Customer Reviews

A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How can you not love someone who writes, "What makes a boy from Ohio, born in the wrong century, raised on Tater Tots and Birds Eye, end up wanting to eat like a Greek peasant for breakfast, a French peasant for lunch, and a Moroccan peasant for dinner?"

This book is beautiful, inspiring, intelligent and unpretentious. It is laid out by seasonal menu, rather than classes of food, and gets you thinking about the experience of food as much as the creation. The recipes are well written with lovely pictures, clear formatting, and good descriptions.

I'll also include another quote from Tanis that you might find useful if contemplating a purchase: "Simplicity is key. People who cook fussy food for their friends seem to have the least fun. I say leave that fussy food to those with a staff and a paid dishwasher... A meal needn't be fancy, nor should it take all day to make. But, that said, most of the menus in this book are not those 30-minute-specials-with-only-3-ingredients whose intent seems to be to keep youout of the kitchen. What's wrong with spending a little time in the kitchen?"

I bought this cookbook for my husband for Christmas (he is the cook in the family) and he absolutely loves it. He has made several of the recipes, mostly the duck ones so far, and they have all turned out delicious AND beautiful. The recipes he has made have been fairly simple but still come off as "fancy" (meaning if you served these meals to guests they would be impressed).

He said his favorite thing about the book is that it has made it easy for him to try out new ingredients (this week it was turnips) without a lot of fuss. He also enjoys the organization of the book by menu. Finally, this is truly a beautifully made book, with gorgeous photography and nice paper.

I would say this book is great for a home chef with a bit of experience who is looking to try new things and expand their horizons.

I feared this would be precious and silly but what a great book! Good, simple food and creative menus. Read this instead of Rachel Ray or Sandra Lee and you'll actually learn how to cook instead of just following recipes.

This good has fantastic recipes - either use his entire meals or do individual recipes. I have yet to find one that wasn't both interesting and delicious. Also, his color palette on the plate is wonderful. So it's very inspirational (and you can play around with the ingredients a little if any are hard to find - it's the combinations and the colors and the freshness that make it great.

Why only 4 stars, then? I fear it's the book's production that lets it down. The worst aspect is the portion control. Standard recipes in books are for 4 - halve it for two and double for a party of eight. Tanis' quantities are all over the place. Sometimes it's easy to catch - you know that 1lb of protein per person is plain wrong. Other times, it's much more difficult. A competent editor would have put this right. Then there are minor things like a lack of a sensible recipe index.

But those are minor gripes. If you enjoy good food and good cooking, this book is a treat - I've already given three to friends!

I try one recipe a week from this wonderful and beautiful book. They take time and thought and they have been %300 delicious.( I have given this book 3 times as a gift!) I even read it in bed at night and have my breakfast looking thru the pictures and dreaming up new ingrediants for a recipe that I have already tried.David's recipes incite creativity and reverie. Thank you Mr. Tanis.

I cook a lot and have found some wonderful recipes that I use, but so far this cookbook has failed me twice. I made the spinach pie twice and both times it was watery and unflavorful (and I use the best of ingredients, like organic everything). The second recipe was the Cherry and Almond Clafoutis. It was way too sweet and did not make a enticing presentation in the cast iron skillet I used. I am hesitant to try anymore of the recipes.

This is a beautiful book. There are lots of interesting seasonal recipes, with gorgeous pictures. It's about eating with the seasons and honoring what each season can bring to the table. Some recipes are simple and some more involved. Not all the dishes have to do with figs, but all have been carefully prepared around what is grown and available fresh.

This cookbook is part memoir, part travelogue, completely beautiful to read. For some of the recipes you have to be a serious foodie AND have money to burn on exotic ingredients. Like morel mushrooms, saffron, rabbit, lobster, etc. Not on our budget, nor in our local stores. Some recipes, but not all. Most only require a decent deli counter, a good produce section or farmers' market, and a sense of adventure. I had to try, even if it seemed dubious, and he was right: fresh sliced figs sprinkled with good salt and a drizzle of olive oil are delicious. Add a nice frosty beer and that's a good snack for grown-ups. And that's just in the introduction. The desserts are especially delightful, we loved almost all of them.

I am a cookbook freak. I am not even sure how many I own and I don't want to count them-it borders on a disorder! But then again, I used to work as a personal chef, and although I love to eat out, I tend to cook at home most nights, so my obsession goes to good use. Of all my cookbooks I have a few tried and true books that I turn to again and again- this is one of them.
I have made from this book: green chili stew, salmon with Vietnamese cucumbers, spinach pie, pork loin, paella with shrimp and squid ink, to name a few. All have turned out well.
There are so many memoir type cookbooks out there and although this is not officially one of them, Tanis does have his personal musings about food included with each menu. I love the memoir/cookbook genre, but they can be a bit precious...."The waft of the scent of (fill in name of flower/fruit) blossoms from the (fill in name of tree) in (fill in glamorous or exotic country) where my family had a house....." Tanis' musings are so engaging but with a down to earth voice that does not come off like he is trying to write a poetic novel. I have actually read both his books cover to cover. He wrote one sentence about zucchini as a preface to a another recipe for zucchini and I have taken this idea and eaten it literally hundreds of times adding my own variations (zucchini and onion cut up and slowly stewed in olive oil as a side dish, or over pasta). This is what I love about this book- Tanis encourages you to explore, to work with food the way a chef does- not by following exact times but cooking by smell, sight and feel and substituting based on what you happen to have on hand or what looks good at the market.
The book is also very of the moment (it's divided into seasonal menus) and yet not at all fussy. You would happily have eaten these foods years ago and will happily eat it years from now. There are some unusual menus and ingredients that I would not try (a chicken terrine that looks a bit jello-y and aspic-y and not my thing), but overall I highly recommend this book.

David Tanis is a wonderful teacher. He leads you into the seasonal menus with ingredients and recipes that intrigue. I borrowed this book from the library. After 45 years of cooking for my family and friends I thought I owned enough cook books. Not true. Owning, reading and using 'A Platter of Figs' is as close to having Tanis in the kitchen with me as I'm likely to get.