presentations occasionally skirt the modern-art style popular with the Adria brothers, Achatz, and their devotees, but usually have a look and construction of classic French pastry (mille feuille, tarts, macarons, etc). In short: these plates still look like identifiable food (don't get me wrong, I love the Adrias and Achatz).

Some example desserts included in the book, selected at random: (as I said, information really is quite hard to come by, so here's something to go on)

Roasted Pears with Milk Puree, Croissant Ice Cream, and Muscovado and Rum Jelly

Damson and Orange Clafoutis with Damson Kernel Ice Cream

Warm Chocolate Mousse with Espresso-Soaked Sponge and Amaretto Sabayon

Prune and Honey Cake with Pressed Apples and Mahlab Cherry Stone Ice Cream

Swiss Chard and Confit Melon Tart

White Asparagus Creme Caramel

To be clear, many of the recipes in this book ARE doable with what should be available in a major city, and most of them can be done if you're willing to put in the time to find missing elements thanks to the internet. I just wanted to give fair warning.

I'm really looking forward to experimenting with his techniques, component recipes, and flavor profiles.

Please feel free to comment below if you have further questions that can be answered by flipping through the book, and I'll try to comment back with answers. I also hope to update this review later with some actual hands-on experience.

DEM's Dessert is wonderful book, four stars only for the relatively short length and modest ingredient and technique explanations and content, a great value nonetheless with a quite a few useful recipes for the professional and home cook alike, a lot of the recipes are in fact quite approachable to the adept home cook with modest equipment, the "wild" chapter of the book uses a lot of herbs and spices not readily available in the US (or downright illegal) but inspirational altogether. DEM's style is an evident evolution of the fact that his entire kitchen team is just him and three other people. To be able to produce food of this caliber with such a small brigade would amaze most chefs working today. Not a trained pastry chef DEM's desserts are geared for maximum flavor, highlighting seasonal and local ingredients and presenting them in a simple but creative way. Photography and layout are simple and easy to read and understand and the appendix contains useful base recipes that can be adapted to make other new desserts. Inspirational.