Acclaimed chef Angelo Sosa is obsessed with flavors. He was seduced by spices, herbs and ingredients while traveling through Asia. He fantasizes about how coriander will pair with lemongrass. The smells of cumin and cilantro transport him back to his Aunt Carmen’s kitchen in Queens and the taste of salt reminds him of a certain “Judges’ Table” on “Top Chef.” Combining his years as a chef with his innate understanding of how thoughtful food can change our lives, Angelo is uniquely able to reach out and inspire virtually anyone. In FLAVOR EXPOSED, he not only aims to teach the reader to identify and cook with nine flavor profiles, but he explains the concept behind a “flavor trinity”—the base of each of his recipes. His stories of life as a “Top Chef” contestant, in the kitchens of four-star restaurants, and as a culinary student desperate to surpass all expectations, will also enchant everyone interested in what it takes to become a chef of his caliber. And Angelo’s recipes—simple, innovative, and unbelievably accessible to the home cook—will amaze with their myriad of flavors and exotic influences. Who else could conceive of a Sweet Tomato Soup with Curried Whipped Cream? A dish that immediately sparks childhood memories, yet is also layered with such sophistication as to make it simultaneously familiar and unexpected. Whether it’s his elegant Soy-Steeped Chicken with Tea Leaves, his signature Saigon Burger with Ginger Glaze and Thai Basil Mayo, or his utterly delightful Sunny Side-Up Egg with Chinese Sausage and “Takeout” Fried Rice, Angelo’s recipes will tantalize the taste buds of anyone who likes to cook (or eat for that matter). From the millions of fans who rooted for him on “Top Chef,” to the diehard foodies who have long coveted his secrets to creating some of the most interesting and arousing food being made today, FLAVOR EXPOSED will undoubtedly fill the need.
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“Coupled with his elegant approach, Angelo’s cuisine is utterly unique. One can feel his passion for Asian flavors, his talent for combining them harmoniously, and his uninhibited creativity in each and every of his recipes. They all tell a story—the story of a chef who lives for cooking.”—Alain Ducasse, from the Foreword
"Angelo Sosa is a perfectionist, and one of the most committed and principled chefs I know. Throw in his penchant for global cooking and his expansive culinary skill set and you have the perfect recipe for a great cookbook author. His first effort is thrilling, reliable and insanely sexy...but most importantly the food is as delicious and sensible."—Andrew Zimmern
"Angelo is a fantastic chef. Flavor Exposed is a great way for home cooks to learn about his wonderful Asian-influenced cuisine in a very organized and east to understand way." - Masaharu Morimoto
"This book, with its well-designed flavor map and recipes divided according to nine major flavor profiles, demonstrates a keen understanding of the complexity through simplicity concept. His unique recipes feature clever and often surprising ingredient combinations, designed in a way that allow for contrasting tastes to complement and enhance one another, creating a layered explosion of flavor with each and every bite... Angelo Sosa has conquered the art of the unexpected with Flavor Exposed." - Jean-Georges Vongerichten
"Angelo Sosa has a true talent for presenting both old and new flavors together like few other young chefs can - at once elegant, approachable and thoroughly unique (this in itself is a rare culinary trinity!). His book will serve as both inspiration and guide to many meals in my home for years to come." - Gail Simmons
“Sosa believes in the science of flavor and the art of cooking. He categorizes recipes by the primary tastesthe tongue physically senses: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. To those fundamentals he adds spicy,earthy, and nutty. Out of this palette of flavors he creates unique recipes that harmonize these attributes.Scallop and banana tartare offers a basic sweetness, which is underscored by dressing it with jalapeñovinaigrette for contrasting acidity and spiciness. Salty flavor dominates in Sosa’s remarkable riff onChinese takeout standard General Tso’s chicken reimagined with sweetbreads. Even more startling, sloppyHo Chi Minh revolutionizes an American classic with Vietnamese flavors.”—Booklist
“Chef Angelo Sosa combines flavors in surprisingly delicious ways. His unique cooking style comes from many influences: his Dominican-Italian heritage, French culinary training, time spent working with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, competing on Top Chef, and traveling in Asia. He brings these experiences to bear in this inviting cookbook, sharing 100 exciting, globally inspired recipes. Some are jazzed-up versions of familiar fare: Mustard Seed Potato Salad, for example, or Sloppy Ho Chi Minh, an exotic riff on the classic Sloppy Joe. Others are wildly original, like Curried Pots de Crème and Grilled Watermelon with Chinese A-1 Sauce. The flavors are innovative and complex, but the cooking, generally, is not. Really, it all boils down to this: Buy this book and cook from it. If you do, you'll find yourself cooking and eating better than you ever imagined.”—Fine Cooking
OK, so we know it’s just another cookbook from another well-known and celebrated TV chef, but Angelo Sosa’s Flavors Exposed sets itself apart from the rest with a very clear focus behind the often played-out Latin-, Southeast Asian-, and Indian-inspired recipes: the flavor trinity. In each recipe (which are incredibly easy to follow and accessible), Sosa explains the reasoning behind each of the flavors so that you learn about more than just a new dish; you understand how the flavors work together so that you can apply this to other dishes you create. (Kyle Books) (Anne Dolce, The 25 Best Cookbooks of the Year (2012) The Daily Meal, November 21, 2012 )
"Angelo Sosa is a perfectionist, and one of the most committed and principled chefs I know. Throw in his penchant for global cooking and his expansive culinary skill set and you have the perfect recipe for a great cookbook author. His first effort is thrilling, reliable and insanely sexy...but most importantly the food is as delicious and sensible."—Andrew Zimmern
"Angelo is a fantastic chef. Flavor Exposed is a great way for home cooks to learn about his wonderful Asian-influenced cuisine in a very organized and east to understand way." - Masaharu Morimoto
"This book, with its well-designed flavor map and recipes divided according to nine major flavor profiles, demonstrates a keen understanding of the complexity through simplicity concept. His unique recipes feature clever and often surprising ingredient combinations, designed in a way that allow for contrasting tastes to complement and enhance one another, creating a layered explosion of flavor with each and every bite... Angelo Sosa has conquered the art of the unexpected with Flavor Exposed." - Jean-Georges Vongerichten
"Angelo Sosa has a true talent for presenting both old and new flavors together like few other young chefs can - at once elegant, approachable and thoroughly unique (this in itself is a rare culinary trinity!). His book will serve as both inspiration and guide to many meals in my home for years to come." - Gail Simmons
“Sosa believes in the science of flavor and the art of cooking. He categorizes recipes by the primary tastesthe tongue physically senses: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. To those fundamentals he adds spicy,earthy, and nutty. Out of this palette of flavors he creates unique recipes that harmonize these attributes.Scallop and banana tartare offers a basic sweetness, which is underscored by dressing it with jalapeñovinaigrette for contrasting acidity and spiciness. Salty flavor dominates in Sosa’s remarkable riff onChinese takeout standard General Tso’s chicken reimagined with sweetbreads. Even more startling, sloppyHo Chi Minh revolutionizes an American classic with Vietnamese flavors.”—Booklist
“Chef Angelo Sosa combines flavors in surprisingly delicious ways. His unique cooking style comes from many influences: his Dominican-Italian heritage, French culinary training, time spent working with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, competing on Top Chef, and traveling in Asia. He brings these experiences to bear in this inviting cookbook, sharing 100 exciting, globally inspired recipes. Some are jazzed-up versions of familiar fare: Mustard Seed Potato Salad, for example, or Sloppy Ho Chi Minh, an exotic riff on the classic Sloppy Joe. Others are wildly original, like Curried Pots de Crème and Grilled Watermelon with Chinese A-1 Sauce. The flavors are innovative and complex, but the cooking, generally, is not. Really, it all boils down to this: Buy this book and cook from it. If you do, you'll find yourself cooking and eating better than you ever imagined.”—Fine Cooking
OK, so we know it’s just another cookbook from another well-known and celebrated TV chef, but Angelo Sosa’s Flavors Exposed sets itself apart from the rest with a very clear focus behind the often played-out Latin-, Southeast Asian-, and Indian-inspired recipes: the flavor trinity. In each recipe (which are incredibly easy to follow and accessible), Sosa explains the reasoning behind each of the flavors so that you learn about more than just a new dish; you understand how the flavors work together so that you can apply this to other dishes you create. (Kyle Books) (Anne Dolce, The 25 Best Cookbooks of the Year (2012) The Daily Meal, November 21, 2012 )
From the Author
“This is how it is when I’m coming up with new dishes: I get obsessed by a flavor, an ingredient, a taste, and I begin to pair it up with other complementary flavors. Then I decide which ingredients mesh well together with these flavors. Most of my food is based on a trinity of flavors; the idea is that to create a dish that really works you need three different components that are the key focal points. Let’s say I start with sweet, salty, smoky. Think of bacon and eggs. You have the smoky, salty bacon and you jazz up the eggs with some sweet ketchup. Right there you’ve got your trinity of flavors. Now think about chorizo and onions, smoked salmon and pickles, prosciutto and grilled watermelon… These are all based on exactly the same flavor combo, one that we’re totally familiar with—all I do is up the ante by using unexpected ingredients. And you can push it even further—if you want live lavish, how about adding a nice thin slice of red snapper to that prosciutto and watermelon?”
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Chilewheel
Amazon Verified Purchase
I confess. I've never watched Top Chef, and I'm a professional cook. I'd never heard of Angelo Sosa. But when I saw that the forward to Sosa's book was written by Alain Ducasse, and that Sosa had worked in the kitchen of Jean George Vongerichten, one of my favorite chefs, I was intrigued. I'm glad I took a look. If your bent is to the new emphasis on global cuisine, then "Flavor Exposed" will offer good food and food for thought. Recipes are grouped according to the five elemental flavors, as well as smoky, bitter, earthy and nutty. A preface is provided at each section, which reveals a bit more of the author's history and philosophy of food.
Unlike some, who rate a cookbook almost solely by reading the table of contents, I tend to think that the book must, to be useful, have recipes written in good format, and which have been cooked frequently by the author or tested thouroughly by the author and/or some friendly helpers. Of course, it also never hurts tht the dishes taste good. The only way to know this, and thus know whether or not the cookbook is actually useful and worth one's time and money, is to dive in and make a fair cross section of the recipes provided. I went through and selected 25 recipes and made them all prior to this review. I can state unequivocably that this is a good cross section of multi ethnic cuisine, not necessarily traditional, or authentic, but which displays Mr. Sosa's understanding of how to combine flavors and ingredients, and use a number of cuisine or country specific ingredients. It also displays his professional chops and proclivities, which is a long winded way of saying that I like the way he thinks about his food, and how he executes his ideas.
None of the recipes is hard to make. Many are ethnic riffs of standard American fare,e.g., "Saigon Burgers," "Sloppy Ho Chi Minhs," "Far East Egg Salad,"...you get the drift. Anyone with a basic ethnic pantry and/or access to the internet can whip these up pretty quickly. I liked the interesting ways that Sosa used watermelon in several dishes, and I did my own riff on some of the recipes I tried. And that's also a plus with a cookbook; when it suggests or inspires in the user's mind a new way of thinking about a particular dish or ingredient.
If you are a fan of the new global, multi ethnic food and cooking emphasis, then this book, especially when paired with Susan Feniger's new "Street Food," will give you lots of worldly inspiration.
Unlike some, who rate a cookbook almost solely by reading the table of contents, I tend to think that the book must, to be useful, have recipes written in good format, and which have been cooked frequently by the author or tested thouroughly by the author and/or some friendly helpers. Of course, it also never hurts tht the dishes taste good. The only way to know this, and thus know whether or not the cookbook is actually useful and worth one's time and money, is to dive in and make a fair cross section of the recipes provided. I went through and selected 25 recipes and made them all prior to this review. I can state unequivocably that this is a good cross section of multi ethnic cuisine, not necessarily traditional, or authentic, but which displays Mr. Sosa's understanding of how to combine flavors and ingredients, and use a number of cuisine or country specific ingredients. It also displays his professional chops and proclivities, which is a long winded way of saying that I like the way he thinks about his food, and how he executes his ideas.
None of the recipes is hard to make. Many are ethnic riffs of standard American fare,e.g., "Saigon Burgers," "Sloppy Ho Chi Minhs," "Far East Egg Salad,"...you get the drift. Anyone with a basic ethnic pantry and/or access to the internet can whip these up pretty quickly. I liked the interesting ways that Sosa used watermelon in several dishes, and I did my own riff on some of the recipes I tried. And that's also a plus with a cookbook; when it suggests or inspires in the user's mind a new way of thinking about a particular dish or ingredient.
If you are a fan of the new global, multi ethnic food and cooking emphasis, then this book, especially when paired with Susan Feniger's new "Street Food," will give you lots of worldly inspiration.
Angelo Sosa had me hooked from the moment I read a certain sentence in his Introduction: "...simplicity is complexity..." Although I might like to debate with him that "complexity is simplicity".
I haven't been so motivated to develop and create new flavor combinations since I first read Eat with Your Hands. Even though there are only 100 recipes in this book, I found quite a few that stirred my senses and got my heart pounding and my mind racing.
There are two broth recipes especially--one using watermelon and one using Spam (yes, Spam)--that are masterful. And simple (sensational) salads: There is a Pineapple and Celery Salad with Sambal, a Spiced Watermelon Salad with Aleppo Pepper and Mustard Seed Potato Salad.
Most of his recipes are influenced by his love of Asian flavors, although he loves his Dominican roots as well: There is a sloppy joe that combines shrimp paste and fermented chili paste with ground beef and other Asian flavors. The Saigon Burger has a ginger glaze and the bun is slathered with a Thai basil mayo. There is an Asian pork belly and a Vietnamese twist to Maine lobster rolls. As a "love letter" to (and in memory of) his Aunt Carmen he has included recipes for bacaloa and another for tostones. There are recipes for pickles, ketchup, spice blends and more.
I keep thinking of two other books that inspired me as this one does, and this book falls somewhere in between the two. I'll mention them, thinking that maybe you are familiar with one or the other or both (plus Eat With Your Hands mentioned above) and it might help you get a feel for this book. They are: Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold and Flying Pans:Two Chefs, One World.
Why four, instead of five stars? And, of course, the star rating reflects my personal tastes. (You might give it an extra star for the exact same reasons I knocked it down one.)
--Too many recipes that require frying.
--Too many recipes that require sushi-grade fish. (I do like fish and raw fish, I just don't have easy, quick access to it.
--There is a lot of salt in these recipes.
--There are only 100 recipes.
--Plus, I have very mixed thoughts (kind of uneasy ones) regarding Sosa's prose and the personal information he gives us at the beginning of each chapter. He seems to be reliving his past experiences and the ways he handled them. The prose does not come off as a philosophy on life, but, rather, it almost sounds like he is trying to vindicate himself--give excuses and explanations--for his actions in the past. Sure, our experiences--and how we handle them--make us who we are; there is no doubt of that and all humans (and all animals and birds, too, come to think of it) have that in common. But I don't really need to hear about how he got sick, how he didn't get to act like other kids when he was growing up, why his parents were so strict, why he loves his Aunt Carmen and why he had an argument with a former employer, or why his restaurant went belly up...
I haven't been so motivated to develop and create new flavor combinations since I first read Eat with Your Hands. Even though there are only 100 recipes in this book, I found quite a few that stirred my senses and got my heart pounding and my mind racing.
There are two broth recipes especially--one using watermelon and one using Spam (yes, Spam)--that are masterful. And simple (sensational) salads: There is a Pineapple and Celery Salad with Sambal, a Spiced Watermelon Salad with Aleppo Pepper and Mustard Seed Potato Salad.
Most of his recipes are influenced by his love of Asian flavors, although he loves his Dominican roots as well: There is a sloppy joe that combines shrimp paste and fermented chili paste with ground beef and other Asian flavors. The Saigon Burger has a ginger glaze and the bun is slathered with a Thai basil mayo. There is an Asian pork belly and a Vietnamese twist to Maine lobster rolls. As a "love letter" to (and in memory of) his Aunt Carmen he has included recipes for bacaloa and another for tostones. There are recipes for pickles, ketchup, spice blends and more.
I keep thinking of two other books that inspired me as this one does, and this book falls somewhere in between the two. I'll mention them, thinking that maybe you are familiar with one or the other or both (plus Eat With Your Hands mentioned above) and it might help you get a feel for this book. They are: Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold and Flying Pans:Two Chefs, One World.
Why four, instead of five stars? And, of course, the star rating reflects my personal tastes. (You might give it an extra star for the exact same reasons I knocked it down one.)
--Too many recipes that require frying.
--Too many recipes that require sushi-grade fish. (I do like fish and raw fish, I just don't have easy, quick access to it.
--There is a lot of salt in these recipes.
--There are only 100 recipes.
--Plus, I have very mixed thoughts (kind of uneasy ones) regarding Sosa's prose and the personal information he gives us at the beginning of each chapter. He seems to be reliving his past experiences and the ways he handled them. The prose does not come off as a philosophy on life, but, rather, it almost sounds like he is trying to vindicate himself--give excuses and explanations--for his actions in the past. Sure, our experiences--and how we handle them--make us who we are; there is no doubt of that and all humans (and all animals and birds, too, come to think of it) have that in common. But I don't really need to hear about how he got sick, how he didn't get to act like other kids when he was growing up, why his parents were so strict, why he loves his Aunt Carmen and why he had an argument with a former employer, or why his restaurant went belly up...
By Dtramell
Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought this book because I am a fan of Angelo, and I knew what kind of food he was into. Being a chef myself, I was interested in the spin he puts on food. Not only are they great recipes, but he puts them in a easy format so that no matter what skill level you are, you can understand it. The flavors and food are all restaurant quality, and he shares a bit of his thought process and experiences. I recommend this book to anyone who loves cooking, eating great food, and likes to think outside of your usual traditional recipes and trying something new!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inventive Food Porn!
Let me explain the "porn" part first - the pictures are amazing and get you very excited to try the recipes. Read more
Published 2 months ago by indiestar
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sophisticated yet simple-to-prepare recipes
Foodies who want to kick up their repertoire a notch will appreciate the sophisticated yet simple-to-prepare recipes and Sosa's elemental approach to interpreting and combining... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Marcela Landres
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cannot wait to cook from this book!
I just received Angelo's cookbook today and I have to admit I was a little worried - I thought maybe a fourth of the recipes would appeal to me - I'm happy to report that I will... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Andrew'sMom
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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