Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen (Culinary Institute of America) (Hardcover)

~ Culinary Institute of America® (Author) "Smoked meats and fish..." (more)
Key Phrases: tinted curing mix, grind through the fine plate, feet sheep casings, Chef's Notes, Basic Mayonnaise, Salad Yield (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Garde manger refers to the restaurant kitchen area where cold dishes, including soups, salads, sandwiches, sauces, cheeses, sausages, and pâtés, as well as hors d'oeuvres and the condiments used to garnish them, are prepared. The book Garde Manger is a teaching text for food professionals, updated from a 1973 edition by a team of chefs from the Culinary Institute of America. Home cooks, as well as students and professional cooks, will enjoy the chapters on preparing dressings, cold soups, salads, and sandwiches in this clearly, concisely written book, which is illustrated with hundreds of color photos. More serious home cooks will also appreciate the chapters that delve into making sausages, smoked foods, terrines, and other charcuterie. Here you'll learn to prepare and smoke old-fashioned, lusty French Garlic Sausage or a Pheasant Galantine enriched with pork fat and Madeira.

Intermediate cooks comfortable with terms such as chiffonade (leafy vegetables cut into very thin strips) will appreciate composed salads like simple Italian Shaved Fennel with Parmesan and heat-spiked Buffalo Chicken Salad, in addition to such soups as Cold Carrot Bisque sparked with ginger, tangy orange juice, and yogurt.

Noncooks interested in food will find Garde Manger fascinating too. How better to appreciate the Roasted Vegetable Terrine, layered with eggplant, squash, mushrooms, and goat cheese and served at your favorite restaurant, than by understanding how it is made? Home cooks who entertain will appreciate Garde Manger's recipes, as they produce quarts of sauce, gallons of soup, and canapés by the dozen. For the rest, when you can't modify the recipe, there is always the freezer. --Dana Jacobi

Product Description

The most comprehensive book ever on garde manger—from the creators of The New Professional Chef®

The Culinary Institute of America's complete and contemporary guide to garde manger can help anyone master the art of cold food preparation. Combining clear, illustrated explanations of basic methods in full color with over 400 recipes, it covers sausages, cured and smoked foods, terrines, pâtés, galantines, and roulades as well as sandwiches, salads, cold sauces and soups, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, and condiments. A separate chapter on cheeses demystifies the unique challenges of cheese selection, preparation, and presentation.

425 color photographs of techniques and finished dishes

• Innovative preparation and presentation ideas
• Tips on successful flavor, texture, and color combination

The Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, NY, and St. Helena, CA), hailed by Time magazine as "the nation's most influential training school for professional cooks," is the author of some of the most significant works for professionals and students.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 488 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471323675
• ISBN-13: 978-0471323679
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #812,659 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars encouraging, January 9, 2000

By A Customer

This volume is fantastic. It is encouraging to see culinary professionalism displayed so everyone can see the bones of it. I am a chef and enjoy its purism and sense of direction. It is a great culinary tool for myself and my cooks. I am currently teaching a class in garde manger for which I have ordered this book as a text. This is a must for your collection.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference and guide, July 1, 2005

By	Cosmas Bisticas "Chez Cosmo" (Denver) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Many of the readers have commented that this book is for professionals only. I happen to disagree with this opinion as there are no prerequisites required to understand the instruction given within. Having said this, if you are not even curious of understading the fundamentals of lets say for example, sausage making, there is no need to buy this book, you can find great sausage at the grocery store without the hassle of making it at home.

So this book, yes it is for professionals but also for anybody who wants to understand (and even apply)the nuts and bolts of the cold kitchen. Personally I think that understanding the method that is used to prepare something, gives one a greater appreciation of that something when it is offered to him/her.

So for all of you non-professionals, if you are simply curious, about how to make salad dressings, terrines, or bologna for that matter, this book is written in laymans terms and will be an interesting journey into the world of Garde Manger.

54 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedic Authority on Cold Food Prep and Service, February 24, 2004

By	B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

One could compare this book, `Garde Manger' by the Culinary Institute of America to Martha Stewart's `Entertaining' like a comparison of Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics to a popular history of 20th century physics. Unfortunately, that comparison does not hold up. The more appropriate comparison would be between a technical work on wood joinery to a glossy `This Old House' imprimatur book on cabinet making. The difference between the classroom and the home kitchen is simply not that large. One can even bend the simile around on itself to say that the laboratory in which new culinary thoughts arise is in the home kitchen and not in the teaching classrooms of the Culinary Institute of America.

All this playing with comparisons is simply meant to make the point that while this book is presented as a textbook by the most prestigious culinary training institution in the country, it's material is simply not that different from a book with more obviously commercial origins.

This book does have a lot of material you will not find in a Martha Stewart or Ina Garten or Paula Deen book. High on the list of interesting background information is the history of how the French Revolution may have been a major contributor to the rise of restaurants and the great strength and variety in French cuisine.

The real story here is cold food and how it is prepared and served in (French) restaurants. On this subject, this book is a delightful source of both recipes and Alton Brown / Shirley Corriher type background. Honestly, the true culinary counterpart to Feynman's lectures would be Harold McGee's oft quoted books on food science.

This CIA book gives a wealth of recipes for salad dressings and other cold sauces, cold salads, sandwiches, cured and smoked foods, sausage, forcemeats, cheese, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, condiments, and basic recipes (spice mixes and the like). One thing that immediately endeared me to the book is its treatment of vinaigrettes, which easily outdoes even Martha Stewart's better than average treatment. This material is worth the price of admission. Another service it supplies, with the authority of a teaching institution, is to simplify some culinary terms. For example, it always bedeviled me to know the difference between, for example, a relish, a salsa, and a chutney. Turns out that they simply are three different words for the same basic preparation. Like `plains', `veldt', and `pampas', they are different words for the same thing reflecting three different ethnic sources.

The chapters on curing and sausage may interest fewer readers than most, but there is much you can get from these chapters even if you never make a sausage. I was particularly struck by the fact that government regulations require that pork used in sausage making be `certified'. That's a little fact that people like Emeril and even Alton leave out of their little how to shows on sausage making. As a great believer in serendipity, I believe you never can tell what inspiration you can get from unfamiliar material. Here lies the greatest value to this book. It tells you a lot of the things which more popular treatments of the same subject can easily overlook. This includes things like sanitation, shelf life, and equipment care. As an aging hippie whose fantasies were fueled by the `Whole Earth Catalogue', I find the chapter on cheeses to be worth a month's run of `Good Eats' shows.

One can say that this book is really meant for the restaurant professional, but I believe it has many uses for the home cook. The most important use is as a resource for making pantry items like prepared catsup, mustard, relish, crackers, spice mixes, salad dressings, and stocks which one may typically buy at the supermarket. If you put your mind to it, you will certainly attain a better tasting product. What may be more important is that you will also certainly attain a better tasting product with no laboratory chemical ingredients.

For the real foodie, this book is a treasure. It gives recipes for lots of things few other books take the trouble to cover. The danger to the newbie is that they may not see those points at which the book's coverage is not complete. One area is in the recipes for stocks. These recipes are `bare bones' instructions with none of the usual cautions and explanations given in some other books. If you are really serious about stock making, consult `Jeremiah Tower Cooks' or Judy Rodgers's `The Zuni Café Cookbook' or even the CIA's `New Professional Chef' text. One can excuse this somewhat since these are hot preparations in a book about cold food. I would have preferred a reference to a work that gave the subject a more complete coverage.

One irritating thing I find in some reviews is a complaint about something which is outside stated range of the book. This book is about cold food. Do not expect details on baking or hot cuisine. Any material on those matters should be taken as a convenience to the reader.

I was a bit surprised to find at least one typo in this textbook by a respected school, published by textbook specialist Wiley. I found no errors that will mislead the home cook.

The book has several features I consider essential in a textbook. One is an bibliography. Another is a list of sources. Another is a glossary of terms. Another, very important, is an index of recipes.

This book is excellent if you are building a culinary library or do a lot of entertaining or are especially fond of salads and sandwiches, or simply like to read about food. The only reservation an interested reader may have is the price. The $60 list price inhibited me for several months, but I believe the book is worth it if you do any entertaining or make any quick cold lunches in your kitchen. Highly recommended.