Tru: A Cookbook from the Legendary Chicago Restaurant (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Gale Gand (Author), (Author), Tim Turner (Photographer), Richard Melman (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In Tru: A Cookbook from the Legendary Chicago Restaurant executive-chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand present 100-plus of the stylish restaurant's most alluring recipes. The tempting dishes, which include the likes of Curried Cauliflower Soup with Cumin Crackers; Roasted Sturgeon with Braised Oxtail and Spiced Carrot Puree; and Roasted Poussin and French Lentils with Bacon Lardons and Truffled Green Brussels Sprouts are clearly presented. Though the majority require special ingredients and a time (and interest) commitment that make them best for special-occasion cooking, all should spark the imaginations (and whet the appetites) of readers interested in seeing what a top restaurant can do when it's at its peak.

Beginning with an introduction to Tru, which includes a discussion of its genesis, culinary approach and service, the book then pursues dishes course by course, with special stops for amuse bouche (appetite-rousing mouthfuls), foie gras, game and cheese specialties, represented by the likes of Roquefort with Pear Chips and Hot Honey Walnuts. Pastry chef Gand then "takes over" and presents a wide range of the restaurant's "multi-course" desserts, including sweet Szechuan Peppercorn Créme Brûlée Spoonfuls, "main-course deserts" like Warm Chocolate Tart with Toasted Almonds Milk Sherbet, and petits fours including Hickory Nut Shortbread. With a section on basic preparations and color photos that depict the dishes in all their creative splendor. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly

This collection is full of the kind of over-the-top recipes that give chef cookbooks a bad name. Tramonto's frou-frou constructions, like Rabbit Roulade with a Salad of Frisée, French Beans and Radish, and Arctic Char Poached in Duck Fat with Spinach-Almond Puree, sound delicious, but with their numerous subrecipes (Roasted Beef Tenderloin, Truffled Potato Puree and Bone Marrow Foam with Red Wine Sauce requires extracting chlorophyll from spinach and parsley, as well as pouring a marrow mixture into a canister powered by N2O chargers) and long ingredient lists, they also sound about as accessible for the home cook as the summit of Mount Everest is for someone who takes occasional strolls in the woods. These rarefied creations do offer a pleasurable peek into the mindset of a creative chef: there's an entire chapter on foie gras, for example. Pastry chef Gand's desserts are equally complex and include small treats the restaurant offers, like Honey-and-Lemon Tea Lollipops, which are "surprisingly easy to make," as long as readers have sucker collars on hand and don't mind pouring 305-degree syrup. Recipe headers are lengthy and sometimes repetitive, adding to the feeling of dizzying information overload this book provides. Photos. FYI: Tramonto and Gand have won awards for their earlier books, and Gand hosts a Food Network show.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Random House (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400060613
• ISBN-13: 978-1400060610
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #309,067 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great memoir of a phenomenal restaurant, March 16, 2005

By	Debra Hunter "voracious reader" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I just ate at Tru for the second time and it was as amazing as the first time - actually this has become my favorite restaurant in the world (sorry Thomas Keller). I was excited to see the Tru cookbook and hoped that, like the stellar French Laundry cookbook, I might be able to use it to cook some of my favorites from Tru. I have read through the entire cookbook a few times and as culinary reading it is wonderful. Sadly in the past few days I have tried three recipes and had three failures. I am an accomplished home chef, not professional by any means but I am a heck of a recipe follower and can usually make any recipe from any cookbook. Unfortunately here it seems that some detail is missing from the recipes or that they are badly written. I'm planning on using this book for inspiration (there's so much of it in here) but will not be following any recipes verbatim. I'd say this was a worthwhile addition to your kitchen library for the reading pleasure alone but be warned that the recipes may not have the results you expect.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Restaurant Book for Foodies and Pros, November 14, 2004

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

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`Tru' by Rick Tramonto, pastry partner Gale Gand and writer Mary Goodbody is a book purely for foodies and professionals. The sure signs of this are the fact that the recipes are presented almost exactly as they are done in the restaurant, with all the special ingredients and equipment a home cook is not likely to have available such as foaming canisters, caviar, truffles, and presentation dishes which are custom made for the Tru restaurant.

This does not mean this is a poor book. It only means that its audience is limited. It is more limited than even Thomas Keller's two restaurant books in that the `French Laundry' cookbook gives more insights into the phenomenology of eating and very high end food handling and preparation techniques. The new `Bouchon' cookbook gives a similar master class in technique along with a nearly definitive reference on Bistro dishes.

Tramonto's book is primarily a biography of his five (5) year old restaurant in Chicago and a synopsis of Tramonto and Gand's professional career together. As Gale Gand is actually the more famous of the two due to her Food Network show `Sweet Dreams' and her light, very accessible small books on simple desserts, it is genuinely interesting to us Food Network junkies to know the background behind some of her TV recipe stories. In the course of the authors' acknowledgments, background chapters, and recipe headnotes, Tramonto seems to mention just about every major culinary figure on the planet if they in any way contributed to his business plan, culinary inspiration, or specific recipe. While this may seem like gratuitous name dropping, I actually find this a definite asset to an essay on culinary excellence. This is also just another sign that this book is written for professionals and foodies. Two years ago, references to the Troisgras brothers and to Michel Bras would leave me cold. Now, I can take Tramonto's Michel Bras inspired recipe and compare it with Bras' recipes in his own book. There is some subtly gratuitous selfbackpatting as when the author cites instructions to the wait staff to inhibit breakage, as a single broken piece of dishware will incur a sizable replacement cost.

Tramonto is clearly aiming for the kind of recognition given to a very small group of American chefs headed by Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter. A quick look at the recipe chapters tells you this at a glance. These are Hors d'oeuvres'; `Amuse-Bouche'; Cold Appetizers; Hot Appetizers; Foie Gras; Soups; Fish and Seafood; Meat and Poultry; Game; The Cheese Course; Dessert Amuse Bouche; Desserts; Petits Fours; and Basic Recipes. This selection is a clear indication that the name of the game at Tru is `Tasting Menus', a relatively large number of small dishes all chosen to go together by the chefs.

I assure you Tramonto's recipes have a richer, more distinctive taste than preparations of similar dishes at your local country club dining room. If I had any doubt that this was possible, I lost those doubts when I made Thomas Keller's recipe for Mac and Cheese with wild mushrooms from `Bouchon'. There was actually subtlety in the taste of the Bechamel sauce carefully infused with onion, pepper, and nutmeg before being strained to smoothness and enriched with Emmentaler cheese. Similarly, Tramonto takes a normally complicated preparation such as lobster bisque and garnishes it with a rather complicated ceviche and prepares it with brandy and sherry in addition to the normal white wine ingredient.

Dessert recipes by Ms. Gand are consistent with the savory chapters in that many ingredients are unusual and procedures are fairly involved. These are not you typical Gale Gand `short + sweet' recipes. One simple amuse-bouche recipe calls for `Perfection' tangerines and basil blossoms. You can substitute clementines or pedestrian tangerines and do without the basil blossoms, but that is not how they do it at Tru.

Unlike celebrated culinary books by Tom Colicchio and John Ash, `Tru' does not go out of its way to highlight pedagogically interesting portions of recipes where new techniques are revealed. Yet, the book is a treasure chest of culinary techniques and unusual ingredients. You just have to read carefully to locate them. One general technique hidden in a recipe is Gand's method for roasting lemons to be used in a `lemonade shooter'. This is also the very first book I have read which uses the foaming technique pioneered by Spanish chef Ferran Adria. The book also makes use of a juicer to produce smooth fruit and vegetable juices in several recipes. The book is also the very first mention I have seen of the ingredient truffle flour.

Every savory entrée includes a detailed wine recommendation supplied by Tru's sommelier. While I am not a wine aficionado, I believe these suggestions are better than average, as they always are explaining the selection and often give an `everyday' choice plus a premium choice. Almost everything I said about the book in general is not true of the `Basic Recipes' chapter. Here we have detailed recipes for thirty-eight pantry items including twelve (12) stocks, five (5) glaces, and eleven (11) sweet and savory flavored oils. If one does not already own Keller's `Bouchon', this chapter makes this book worth its price to an amateur cook. There are some very common items such as beef, chicken, and fish stock and simple syrup and brioche, but there are also some uncommon items such as mushroom stock, lobster oil, and Beurre Monte. If you have ever made chestnut soup with a vegetarian guest, you can see the value of a mushroom stock.

This is a book of excellent recipes that I believe only amateur foodies and professionals will fully appreciate. The book's photography is sound, but not out of the ordinary. I found it odd that the author discusses his custom kitchen design at length and gives us no photos of this facility. The average list price of $35 is just about right for this good but not great book.

3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars tru: a cookbook from the legendary Chicago restaurant , August 25, 2005

By	Paul Barnard - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Great book
good photos
and great technical skills and also easy to read and use in the ktichen