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(More customer reviews)My grandfather had a restaurant and cooked Sunday dinners for our family. As soon as I was "on my own" I began to cook, relying on James Beard, Julia Child's "Mastering..." and the great French Chef and New York Times columnist Pierre Franey. Then I discovered "Simply French", Patricia Wells classic presentation of "the cuisine of Joel Robuchon" to English-speaking audiences. That book has some fantastic recipes and I still use it often. I have been looking forward to meeting this latest addition to the Robuchon oeuvre.
First, the book is not a "coffee table" beautiful presentation such as Patricia Wells created. There are no photographs or illustrations. Second, we will not learn any Robuchon "secrets" for making fabulous foods. In the early going the recipes do not show anything new to any cook who is familiar with the basic idiom of French cuisine. However, this book does shine: the dessert section is a spectacular feast of ideas, for example the almond flour pastry crust recipes, paired with a variety of fruit fillings. I like to make waffles and there are two fine recipes for different types and techniques of waffles that I will make again. His strawberry Bavarian mousse is a recipe I am very much looking forward to creating. Robuchon also offers great recipes for using different meats such as rabbit (which is widely available in meat markets here in Texas). Robuchon offers fine recipes featuring various parts of the bunny with peppers, with prunes, with a muscadet sauce and with mustard sauces.
Without the aid of Ms. Wells, Robuchon seldom offers personal insights into the dishes presented here but he does offer sound and traditional recipes for poultry, pork, beef and veal and lamb, with the emphasis on bringing out the best of the basic flavors of many of these ingredients. Vegetables and seafood are by no means omitted and one can learn the basics of making stocks and building them into sauces. At a rough estimate, seventy-five percent of the book is devoted to splendid and basic French home cooking and to the recipes that support it. The whole introductory chapter is aimed at a basic discussion of setting up a kitchen (pots, pans, implements) and some ideas about building menus and pairing foods with wines. These latter subjects are presented in a somewhat hit or miss fashion, as if his collaborator captured sound bites here and there without finding the way to unify their content.
Each recipe is carefully and clearly explained in a concise step-by-step method as well.
So I was surprised: this book contains some fine new recipes but most of the text is devoted to teaching a home cook how to prepare good basic dishes using reliable rather than path-breaking recipes.
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