Customer Reviews

France: The Beautiful Cookbook- Authentic Recipes from the Regions of France

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This is easily the greatest French cookbook I've ever seen and one of the best cookbooks overall. I've been to France many times and the same food is in this cookbook as is in France. The recipes are easy to understand, the food is great, and the photographs just make you more and more hungry. I am a 16 year old boy who has a hard time cooking and filling myself, but this cookbook remedies both of these problems. The meals are simple, yet elegant, not to mention delicious, filling, and scrumptious. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys cooking and would like cooking to become a passion.

This cookbook is the best one I've seen! It's comprehensive selection of food covers all styles of French food and offers a wide variety of tastes that suit even the most selective of appetites! Easy to follow recipies combined with the outstanding photographs make this a truly enjoyable book to own and use.

I got this book on a closeout at my local bookstore, and at that low price the book is wonderful. I'd be a little less thrilled if I paid full-price... but only a little.

I would guess that most "...The Beautiful" books are probably purchased for their coffee table appeal. This is a large format book (12"x18"), with stunning photos of different areas of France and of the food (there's generally one picture of the finished dish for every two recipes). If you want a book to inspire you to travel to France or to go out to eat at a French restaurant, or if you are searching for an impressive and pretty gift, this is a no-brainer. It's gorgeous.

The recipes are very good, too, but I'm tempted to say that they're almost beside the point. There are 240 recipes, divided in menu-like sections (first courses, fish and shellfish, poultry and game, etc.) rather than regionaly. Each recipe is marked with the region it comes from, so you know that the mussels in cream is from Normandy and the veal rolls (paupiettes) are from Provence. There's also a couple of pages, with photos, describing each region. Nicely done.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about French cooking to speak to the authenticity of the recipes, but none of them were jarring. Most of the dishes are kept on the simple side (I get the feeling that the "real" version might require a few more hours in the kitchen), and they do have interesting, if short, introductions. The intro for cassoulet, for instance, gives a little history of this well-known dish, and mentions regional variations ("Toulouse adds Toulouse sausage, leg of lamb and confit"). You'll find the usual suspects of French cuisine; 240 dishes is a bunch, but far from exhaustive.

Most of the recipes are, as I said, very good. Their recipe for sole meuniere matches the one I use, and I have my eye on their recipe for beef braised with Calvados.

However, the book does show that it was written in 1989, when it was difficult to find some "exotic" ingredients. The recipe for chaoucroute (saurkraut with pork and sausage) calls for, among other things, a smoked kielbasa, and 6 Strasbourg sausages or frankfurters. David Rosengarten's _Taste_ has a whole chapter devoted to charcoute (which led me to spend my sole evening in Paris at a restaurant for which it's the specialty -- maybe I'll send him the bill), and it's obvious that these are gringo subsitutions. Kielbasa, maybe; frankfurters, no way. (Oddly, though, they don't shy away from dishes made with venison or rabbit, which I find much harder to find.)

As someone else mentioned, the desserts chapter feels short; there's about 20 recipes here, and I think most of us would assume that the French pastry section would be far larger.

Overall, this is a fine book -- particularly for inspiration purposes. If you can get it at a good price, grab it.

A great collection of the recipes that gave French cuisine its international fame is awaiting you in this book. Don't allow yourself to be intimidated by the excellent pictures, and try some of these traditional dishes. The vast majority of the ingredients can be found in the United States. Just make sure you take your time to enjoy this wonderful food, as the French take theirs to make meal taking an amazing experience.

Instead of purchasing this book here, I recommend looking for it in stores like Waldenbooks or Barnes and Noble in their section of books on sale. These stores always have a section of huge books that have been marked down to very reasonable prices.

This book isn't particularly huge, but it is legitimate in its recipes. I have tried several recipes from this book and they've all come out wonderful and comparable to the "real deals" that I've tasted over in France myself. There was no need to alter any of the ingredients or amounts, as so far I've had no failures/disasters in cooking from this book. It is divided up into sections (poultry, fish, desserts, etc.) and each section opens first to an introduction to a region of France with a little bit of background. The book provides pictures for almost every recipe they list, which I know can be helpful to some readers/cooks to know what it is they're cooking.

I would say, though, that some of the recipes might require you to be a little adventurous, as of course these authentic recipes require foods that Americans do not normally eat very often (like lamb and rabbit, for example). But I've found that other than that, the ingredients were not so exotic that I couldn't find them in the store and was forced to make adjustments.

I bought a half dozen other French cookbooks before I found this one. I wish I'd found this one first. If I had I would not have wasted my money on the others.

This book has recipes I actually want to cook. This book doesn't insult your intelligence with recipes so basic as basting a chicken with butter, or frying a trout in a pan, or adding some garlic to mashed potatoes, or ripping me off with a plain fried steak with French fries recipe like the several of the other books do. (Ya, I know they're called "French" fries but I didn't have to buy a French cookbook to figure out how to make them.)

The pictures in this book are fantastic. The recipes are well chosen. The book is well written. For once I feel like I got what I paid for. If I could have only one French cookbook it would be this one.

Wow! What a find! This is an amazing book! You can hardly stop looking at the beautiful photos long enough to try the recipies! But when you do.........you'll be very happy! Be sure to try the Chicken Vinagrette on page 127, as it is the tastiest thing I have ever put into my mouth!

I love this book! Great recipes and information about the country. Glossary is extremely useful.

This is an absolutely wonderful cookbook. There are so many divine recipes in this book, I don't know that, in my lifetime, I will be able to cook all the dishes I want to try. The photographs are as appealing as the recipes. This is, without a doubt, the best French cuisine cookbook I have seen.

This book is really packed and pretty. The pictures are great, but I think it could have included more desserts.