Customer Reviews

Glorious French Food: A Fresh Approach to the French Classics

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Peterson is thorough and talented and creative, and cut his culinary teeth (so to speak) in France. Thus, he has a wealth of info at hand to write this book.

Wealth of material to pass on well describes this monumental effort of over 700 pages. Techniques and equipment and sources are all nicely organized and explained here, as this is a trademark of Peterson's published efforts.

What I find exceptional to other French efforts is a pronunication guide which is thorough and delightful to use. No more fastly slurring when ordering now. This provides what we need to order Fletan Aux Moules.

Where does one start to comment on this massive undertaking of reviewing this, only to say that the recipe collection is extensive and flavorful and within the reach of serious home chefs. One certainly cannot comment on trying even a small majority of these quickly, however, the few tried on magnificent! E.g. Mediterranean Fish Soup (Bouillabaisse) for which he provides a history of the dish, the contentions over its meaning, etc. Plus he adds tips to achieve as close to the real thing dish in making the rouille, spice tricks and fillet advice. The result is superior Fish Stew!

Second dish tried was Saute of Beef or Lamb En Surprise. This amply demonstrates his concern to provide necessary substitute considerations (e.g. here for morels). This quickly prepared dish is exquisite, and demonstrates the depth of flavor and concentration on the red wine beef broth which serves as defining layer here.

I cannot wait to dive into other delights here. This is truly one to invest in and turn to often. Most of us home chefs will thrive on this most welcome and well-done offering.

`Glorious French Food' by leading culinary educator, James Peterson may be a true lost classic, in the cookbook world similar to `The Thirteenth Warrior' in the movies or the novels of Thomas Berger, including `Little Big Man'. I noticed a copy on the bargain stacks a few days ago and immediately felt regret for not having done a review of it to help, in some very small way to raise the reputation of this excellent culinary pedagogical text.

I have a very `love / hate' relationship with James Peterson's books. Peterson has a very well deserved reputation as the author of the classic reference, `Sauces', now in a second edition (rare for cookbooks) and his Jacques Pepin homage, `Essentials of Cooking' (for those of you who need your culinary show and tell in full color). He has also done several excellent texts on special subjects such as Vegetables, Salmon, Duck, and Soups. I have reviewed each and every one of these books favorably, yet my experience when doing specific Peterson recipes (except those in `Sauces') is mixed. I am not entirely surprised at this, as I sometimes find his individual recipe descriptions just a bit mixed up, as if his copy editor was taking a coffee break as they were editing that recipe.

Peterson may in this book offer a great explanation for this paradox. He says that his greatest ambition would be to write a cookbook with no recipes. This is not as easy as it sounds, since I reviewed Pam Anderson's book `How to Cook Without a Book' and I found it wanting in several regards. Peterson also says that his greatest compliment is when a reader says they made one of his recipes, but changed it a bit, and it came out very well. All this means is that Peterson is a relatively unconventional cookbook author who is best approached differently than you may approach `The Joy of Cooking' or `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'.

This book, even for its great size (almost 750 pages) is, like Madeleine Kamman's `The New Making of a Cook', a book meant to be read from front to back in an easy chair with no electronic distractions nearby. The first and most important reason for reading this book like a novel is its novel organization. Instead of chapters on Salads, Soups and Stocks, Meat, Poultry, Starches, Vegetables, and Desserts, there are a very neat 50 chapters on fifty of the most famous dishes from the French culinary canon. As you may guess from the size of the book, there is a lot more here than 50 recipes which, with a typical treatment, may take not much more than 100 pages to dispatch. Rather, most of the chapters are really about a family of dishes.

The very first chapter takes twelve (12) pages to cover `Assorted Vegetable Salads', all falling under the rubric of the French word, `Crudites' which, roughly translated, means raw vegetables. In this chapter are nine (9) dish recipes for Celeriac Remoulade, Grated Carrots, Red Cabbage Salad, Cold Cucumbers, Marinated Mushrooms, Baby Artichokes with Walnuts, Shaved Fennel Salad, Tomato Salad, and Parisian-Style Potato Salad. There are also two `pantry' recipes for Basic Mayonnaise and Crème Fraiche. Like the very liberal Chris Schlesinger (`The Thrill of the Grill', `How to Cook Meat', etc) and unlike the very traditional Madeleine Kamman, Peterson is extremely liberating with his advice. He tells us how to improvise crème fraiche and he tells us all the reasons why some substitutes, such as American sour cream, will just not work as well in some recipes. He does not tell us not to improvise. He also follows the party line on the right potato for the right dish, but he also says that you can probably get away with using any kind of potato for any kind of dish, which fits my experience in using a russet for both mashed potatoes (with a good potato ricer) and potato salad, two recipes for which russets are supposed to be inferior to waxy or `all purpose' varieties.

Part of what makes many great cookbooks such a pleasure to read is the extent to which the author introduces their own informed opinion into the writing. Both `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and `The New Making of a Cook' would be great cookbooks without the lively opinions of Julia Child and Madeleine Kamman, but they are much better at getting their subject across than a dry presentation of quantities and procedures. If you think this is unimportant, take a quick look at a few recipes in `The Joy of Cooking' and you will see an ample amount of humor in even this encyclopedic collection of recipes.

One thing I especially enjoyed in this book was the affirmation of the doctrine in Ms. Kamman's book that in spite of all the butter, pork fat, goose fat, or olive oil in popular recipes, French cooking is NOT about high fat content. Peterson is especially good on fats in general and butter in particular, as he hits all the right notes about cooking with butter. For one thing, he discounts the common practice so popular with TV culinary personalities of mixing butter and oil to raise the burn point of butter solids. He says it simply does not keep the butter solids from going black. He also clearly differentiates plain clarified butter from the Indian staple, ghee, where the butterfat is taken to a darker brown than is done by simple clarification.

I even found something new on my favorite cookbook subject, omelets. Peterson gives two different techniques and clearly differentiates both the method and the cultural differences in French cooking between the omelet and scrambled eggs.

The bad news is that if this book may be in danger of loosing its market, and it may go out of print. The good news is that you should be able to get a copy from our beloved Amazon.com for cheap.

Glorious French Food is well written but has a somewhat different approach. Instead of huge lists of formulas to be followed, this book is more like base lessons in French cooking. All the basics and classics are included and at the end of the lesson are variations. If one is looking for the "ground rules" in order to evenutally use your own creativity then this is the book for you. If however, you want to just be told "do this, then do that", other volumes may be a better match.

I agree with previous reviewers on what this excellent book is and isn't (Not really for beginners, there is an implied expertise level of the reader, lots of research in writing the book, etc.) However, after using the book for 5 months now, I have a constructive complaint for the editors, who apparently lack the practical knowledge of using a cookbook. What rationale drove them to use such small and hard to read fonts? What drove them to actually use a pale blue ink for some text? (E.g., try reading the ingredient list on page 272 - miniscule font, in that pale blue ink.) Unless your kitchen is very brightly lit, and you have the eyes of an eagle, you will have great difficulty in reading the text. The entire book has a great deal of unused 'white space' that could have been better used by using a larger, darker contrasting font. If there is a second edition, I hope it is more legible (ditch the pale blue ink.)

I absolutely love this cookbook. As a culinary student, I wish they had issued this book out instead of my $150 doller culinary workbook. This book is such a wealth of information. "Glorious French Food" is big, but Peterson's writing is so interesting and entertaining that I've taken it to the beach with me many times. I've always felt dishes are tastier when one learns the history behind the creations. As for the recipes, they are excellent. I test them on my boyfriend, who by chance is French and a culinary graduate. He feels the recipes are very accurate and will sometimes admit that some of them are better then his family's dishes. I highly recommond this book, for both fun and serious cooks out there. It's a great gift to give.

French cuisine, despite predictions of its demise by food writers admist inroads of other Western cuisines including Italian and Spanish cuisines, is still going strong. Many people will, have heard classic/haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine, bourgeois/bistro cuisine, and regional cuisine that form the four important strands of French cuisine, and this book has touched on all four of these cuisines.

One important difference between this book and others is it uses 50 dishes as the starting point and teach 4 to 10 more dishes that share either the principal ingredients or are related by techniques. It is, as Peterson himself mentions in the preface, aiming to teach you to how to cook on your own and understanding cooking is not just a mechanical follow-one-recipe process: it is a little like how you learned mathematics in electrical engineering and apply the central methodology into diverse areas like power load flow analysis, calculating a circuit's small signal behaviours, using signal processing in protection relays.

Bear in mind that this book is geared towards big city or middle-sized suburban-area American homes. Duck a l'orange, for instance, is in the American adaptation version. This makes the book a little tricky to be used if you live in Auckland, Sydney, or in London, where the ingredients available will likely be different from what's available in US. For those armchair chefs who want to buy a book that tells how French food is actually prepared in France itself, another book, such as the Konemann publications, will likely be more useful.

By all means this book is not meant to be an exhaustive coverage of France's cookery. , but most books on French cooking tend to cover very small specialized subject areas (Provence's bistros) or are just a thin compendium of recipes (eg 100 recipe in a 200 page cookbook showcased as "Cuisine of France"). If you are interested to build a library of French cookbooks, I recommend the more exhaustive publications of Jacques Pepin, Alain Ducasse's Grand Livre de Cuisine (currently with 2 titles in English, but there are a few more published in the original French), and the ever reliable Larousse Gastronomique, in addition to this book. Otherwise for a tight bookshelf, this book on its own may be what you want for French cooking.

This book has ample recipes for advanced beginners, with most for intermediate experience level home cooks. Yes, some recipes are for advanced cooks, or moderately persistent intermediate cooks! The meals are well worth the preparation.

These recipes are not rocket science; Peterson guides one well through the more unfamiliar techniques as needed. These are generally extremely well written recipes, often with a commentary on a dish's history or general context, and gives many lessons in technique, without "lecturing". Best of all, the few recipes I've tried have been very tasty!

Do read "Read this first", the first 30 pages, before progressing to individual recipes, to get a broad idea of what it to be presented, and needed as backgroundl Curiously, he recommends not to saute or cook at higher heat in a mixture of butter and oil. That's his choice, however I've seen this mixture as the saute norm, rather than an exception, in French kitchens in the USA and in France. He is an American cook, not a Classically trained French master chef.

Some recipe topics include: Various salads, assorted cooked vegetables, pates and terrines, omelettes, souffles, cheese fondues, vichyssoise (not truly French in origin, but actually American), oxtail soup and stews, vegetable and fish soups, mussels, scallops, soles and lobster dishes, with easily 5 dishes within each of the named categories. It goes on with chicken, duck, veal, rabbit, and many beef dishes. Desserts include tarts, mousse, custards, crepes, cakes, and preserves. Almost encyclopedic in coverage, more than enough to keep you busy for years, cooking classic French dishes.

Even if you do not get around to cook one recipe from this book, you will enjoy reading these tantalizing recipes, and with Peterson's writing style, savor the varied selections of French dishes, learning many techniques and "secrets" from a great chef, these techniques carry over into cooking with all sorts of ingredients available at your local grocery store!

This is a wonderful companion to Julia Child, Paula Wolfert and Richard Olney. It is contemporary without being trendy. His recipes are fairly practical--not larded with recipes for truffles and caviar--and yet are unabbreviated and uncompromising. It will appeal primarily to advanced amateurs and consistently sells for under ten dollars--an amazing value for such a comprehensive and well-crafted work.

Some of you may be familiar with Auguste Escoffier, the legendary cullinarian of French descent that was responsible for classifying and for many complicating French cuisine. This book truly takes that intimidating factor out of the preparation of French food.

This book is focused on recipes that any person with a basic understanding of culinary dos and do nots will have no trouble in grasping and mastering in a very short period of time.

In conclusion, if you have felt intimidated in the past of trying to create French masterpieces, buy this book fearlessly, it is well worth the price

The duck salad was divine, in fact all the recipes we've tried, have been divine.

With the tightening economy, it pays to eat well at home. Glorious French Food: A Fresh Approach to the Classics updates French recipes while maintaining high taste value. Cooks can now eat well at home instead of paying high prices at French restaurants. Gourmet cooking is simplified but tasty when using recipes from Peterson's cookbook.

I've never owned a cookbook from this author, but after trying his French recipes I will be buying more of his cookbooks in the future.