Customer Reviews

Flavor

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have to agree with the general thrust of many of the reviews that highlight the look of the book. It looks really cool (at least after you take off the dustjacket that over-displays Rocco's goofy mug--the one negative about buying the book is the connection to Rocco), and I in fact have it sitting on my coffee table. Many of these review are wrong, however, in claiming that the book is only for looks and not for use as a real cookbook. I have made several of the dishes with excellent results, and have also culled some very helpful and practical tips and techniques (like using vegetable purees instead of starch or flour as a thickener) from the book. Granted, it is not on the level of a book like Joy of Cooking in this regard, but it doesn't have to be. One thing that it does display is that good cooking is not out of the average person's reach, and that the average kitchen can benefit from some "advanced" techniques.

I am a professional Chef with a soft spot for cookbooks. Sometimes I follow the recipes sometimes I don't. Mainly, I like to look at the pictures for ideas and inspiration. My frustration with most cookbooks is there are too many words and not enough pictures. cooking is a sensual/visual experience and less science. If you want science then start baking! But with cooking there aren't too many linear paths to the end, rather many routes to the same place. So if you are a chef and like to see new ideas then at least check this book out. There are a lot of good flavor ideas. If your are a home cook looking for a trusted recipe then stay away. You will have a hard time with recipes in this book. They obviously weren't tested and will be frustrating for you.

This cookbook is a real knock-out. Visually as stimulating as the recipes are for the taste buds, the minute I opened it, I couldn't bear to close it. Its foundation is Rocco's exceptional palate, incorporating elements from all over the world and combining flavors that stimulate the taste sense in new and different ways. It's haute cuisine all the way, but accessible. Simple elements, the basics, fish, meats, vegetables, side dishes, desserts are combined with herbs and spices beyond the usual. The recipes are quite simple and easy to prepare, and the book is laid out very well to help you do so. Being an aromatherapist, I'm always seeking aromatic stimulation, and these recipes fit the bill.

In addition, the book gives you suggestions for wines that go with each recipe.

I've eaten at Rocco's first restaurant in NYC, Union Pacific, on East 22nd Street, and this book makes me feel that I can prepare the same type of food at home, simplified. I treated my cousin to a meal at Union Pacific and we both moaned and groaned through the entire meal in delight. If you want to do the same thing at home with your friends and loved ones, get this book.

Flavor is everything you'd want in a cookbook. Hundreds of great color photos, amazingly simple recipes, plenty of resources like a pictorial guide to all the ingredients used in the book as well as plenty of style and substance. My wife hates cooking and loved the book-go figure.
This guy Rocco delivers on all levels.
Buy Flavor now.

I love cookbooks, but I admit that my cooking endevors usually lean towards the mundane. With that in mind, this book overwhelmed me with it's color coded flavor information for each meal, with the seeming exoticness of them, and the unique ingredients that some of the meals had.

That being said, I found that even with my past in cookbooks that there was still much to be had from this one. The instructions were easy to read and follow, and with serving size, difficulty, and other need to know information quick to find on each page, the functionality of the book impressed me.

Overall, I think it's a must have, even for someone like me who doesn't cook much other than 'regular' chicken and beef. It's enough of a challenge with food that I think we'll enjoy exploring the receipies presented, and it'll be great to use for cooking for company.

Many celebrity chef cookbooks published in the last few months have been packaged as coffee table books and have been written with an emphasis on some distinctive aspect of cooking which will help it stand out from the pack and sell at relatively high prices. Rocco Dispirito's spin on the cooking experience, as the title makes obvious, is on the role of balancing flavors, or, more exactly, the four classic tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty) in preparing food. As we all learned in high school biology class, the four tastes are experienced on the tongue and the remaining components of flavor are experienced by thousands of receptors in the nose. Flavor is actually more about smell than it is about taste. But, the four classic tastes are much easier to classify, so Rocco and his co-author(s) focus on that. There is a brief mention of the newly conceived umani taste found in foods such as tomato, beef, mushrooms, and fava beans. Rocco, wisely, I think, leaves it at that. After introducing the tastes, the theme is carried throughout all the recipes in the book, identifying the predominant tastes of all the ingredients in each recipe. This theme is not merely a gloss, forgotten by the time one gets to the entrée recipes.

This book can be seen on several different layers and the value you find is based on how valuable you find each of the layers in the presentation.

At the most basic level, there are the recipes. For a list price of $35, the number of recipes is pretty thin. There are 105 recipes divided into Appetizers (18), Soups (11), Salads (10), Entrees (35), Side Dishes (11), Desserts (13) and Reserve List (7). The last category needs explanation. All the recipes in the other 6 categories are, I believe, fairly straightforward, with a very reasonable number of ingredients. This is not the same as fast. Many recipes do require long cooking or marinade times and very few require less than an hour of active time, even though few require any fancy techniques or equipment. This is a sure sign that the restaurant recipes have been adapted to home cooking. The Reserve List recipes are all distinguished by being more difficult to prepare, with more steps and more ingredients. These are the types of recipes you will find in a book by Daniel Boulud. The recipes in this book are based on French seafood style of cooking with a heavy infusion of Southeast Asian (Thai cum Vietnam) flavors and methods. Some are simple, but most have that upscale New York restaurant about it. But then, one of the reasons you buy this book is to do Union Pacific recipes at home.

At the next level, you have the overlay of flavor notes on the ingredients. For the real foodie, this aspect of the book really works. For me, it reinforced the epithany I had while watching the `Jamie's Kitchen' special where Jamie is testing his students for their appreciation of taste. It is so easy to get lost among the trees of equipment, techniques, nutrition, books and recipes and forget that above a bare subsistance level, it's all about flavor, which is the engine which drove the great world cuisines to coax great results out of inexpensive ingredients by seemingly involved methods. It is clear that Rocco is not seeing things hidden from other chefs. He and his collaborators have hit upon a way to bring this to the foreground.

At another level, the book adds very useful information about each recipe, giving the total time, active time, difficulty, number of protions, and recommended wine paring for the dish. The serving size is standard. Nothing new there. The total and active times are uncommon, but they shouldn't be in high end cookbooks. I believe these times are very realistic. The difficulty rating is a great addition. My only reservation is that no recipes outside the reserved list have a rating of more than 3 out of 6. Still, a very good thing.

The top level is the way in which photographs have been used in this book. There is a photograph for the finished product for almost every recipe. Almost all of these photos are very good. There are also many photographs of ingredients. Pretty. Not that useful. There are several techniques which are illuminated by a series of photographs, but NO TEXT. They look like pages from a book seen in Fahrenheit 451. All pictures. No reading. They work, but they would have worked much better with a little text. As in Jamie Oliver's book, there are a lot of photos of Rocco and colleagues fondling ingredients. Except for the one with the young girl covered in chocolate, I could do without them.

As long as you get this book at a discount price, it is definitely worth it for the amateur chef. It will succeed in making cooking more interesting and it will give you some great experiences with exotic ingredients. Rocco's advice on encountering new ingredients is right up there with Alton Brown's advice on thinning out your kitchen equipment. Another added value are the lists of ingredients by taste and by season at the back of the book. The obligatory list of internet ingredient sources is there as well.

I have just a few pet peeves. Rocco does a great service by pointing out which ingredients infuse well in water and which ingredients infuse well in oil, but then spoils the whole insight by relegating it to `scientific babble'. The other minor annoyance is when he assigns classic names such as pot au feu to a dish which are substantially different from the classic recipe, then neglects to put these named dishes in the index.

A great gift for the foodie on your list.

This cookbook is so interesting because it's very creative and it lets you in on the process. Rocco's cooking theory here is "sweet, salty, bitter, sour" and he labels each ingredient in the recipes with a colored dot so you can see how he is using one (or more) of each per recipe. Then in the back of the book, he has a couple pages listing food items that qualify in each category, so you can think up your own mix of ingredients. The book also has helpful items like mini photos of the more unusual foodie items that my be hard to find, plus a couple pages with ideas of where to buy them (online gourmet shops). I love the cookbook because it has soooo many photos! Each dish has a huge, full-page, color photo of it. There are also tons of black-and-white photos of Rocco and his chefs cooking in a restaurant kitchen (this book is a few years old and he was at Union Pacific then, I think). For the other reviewers commenting on the photos, some are done in an artsy style where the photo is blurred to show movement. Each recipe also has a paragraph or 2 preceding it where Rocco tells a story about the dish. So it's not your typical cookbook with just a bunch of typed-out recipes! There are a few super-easy recipes that I can definitely make: Nutella sandwich with broiled bananas, cauliflower soup, radish and cranberry salad. The book has a mix of super-easy, medium-easy and hard recipes with some super-hard recipes in a separate section in the last chapter. It's fun to see photos and descriptions of some of Rocco's "famous" dishes even though they would be too hard for me to make, like uni sea urchin (yikes! where would you find this?) with raw scallops and tomato water (made by hand) and mustard seed oil (made by hand).

I like cookbooks that teach you how to cook, in addition to giving you great food. This is about my favourite book for entertaining company, on a well-stocked cookbook shelf.

The recipes are innovative, fancy, taste great, and the instructions are clear. What I also like is the background - the description of WHY we do these steps. I noticed he covers a wide range of techniques throughout the book - the recipes are chosen carefully. Wines recommended for every dish, ingredients indexed by flavor, by season, by difficulty and whole meals are planned for every occassion, matching mains with sides.

There's a lot of fish in this book (for me, that's a good thing), and the flavors are generally bold, but well balanced. Appetizers really should only be used as apps in this one - don't make a larger size for a main - the reason is the flavors are too bold. Nice in small amounts. The dishes are impressive, well illustrated, and plating advice is given.

I would recommend this book for a person who loves food (including fish) and who wants to learn more about how to cook. I would not recommend it for the plain old meat and potatoes crowd.

Great pictures, interesting ideas, useful information. I live in Manhattan and can easily find all the ingredients Rocco uses with no problems. If you live in SmallTownUSA, though, either be prepared to buy some online and have them shipped or buy some other book.

Since following Roccos career,after eating at his restaurant Union Pacific. I had to explore this book, and Im glad I did, I have learned so much about the different flavors and how to use them, I admit that I was alittle afraid to try some of these dishes but, I did and it was not at all hard to follow. The pictures are beautiful and the read is easy.If you enjoy his style of food or want to explore with cooking I highly suggest this book.I also use this book as a reference it has alot of great info. Cynthia M.