Customer Reviews

Two for Tonight: Pure Romance from L'Auberge Chez Francois

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Calling attention to the relationship between love and food, between the heart and the palate, restauranteur Jacques E. Haeringer in his book Two for Tonight (Bartleby Press, 2001) has compiled recipes grouped under such enticing chapter headings as "Breakfast in Bed," "Love in the Afternoon" and "After Midnight," to name a few. His intent is to supply the reader with recipes that create a sensuous mood or as his publicist says, "to heat up a relationship."

"The pleasures of the table, fine food and wine, are an essential part of a passionate life," Haeringer writes in his introduction before revealing recipes for "scrambled eggs" (okay with caviar) to quail stuffed with foie gras which he maintains will bring out the "wild streak we all have inside."

Maybe, not all the ingredients are readily available away from areas of sophistication but just reading about them seems to tempt the palate. Anticipation is a catalyst to romance.

Haeringer also stresses that preparing a romantic meal does not infer that it isn't going to be heart healthy. He suggests making it "as wholesome and nourishing as possible."

While he says he tries to use organically grown produce, meat and poultry, he doesn't fault any cook from straying from this choice. He does recommend using pure water, steaming not boiling vegetables, using whole grains and flours, avoiding the use of white sugar, choosing extra virgin olive oil or other cold pressed oils and unprocessed salt like sea salt or mineral salt. One recipe, citrus salad, calling for the use of ginger which he says is credited with "aiding digestion, improving circulation and even protecting against motion sickness" appears as a fitting conclusion to one of his Love in the Afternoon menu selections.

"When you have the choice follow the suggestions" (in the book) but the author says, "if you worry about every bite and every sip, stress will kill you long before cholesterol."

By the way, this obviously is not a book for vegans.

"Despite all the warnings of past decades, we have now returned to our senses and realize that, for most of us, red meat is an essential component of our diets," Haeringer says. "After all, we did not claw our way to the top of the food chain to eat only vegetables." ...oh my, I just spotted the recipe for Beef Wellington with roasted shiittake mushrooms...yum.

No cookbook, especially one dealing with the subject of love, is not complete without recipes using chocolate. Chef Haeringer does not disappoint, especially with his recipe for molten chocolate cake which he prefaces with a little blurb about how the Aztec ruler Montezuma kept his harem of several hundred women happy by "reportedly drinking 50 cups of chocolate daily."

The wonderfully tempting color photographs, easy to follow recipes (including the section on how to make the sauces that go into them) and a bibliography for further reading make "Two for Tonight" a must for any good cook's bookshelf.

by Mari Winn - Complete review appears on The Joplin Independent online

While this book has some really fancy-pants ideas, unless you are a real foodie, you're not going to like this.

There are some really amazing, really inspired, really... french dishes in here that I'd love to make, but really don't feel like roaming the store trying to find. I go through the book and it's really a plan-ahead thing to use. Unless you have stuff like quail, rack of lamb, 3 kinds of mushroom and shallots in your fridge, making anything out of here is gonna take some planning.

That being said, they're not difficult dishes per se... just really imposing. If you can get past how intimidating they look you CAN make some amazing things, but really consider yourself... are you going to use it more than once, or is it going to sit on the shelf collecting dust like the other stuff.

If you're a foodie, or at least a wanna-be foodie, go for it.