"The Professional Chef" Review
For a long time I'd been lusting after this gigantic textbook/cookbook by the CIA (Culinary Institute of America... not that whole Central Intelligence Agency... anyways...). It's this Signals and Systems Engineering Textbook sized cookbook / howto / basic of hot cooking. Instead of telling you that you should take a salmon fillet of 6 oz and use this kind of poaching water for this amount of time. It's more a a general here's how you do something. Take 2 parts of stock or water, with some spices like one of these, and then heat the water to this temperature and cook until salmon is done.
I LOVE these kinds of books. I know the basics of cooking. I've been helping my mother in the kitchen since I was in diapers; and been successfully feeding myself for close to a decade. (OMG has it really been close to a decade already...) And if any of you actually know me in real life - you know I'm a starving ethopian child.
It's awesome and horrible all at the same time. The how tos and basics of the cooking chemistry at work are really great. They teach you a technique then give you a whole ton of recipies to try this technique out on. It's really well organized for someone who is serious about learning technique and how to cook things.
This is definiately not a beginner textbook. If you want step by step directions for what to do. If you want recipes that are portioned for four people, or if you really aren't interested in learning how to combine ingrediants and swap stuff out against each other - this is not the book for you. The reciepies are designed as if you were a caterer. Flipping through the book I found one recipe that the first ingrediant was "25lb of goat." Excuse me, I don't think I could even get 25lb of goat at my nearest supermarket. Nor for that matter do I have enough people to feed where 25lb of goat wouldn't last us 2 months, probably more. For one perosn, if you tried to consume that recipe in 2 months, that would be like 6 oz of goat a day, A DAY! I don't know about you, but most days I don't eat that much meat. My diet is actually lacking in protein now that I think about it. Maybe I should be eating more meat....
So, you have to be willing to scale the recipes to something reasonable for the home kitchen. You have to be interested in "real" cooking not just interesting reciepes. You have to be able to deal with ginormous ingrediant lists and know when you can substitute other stuff that is actually in your kitchen and when you can just leave it out all together. There's no way that I'm buyin 25 ingrediants for one recipes. I'll leave stuff out. But you have to know enough about what you are doing to be able to know what you can and can't leave out.
It's an awesome book. Great for learning technique, great for learning fancy awesome recipes, great book. Not for the beginner. I would recommend this book for anyone who knows what a mircoplane is.
I LOVE these kinds of books. I know the basics of cooking. I've been helping my mother in the kitchen since I was in diapers; and been successfully feeding myself for close to a decade. (OMG has it really been close to a decade already...) And if any of you actually know me in real life - you know I'm a starving ethopian child.
It's awesome and horrible all at the same time. The how tos and basics of the cooking chemistry at work are really great. They teach you a technique then give you a whole ton of recipies to try this technique out on. It's really well organized for someone who is serious about learning technique and how to cook things.
This is definiately not a beginner textbook. If you want step by step directions for what to do. If you want recipes that are portioned for four people, or if you really aren't interested in learning how to combine ingrediants and swap stuff out against each other - this is not the book for you. The reciepies are designed as if you were a caterer. Flipping through the book I found one recipe that the first ingrediant was "25lb of goat." Excuse me, I don't think I could even get 25lb of goat at my nearest supermarket. Nor for that matter do I have enough people to feed where 25lb of goat wouldn't last us 2 months, probably more. For one perosn, if you tried to consume that recipe in 2 months, that would be like 6 oz of goat a day, A DAY! I don't know about you, but most days I don't eat that much meat. My diet is actually lacking in protein now that I think about it. Maybe I should be eating more meat....
So, you have to be willing to scale the recipes to something reasonable for the home kitchen. You have to be interested in "real" cooking not just interesting reciepes. You have to be able to deal with ginormous ingrediant lists and know when you can substitute other stuff that is actually in your kitchen and when you can just leave it out all together. There's no way that I'm buyin 25 ingrediants for one recipes. I'll leave stuff out. But you have to know enough about what you are doing to be able to know what you can and can't leave out.
It's an awesome book. Great for learning technique, great for learning fancy awesome recipes, great book. Not for the beginner. I would recommend this book for anyone who knows what a mircoplane is.
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