211 of 220 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Reference for All, But don't replace older edition, February 13, 2007
This review is from: The Professional Chef (Hardcover)
`The Professional Chef, 8th Edition' by the faculty and staff of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA), generally thought to be the best culinary school in the country, is truly a great textbook for, exactly as the title states, anyone who wishes to be a PROFESSIONAL chef, sous chef, line chef, garde-manger chef, catering chefs or even charity soup kitchen cook. It is NOT that good for people who may wish to simply be personal chefs, pastry chefs, bread bakers, or simply better home cooks. This is because every aspect of the book, starting with the recipes and including everything else, is oriented towards preparation for large groups of people. Virtually all recipes, even the bread baking recipes, are written to serve a minimum of 8, and generally between 12 and 20 people.
The other side of the coin is that this book contains hundreds of pages of information which you will not find in practically any other book. Much of this, such as the cost of serving calculations and other business considerations are not likely to be very interesting to the majority of amateur cooks (unless you happen to be managing a charity food service). But there are also lots that should be interesting to the average cook. Topping this list is the chapter on food safety. Most of us who read a cookbook now and then and watch our share of Food Network cooking shows (especially Alton Brown's Good Eats) will have a passing knowledge of food safety, but the material here will give one the confidence to know they are following the `professional' approach to food safety.
Even though virtually all recipes are written for larger than `home' serving counts, every serious amateur cook, even if they are cooking for only one or two, will be amply rewarded by reading large sections of this book and using it as a reference for many, many techniques.
To look at one of my favorite subjects, eggs, for example, I find several things I either never knew or have forgotten. For example, this is one of the few places where I've seen instructions on how to vary cooking time for hard boiling eggs based on the egg size. This variation, from 12 minutes for small eggs to 15 minutes for extra large eggs explains why I have seen cooking times everywhere from 8 to 20 minutes. The great thing is that in the amateur volunteer kitchen, one has it on GOOD AUTHORITY that we only really need 12 minutes cooking time, as long as we follow the other recommendations such as leaving two inches of water above the top of the cooking eggs. Staying with the egg section, one may be surprised at how few different major recipes there are. There are only 16 main recipes; however each main recipe, like the `rolled omelet', may have up to 14 variations. But there are still things missing. While we get a recipe for French toast, there is no recipe for any classic Italian or Spanish egg dishes such as the frittata or the tortilla Espagnole. There is not even a mention of `frittata' in either of the two indices.
The egg section reveals one annoyance I find with the book. It begins each major section, as in the Chapter 29 on eggs, with six `master recipe' multi-page presentations on important techniques. In this case, it has sections on `Cooking Eggs in the Shell', `Poaching Eggs', `Frying Eggs', `Scrambling Eggs', `Making Omelets', and `Savory Souffles'. Then, the chapter goes on to give specific recipes, repeating the same subjects, with overlapping and with additional information. And yet, there seem to still be little details left out. On the sections on scrambled eggs, there is nothing about cooking eggs in a bain marie (water bath), which is certainly tedious, but which by some of the very best authorities (James Beard, for example) is the very best way to achieve the pillowy moistness which distinguishes the best scrambled eggs. This two part approach to technique presentation (most of the best pics are used in the introductory section) makes the book a bit more interesting to read for ideas outside the kitchen, but it makes it less useful as a reference where the objective is to find everything you need in one place.
Those of you who happen to own earlier editions of this tome may be interested in whether the $70 you need to acquire this latest edition is really necessary. In a word, I believe the answer is `NO'. This edition has 1215 pages, compared to 869 pages in my 5th edition, but many of those extra 346 pages do not yield genuinely useful culinary training. For example, there are 106 pages in a new `World Cuisines' chapter that has much good to say about France, Italy, China, Japan, and other culinary hot spots, but it has not a single word, for example, on the United Kingdom or Ireland. On the other hand, 8th edition has 7 pages on health and safety while 5th edition has 20 pages, with much better graphics on things like the pH scale and on food cooling techniques. The 5th edition also does not have the noisome bifurcation of master technique and detailed recipe cited above. Therefore, you get much more information per page in the earlier edition. The 5th edition also includes the frittata and more detailed information on more different omelet techniques. I also think the pictures of techniques are better in the older edition. Last but not least, I think the presentations of English versus metric measurements are much better done in the older edition.
I think the bottom line is that if you do not already own an earlier edition, this $70 book is easily worth three or four other cookbooks as a reference and as an AUTHORITY, if you are a professional. But, if you own an earlier edition, don't bother buying the new one.
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113 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Consider Labensky and Hause's On Cooking, December 31, 2007
This review is from: The Professional Chef (Hardcover)
The Professional Chef is a well-organized, fairly complete cooking text and a very beautiful book. It deserves its great reviews. However,
On Cooking by Labensky and Hause is somewhat longer (and thus more complete) and contains much more detailed exposition and recipes than The Professional Chef. It is not as flashy as The Professional Chef: If you were in a book store trying to choose between the two in a short amount of time, The Professional Chef would probably command your purchase; however, I own both and every single time I look for information or recipes, On Cooking has much more complete information.
Some examples: In On Cooking, there is a whole chapter on knife skills, as compared to sections in The Professional Chef. On Cooking's recipes include nutrition information and generally consume one or more pages. In The Professional Chef, each recipe consists of a quarter-page worth of information, though many of them are (beautifully) typeset to fill an entire page, so many of the book's pages consist mostly of blank space. The Professional Chef's section on anatomy of eggs and identification of quality and freshness is a very brief affair while On Cooking has tables of information, charts, and illustrative drawings. Furthermore, in On Cooking, the information about eggs in general is located in the same chapter as everything else on eggs, whereas The Professional Chef is organized like a culinary curriculum: one learns about how to select eggs long before learning how to cook them, so the section on eggs themselves occurs toward the beginning of the book, while the chapter on how to cook them occurs at toward the end of the book.
On Cooking is the more expensive and less flashy (but by no means less well-illustrated) of the two but it really is a superior informational resource.
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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good foundation for a home cook, February 10, 2007
This review is from: The Professional Chef (Hardcover)
I am a home cook, but wish I had chosen a career in culinary arts. I am not interested in starting in such a grueling field at this point in my life, but I am interested in developing my culinary skills. That's why I chose this book. From this book, I have been learning about foods of different regions and basic cooking techniques. Some of what they offer is not that applicable for the home cook, such as how to inspect a giant hunk of meat when it's delievered to your place of business, and the recipes are designed for food service; for example, most soup and stock recipes prepare 5 gallons. I have had success with scaling some of the recipes down, but other recipes don't scale down as well, especially if you're making just one or two portions. But I didn't get this book for the recipes as much as for the techniques. With that in mind, I am very pleased with this book and imagine it will become an important part of my home designed culinary education.
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