Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Well, this one sure seems to have sparked some controversy, but count me on the side of the fans. This is the only new cookbook I've seen this season that seems truly original. I'm very tired of the next French, next Italian, next Bistro book that while they may have a few interesting things are old hat to my cookbook collections.

Some of the recipes in East of Paris are complex, and I agree that the seasonal organization could have been dispensed with. However, I've already picked up a number of ideas and tips to spur my own kitchen inventions, as well as easily made some of the recipes as written. I'm delighted with this book!

A beautifully presented work -- the artistry in the food creations is matched by the artful photographic presentation. A friend who is serious about food and cooking reports, after having had a most successful experience with trying a first recipe from the book at home, that this can serve not just as a cookbook but as a guide to life and how it should be lived. It is tasteful and gracious in every way. We need more like this to bring more light, whether from east of paris or elsewhere, into our kitchens and our lives.

I bought this book and a book about Austrian wine. I found the recipes to be a bit complicated, but quite wonderful. I also found some Austrian wine from an online shop (www.winemonger.com) to go with the food!

This book has nothing to do with the "New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube." It has everything to do with the cuisine of Danube, Bouley's Manhattan restaurant. It also has nothing to do with food that "real people" can cook, and Gott in Himmel, am I getting sick of these self-serving chef cookbooks. There are countless conceits in this book, but here's just one example. The book is divided, as chefs insist, into seasons. Braised Veal with Porcini is listed as a summer dish...just the kind of thing that all of us would serve on a hot summer's night, right? And last time I checked, fresh porcini (the recipe does not use dried porcini), are in season in October at the earliest. If you are addicted to chef's books that you will only read as vicarious entertainment, you might want to plunk down the money. If you are looking for recipes to truly inspire, and maybe even make, skip it. For a book that really shows the cooking of the Danube region, search for Lilian Langleth-Christensen's Old Vienna Cookbook, published by Gourmet Magazine in the late 50s.

What can I say, many of the pictures in this book are wonderful and present the cuisine in fabulous splendor, but the recipies tend to be complex and will not come out exactly as pictured. Some of the dishes seem convoluted, particularly the dishes that require minute amounts of over a dozen ingredients.
I understand that David Bouley is held in a high regard, just reading Charlie Trotter's review is enough said, but, I think that is based largely inpart on Bouley's restaurant, not the book itself. I also beleive that much of what is in this book is not meant for the novice cook. I consider myself experienced and more than capable of preparing an out and out quality meal, but this book is not helpful in explaining technique or corresponding the text and pictures to an actual outcome.
I say beware of this book. Check it out from a library or borrow a copy from a friend and try the recipies first. I think that if you were to buy this based upon reviews or a cursory glance, you will be disappointed in how the recipies translate into stunning dishes in your own kitchen. If you struglle or fail, as I did, it is disheartening and should in no way reflect upon you as a cook. I will be honest, I was discouraged, but I had to sit and think about the audience for this book and the level of skill it is written for. I think anyone considering this book as a gift or addition to their own library needs to consider these two factors prior to making a purchase. And, if in doubt, spend some time looking it over carefully in a bookstore coffeeshop before you buy.
Make no mistake this book is wonderfully photographed and well constructed, but contnet wise, I cannot say that it is among my favorites nor do I find it a very useful or insightful text.

What makes this book effective are the possibilities it offers to take part in the realm of pure gastronomic ritural - from cooking to digestion. It's hamartophobic in the best sense, as Bouley and Clark capture through words and photographs what taste buds would attest to if they could take on their own five senses. I entrechat and applaud your efforts. It's Austrian food on the highest level.

This chef is a guy I spent time with in high school, so I bought it for personal reasons. The food is beautiful and very sophisticated, upscale, like his restaraunts. He lost his bakery in 911, but quickly set up an elaborate food stand there to feed volunteers who were working around the clock, hungry and exhausted. Thanks, David