East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube (Ecco) [Hardcover]

David Bouley (Author), Melissa Clark (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ecco | Publication Date: November 11, 2003

David Bouley, universally praised as one of the most important chefs cooking today, shares his recipes from Austria and other regions of the Danube in this stunning, beautifully illustrated, one-of-a-kind cookbook.

East of Paris embraces Austrian culture, lifestyle, and -- above all else -- the new Austrian cuisine, as interpreted by the renowned David Bouley. Praised as one of the top chefs in the world, Bouley, in collaboration with executive chef Mario Lohninger, has adapted and lightened Austrian cuisine, introducing innovative cooking techniques to indigenous ingredients and classic regional dishes. This cuisine is truly unique, capturing the peak flavor in its ingredients, combining classic techniques and influences from around the world, and translating them into a culinary language with an Austrian gestalt.

All of the recipes here have been prepared for the home cook; some are from Bouley and Lohninger's own repertoire, and some are reinvented traditional dishes that have been made in Austrian homes for generations. Featuring extraordinary photographs by Thomas Schauer, East of Paris introduces readers to a refined cuisine that draws on Austrian cooking, is prepared with the highest standards, and goes well beyond the culinary canon.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of dishes from motorcycle-riding chef David Bouley's Danube in lower Manhattan falls in the category of challenging. A note accompanying a recipe for Grostl of Maine Lobster with Veal Ravioli, Fresh Peas, and Lemon Shallots calls it "labor-intensive to make at home, but not difficult," then provides a three-day schedule for producing the various components. Lengthy lists of ingredients are the norm in recipes for hearty fare such as Whole Roast Suckling Pig with White Wine-Braised Cabbage and Beef Cheek Goulash with Potato Puree. A recipe for Duck and Cabbage Sausages calls for rendered duck fat and sausage casings, as well as two kinds of sesame seeds. As Bouley explains in an introduction that recounts his career, this is in no way meant to be traditional Austrian fare or even fusion. Instead, it represents his imagining of "what the cuisine of Austria would be if the Austro-Hungarian Empire were still extant." Imperial dreams aside, this is food that takes the simple, sometimes heavy favorites of Austria to rarefied heights, resulting in concoctions such as Venison Strudel with Plum Jam, Chestnuts and Brussels Sprouts. Chapters are arranged by season, with Whole Roasted Foie Gras with Cherries suggested for summertime. A concluding chapter offers "signature dishes" such as Schlutzkrapfen (Austrian Cheese Ravioli with Harvest Corn and Smoked Mushrooms). As is to be expected in the face of a strong Austrian influence, desserts, such as Bohemian Plum Pancakes for fall, are a highlight here, if predictably complex: a recipe for Apple Strudel includes excellent detailed instructions and suggests that it will take two people to execute them.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

When star chef David Bouley opened Danube, a Viennese restaurant in New York City, some questioned whether Austrian and Hungarian cooking really merited such high-end attention. Soon a reservation at Danube became one of the city's most sought-after prizes. Bouley, his associate chef Mario Lohninger, and food writer Melissa Clark have now documented the recipes that brought Danube such acclaim. In recipes and photographs, East of Paris lays bare what diners found so intriguing. Bouley's cuisine transcends typical Viennese fare of goulash and schnitzel. Oxtail strudel canapes wrap a common Austrian meat in familiar pastry to produce an original dish. But many of Bouley's dishes seem far from anything Austrian--crab-filled avocado dumplings contain no distinctively central European ingredients save salt and sour cream. Lobster frequently appears, as do Southeast Asian ingredients on the order of lemongrass. A work of invention and imagination, East of Paris appeals chiefly to the restaurant's many devotees, but only expert chefs will likely find success with the complex recipes. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; First Edition edition (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066214491
• ISBN-13: 978-0066214498
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,068,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strudel and Goulash and Schnitzel Oh My, December 5, 2003

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube (Ecco) (Hardcover)

If your heart is in Mitteleuropa so you get dewy eyed for Mozart?s music and smile when Wolfgang Puck says ?vegetables? with an extra syllable and yearn for the taste of strudel then read no further and buy a copy of this book. This is a long cold drink of water for all of us foodies who spend their time in cookbooks wading through French and Italian terms for the tenth recipe for coq au vin and the seventeenth recipe for gnocchi.

For the more discerning cookbook buyers among you, this is a celebrity chef coffee table style book of recipes from David Bouley?s restaurant ?Danube? which specializes in recipes from Vienna or in the style of Vienna, primarily those which would have been served to the Hapsburgs rather than simpler fare found in a Prater district caf?. This is Austrian haute cuisine, oddly showing much more influence from northern Italy than from Paris (hence the title of the book). This makes eminent sense as much of northern Italy was once under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Recipes are divided among seven (7) chapters primarily presenting cuisine by season. Chapters are:

Fall: 14 recipes featuring cabbage, plums, truffles, and suckling pig.
Winter: 16 recipes freaturing venison, strudel, goulash, and viener schnitzel
Spring: 13 recipes featuring salads, rabbit, lobster, and crab
Summer: 12 recipes featuring veal shank, lamb chops, mackeral, salmon, and foie gras
Signature Dishes: 8 cocktail recipes plus 14 entrees, including 7 seafood entrees
Traditional sweets: 15 recipes including the world famous Sachertorte and Linzertorte. Yum
Pantry: 13 recipes for stocks, doughs, and cures

Most recipes are relatively long but very well written (Melissa Clark, one of the co-authors, is a professional writer who has written or collaborated on 16 books, including at least one on desserts). Aside from the usual ocurrences of foie gras, black truffles, and caviar one would expect from a cuisine prepared for emperors, there are few unusual ingredients. One of the least familiar is a soft ricotta like cheese named Quark (Topfen in German) which is a soft, fresh, white curd cheese similar to pot cheese. I have never seen it in my local megamart, but then I never looked for it.

For the cuisine of Vienna, there are a surprisingly large number of seafood recipes, although I suspect that by the middle of the 19th century, Vienna was within 12 to 16 hours of the Adriatic coast by train.

The layout of the book and the photography are as good or better than similar books with equal or higher list prices. The photographs of frolicking sous chefs are kept to a minimum and the photographs really succeed in making the food, especially the pasteries, look appetizing.

If you have no cookbook which include the flagship Viennese tortes and strudels, this alone is worth the price of admission. The recipe for Sachertorte, for example, is similar to the recipe in the recent book ?Kaffeehaus? by Rick Rodgers, but seems to achieve a much fancier result with two layers instead of one and with more chocolate, but less sugar.

I would trade a Daniel Boulud and two Jacques Pepin softcovers for this one. This may not be for everyone, and the authors are honest about not doing historically accurate cuisine (?New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube?) but if part of your heart belongs to Austria, you will enjoy this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Austrian Cuisine For Today, Exceptionally Prepared, November 19, 2003

By 

rodboomboom (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube (Ecco) (Hardcover)

When the caliber of Charlie Trotter says of Bouley: "the most influential chef cookingin the United States" and this cookbook a masterpiece, it should give gourmets notice.

One notices the title, East of Paris, something else other than French. In this case, Austrian. Bouley reached this point via a journey leading from his G-Mom's roasted fresh vegetables to cooking in Vienna 49 and from there spending time in Vienna.

The cuisine result: peak flavor of ingredients, combining classic technique with world flavors and then having all this translated into an Austrian gestalt. Teaming up with Austrian Chef Lohninger, they offer a combo of Austrian classics, classics upgraded, and others dreamed up from scratch soley with us, the home cooks in mind.

The offerings come forth in seasons, with additional chapters on desserts, signature dishes, pantry, wine suggests and sources.
The layout is rich and photos are large, stylistic and captivatingly sumptuous.

Try the likes of: Rosti Potatoes with Smoked Salmon and Mustard Vinaigrette; Krautwickler=Cabbage Rolls Stuffed with Duck, Dates and Foie Gras; Roasted Prosciutto-Wrapped Striped Bass with Szedediner Sauerkraut; An unbelievably good "Goulash Soup; Wine-Braised Beef Cheeks with Chanterelle Goulash (a good dish to venture into a new ingredient); Rubarb Buttermilk Parfait; Salt-Crusted Lamb with Green Tomato Jam; Tyrolean Wine Soup with Fresh Trout and Smoked Trout Crepes.

Of course there are schnitzel and pastry/coffee house items here as well. You'll want to go exploring in this big, wide recipe offering. Be aware though that this is not for the timid home cook who isn't into venturing out with time, technique, or ingreds. But for those who are or on the edge, splurge right into this beaut!

This is a definite upper crust cookbook!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars food as gift rather than product, January 25, 2004

By 

How do i undo this? "rubysegg" (Edgartown, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube (Ecco) (Hardcover)

This book is about food as gift, passion, art. You can't sling these recipes together from what you've got in the back of the refrigerator. They require thought, purpose, planning and love. If you love cooking, this book provides nothing less than the opportunity to indulge in a master class in your own home. If you don't cook but just love good food, this book is a window into the exquisite nuance and detail that go into truly great meals. Bouley isn't a celebrity chef because he rides a motorcycle as some of the reviews imply; he's celebrated as one of the great chefs of the world because he brings such creative juxtapositions and complexity of flavor to every dish. Perhaps it's a cultural thing--we live in an era when time is of the essence, anything but the microwave takes too long. As recently as twenty or thirty years ago, everyone's mother and grandmother spent three days just to make a simple spaghetti sauce. A lot of us have forgotten what a difference that makes in terms of pure taste. You simply can't get certain flavors by whipping up something between the time you get home from work and the time your guests show up at the door two hours later. As a working mother of limited culinary talent, I don't think the recipes in this book are really so much hard as they are time-consuming. But that's not a reason to feel frustrated or deprive yourself of what this book offers--take this book as an opportunity to think about our lifestyle, our alienation from food production in this society, and as impetus to consider the virtues of the kind of "slow food" movement sweeping Europe and what kind of more nurturing life-style changes that might imply if we were to allow ourselves that here in the U.S.