Customer Reviews

Great Garnishes (Wei-Chuan's Cookbook)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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Most of these garnishes appear to be geared towards formal banquets...they are more like works of art than mere food. Although some explanations are given on how to create these beautiful creations, I doubt that the average person could even come close. Carrots carved into dragons, miniature nature scenes, the list goes on...all gorgeous, but if you're looking for a simple "how to" book, look elsewhere.

This book is all about challenge. Carving, carving and carving. For those of you who don't have any talent for this kind of work should skip it. But it also contains a simple decoration but beautiful such as flowers pots. Professional chefs who won awards wrote this book. They are showing incredible techniques and the results are worth to keep as a house decoration! But phiew, talk about myself trying to be at least near those result probably will take zillion of practices. Some of the carvings techniques have to use your own imagination because the guidelines aren't that detail. Example, carving a monkey! This is a hard book. The pages are full with colored photos. Bottom line is that this book is for those who want to be a pro or really love challenges. But for the rest this book is worthy as a collection.

the book has alot of ideas that are photographed step by step, but apart from a handful of ideas, the examples given are kitsch and outdated, great as a conversation piece at a boring home cocktail party, but for a pro chef - forgettaboutit.

This is my first book on garnishing and I love it a lot so I bought another one for the mother of my daughter-in-law.

Personally, I tend to prefer the more minimalist approach to garnishing in Japanese cuisine than I do the Chinese which I sometimes find to be a bit overblown and garish (particularly as characterized in some of the older style stuff in this book). That being said, I am glad to own this book, if only to enjoy seeing some masterpieces of culinary artwork that are featured along with some representative recipes where they might be employed. I am highly unlikely to ever attempt even a fraction of the garnishes shown in this book, though. A lot of what is presented is far beyond my carving skills and a great deal is entirely unsuitable to the type of meals that I am likely to prepare. There are some potentially useful techniques offered, however, and I am particularly interested by the 'Diced Vegetable in Golden Cups' on p.92.

I should add, as a final note, that many of the instructions for the various creations are not especially helpful. Accordingly, this book is really geared toward providing inspiration to fairly skilled 'garnish artists' than a learning tool for the casual amateur. This author has also written another book, Chinese Appetizers and Garnishes, which is probably more useful to the novice (as I regard myself) at showing how to accomplish certain techniques.

Great Book. Awesome food art that everyone try to achieve. Some ingredients are very Asian based. It's a great book to spark creative food carving ideas. Great photographs.

The first few pages are garnishes by Tomi Carey, which are average to OK..but everything after that is superb!! If you have imagination, you can craft masterpieces by following the guidelines/samples in the book. But if you don't have an artistic bone in you, then find another basic beginers book. Excellent buy!

This book is a wonderful resource for adding creativity and style to any prepared food or buffet. The full color photos are easy to follow and understand for a step by step guide from simple to ambitious. I'm satisfied with the books diversity of decorating ideas and would recommend it to anyone with a creative flair.