Books

The French Menu Cookbook
Cheese Board: The Collective Works - Recipes from the Cheese Board and Pizza Collectives
The Casual Vineyard Table
Feeding Baby: Simple, Healthy Recipes for Babies and Their Families
Island Cooking: Recipes from the Caribbean
The Fibromyalgia Cookbook: More Than 120 Easy and Delicious Recipes
Cooking Without Milk: Milk-free and Lactose-free Recipes
The Joy of Juicing: Creative Cooking with Your Juicer
Pocket Guide to Fortified and Sweet Wines (Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guides S.)
Real Wine: the rediscovery of natural winemaking
Superherbs: Herbs for Health and Healing
Tuscany and Its Wines
Crush New Australian Wine Book
Wines of California (Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guides S.)
Wines of the Pacific Northwest: A Contemporary Guide to the Wines, Regions and Producers
The Complete Book of Spices (The Complete Book)
Wines of Spain (Mitchell Beazley Wine Guides S.)
Wines of Italy (Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guides S.)
Kitchen Genius: 500 Tips You Can't Live Without
Retro Cookbooks: Hostess with the Mostess: A Galaxy of Retro Recipes
Casseroles
Country Bread
The Conran Cookbook
The Jewish Kitchen
The Tapas Cookbook: Seventy Delicious Recipes to Capture the Flavours of Spain

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Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
Showing its age
not your run of the mill cookbook
A Classic You Must Have
A good idea book

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook
Alice Waters
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Chez Panisse Café Cookbook
Chez Panisse Vegetables
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Chez Panisse Fruit

ASIN: 0679758186
Release Date: 1995-04-18

Book Description

This timeless addition to the Chez Panisse paperback cookbook library assembles 120 of the restaurant's best menus, including galas, festivals, and special occasion meals that have become such gustatory celebrations. A full range of menus is featured, from picnics to informal suppers. Line drawings.

Customer Reviews:

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook.......2006-10-30

American foodies owe a debt of gratitude to Alice Waters. She is the patron saint of California cooking, or new American cooking, or whatever you want to call it. She's the one who gave us goat cheese croutons, roasted beets, mache, and so many other now-ubiquitous dishes. "Former Chez Panisse chef" is just as much a brand name as the brand named meats and produce she serves at her restaurant.

For those reasons, I actually read The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook cover to cover, the way one reads an MFK Fisher book - to get an understanding of the cook's philosophy as well as recipes. Both women write in a formal style and have strong ideas about ingredients, preparation, presentation, and consumption. Unfortunately, Water's writing is more spare, perhaps as befits a patron saint, and lacks the pithy humor that leavens Fisher's books. Reading her prose is more like learning a lesson than being entertained.

Which may be why this book struck me as an essential book for someone who wanted to learn to be a restaurant chef, but not particularly useful for someone cooking at home. Most of the menus require some final preparation of the next dish after the preceding one has been served - possible in a restaurant, but not much fun at a dinner party if the cook wants to eat with the guests.

The individual dishes are also complicated or labor-intensive, causing me to often think as I read, "I'd eat that if someone made it for me." Waters is particularly fond of leg of lamb, lobsters, and quail and her recipes for these show the difficulty in preparing them at home. First, most of the lamb recipes call for spit-roasting the leg of lamb. She even explains how to build a spit. In my spit-deficient kitchen, those recipes are not possible.

Second, while I find a steamed lobster to be a wonderful treat on a special occasion, Waters takes the fun out of it with instructions to semi-cook a lobster, then remove the meat and make a fumet with the shells - a process involving roasting the shells, making the broth, putting the shells in a blender, then straining the whole thing through a fine sieve - then finish cooking the lobster. Whew!

Finally, quail do not usually show up on my dinner table, but if they did, I do not think I'd have the dedication to follow Walter's recipes. In most of her quail recipes she gives similar instructions: "Marinate the quail in a cool place overnight . . . turning the quail four to five times during this time." No little boney bird is worth losing a night of sleep.

Reading this Menu Cookbook made me want to spring for dinner at Chez Panisse, but it did not make me want to don an apron and start cooking.

Showing its age.......2003-04-06

There's a lot of good sense and good food in this book, but the California style is getting a bit past mark of mouth, if you'll permit an archaic phrase/pun. I've made a few of these dishes, and they're fine, but somehow this isn't the book I pick up and flip through, asking myself, "what's for dinner?" With Jody Adams, Daniel Boulud, and Pat Wells on the shelf, I'm not sure I'd call this a "must have" addition. But, if you're a Waters fan, go for it .

not your run of the mill cookbook.......2002-12-28

This is one of Alice Waters' early books, and it shows, as compared to the later ones. Many of the recipes are complicated, and involve ingredients that are not easy to come by, even in NYC. I read it more for amusement. The later books (Vegetables, Fruit, Cafe), are much more user friendly and result in great dishes. I wouldn't recommend this to someone new to her philosophy of cooking, or who doesn't have serious kitchen experience.

A Classic You Must Have.......2001-01-08

There's a special reason we go to the books of the great chefs. It's not to throw a meal together in 2 minutes, or to make sure we will find a dish we can cook with no trouble in two pans in our kitchens at home. It's to look inside an imagination and see what someone can achieve with ingredients and passion when it's what they do all day, every day, with devotion.

As Nigella Lawson said about another writer, "I often cook, if not directly from it, then inspired by it (which is more telling)". This is a truly inspiring work, one you will go back to again and again. From the buckwheat crepes with glaced fruit and eau de vie, to the amazing amazing fish soup, simple dishes with corn and over the top reworking of french classics, the judgement of flavours and textures is perfect. Ignore Water's fetish about perfect lettuce, read it, and just go to the kitchen. 10 stars out of five, the best of all the Waters books.

A good idea book.......1998-04-03

I enjoy reading this cookbook more to gather ideas than to find recipes I want to cook. Alice Waters describes how she and her team at Chez Panisse created many of their memorable meals, what inspired them, the problem that arose, and how they worked around those problems. What she doesn't write about as much is the actual process of preparing the food--the recipes. Of course, for some of these menus, it would be virtually impossible to create in a home kitchen, or to have access to the ingredients (a pig feed a diet heavy with garlic comes to mind). Good ideas for the knowledgable cook.

The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France--Season by Delicious Season--In Beautifully Composed Menus for American Dining and Entertaining by an American Living in

Average customer rating:

A great supplement to Simple French Food
Possibly the most sophisticated cookbook in English

The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France--Season by Delicious Season--In Beautifully Composed Menus for American Dining and Entertaining by an American Living in
Richard Olney , and Paul Bertolli
Manufacturer: Ten Speed Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Simple French Food
Lulu's Provencal Table
French Provincial Cooking (Penguin Classics)
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Cooking by Hand

ASIN: 1580083854

Book Description

As those who knew him will attest, Francophile and food writer Richard Olney was one of a kind—a writerly cook who had a tremendous influence on American cooking via his well-worn cottage on a hillside in Provence. Born in the Midwest in 1927 and drawn to France at the tender age of twenty-four, Olney was unapologetically attracted to the style, flavors, and tastes of French cooking when most Americans were smitten by the wonders of the new prepared foods in their markets. With unrelenting passion and precision, Olney studied and explored the cuisine, carefully documenting all he had learned for future generations of chefs, cooks, and food lovers. His first of several landmark works, THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK was well ahead of its time with its authentic French recipes and then-unheard-of seasonal approach to cooking. Little did we know then that THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK would provide inspiration for Alice Waters and her compatriots as they built the groundwork for a culinary revolution in America. Brimming with the honest and enlightening explanations of how the French really cook and the 150-plus authentic recipes, this book is a masterful resource that is a must for every serious cook.

Customer Reviews:

A great supplement to Simple French Food.......2007-04-15

This book is a great addition to Olney's classic Simple French Food.

Possibly the most sophisticated cookbook in English.......2006-08-12

Looking back to 1970, the year this book was first published, puts its sophistications in context and underscores the enormity of its contributions. America was deep in culinary ignorance, eating out of cans and supplementing that metal-tinged blandness with gut-busting mountains of artificial 'foods'. America was lost somehwere between the post-war meat-and-potatoes era and the chemical concoctions of the 80s and beyond. Small glimmers of possibility illuminated the occassional suburban cocktail party, when hostesses under the influence of Julia Child trotted out a few hotel-food hors d'oeuvres, and a few ethnic enclaves still held up a candle of flavor, but America was largely a culinary wasteland. Servings were large, everything was bland, and mealtime had become TV time. Without flavor or family, American meals were effectively dead.

It was into this lunar food landscape that Richard Olney introduced several revolutionary ideas at once in The French Menu Cookbook. I should say that he RE-introduced these ideas, because they had existed, with varying degrees of sophistication, for as long as people had eaten, but an industrial food system had interrupted that great cultural memory. This book's structure is its message: the food is introduced not by category, but by course within menus, and the menus themselves are organized by season. For those of us who have heard the gospel of seasonality and regional availability and freshness from Alice Waters and Paul Bertolli, at al, it can be easy to forget that this idea is still, 36 years after The French Menu Cookbook, radical, and so against the grain of the industrial food complex as to be almost an act of treason. But Richard Olney's way with food started that revolution at possibly the most inoportune moment in Americna history.

A sample menu says it all:

An Informal Spring Dinner

Hors d'oeuvre of Crudites
Shrimp Quiche
Coq au Vin
Steamed Potatoes
Wild Green Salad
Cheeses
Flamri with Raspberry Sauce

all of the above matched with appropriate wines.

Notice the careful development through the courses, the constant shifts of flavor to keep the palate alive, the seasonal ingredients... All of this was deeply shocking at the time.

But there's one more big surprise: this book is every bit as good today as it was in 1970. It doesn't feel even remotely dated, like Julia Child's books do. Maybe, in hueing so faithfully to the principles of freshness, seasonality, and regional availability, Olney tapped into something timeless. And so this book was a classic the day it was published, and remains one of the most sophisticated, satisfying, and inspiring cookbooks ever published.

Very highly recommended.

Cooking the French Way: Revised and Expanded to Include New Low-Fat and Vegetarian Recipes (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks)

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Cooking the French Way: Revised and Expanded to Include New Low-Fat and Vegetarian Recipes (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks)
Lynne Marie Waldee
Manufacturer: Lerner Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0822541068

Boulestin's Round-the-Year Cookbook (Dover Cookbook Series)

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Boulestin's Round-the-Year Cookbook (Dover Cookbook Series)
X. Marcel Boulestin
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (The Cook's Classic Library)

ASIN: 048623214X

Book Description

The author has selected surprisingly simple French recipes for a wide variety of dishes: saumon Bretonne, moules Bordelaise, sauce mousseline, gigot en daube, souffle au chocolat, omelette Nicoise, coquilles St. Jacques, bouillabaisse, creme de pamplemousse, and many more. Recipes are arranged by month of the year to make use of foods in season.

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The French menu cookbook;: The food and wine of France-season by delicious season-in beautifully composed menus for American dining and entertaining by an American living in Paris and Provence
Richard Olney
Manufacturer: Simon and Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Simple French Food

ASIN: 0671203657

Behoteguy De Teramond's Low-calorie French Cookbook, With Season-by-season Diet Menus

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Behoteguy De Teramond's Low-calorie French Cookbook, With Season-by-season Diet Menus
Behoteguy; Illustrations by Ivens, Dorothy De Teramond
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IYEKT0

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Behoteguy De Teramonds Low-Calorie French Cookbook, with Season-by-Season Diet Menus
Behoteguy De Teramond
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000K6S1RS

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The French Menu Cookbook -
Richard Olney -
Manufacturer: David R. Godine Publishing -
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QS9F16

Complete dinners from The French chef cookbook

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Complete dinners from The French chef cookbook
Julia Child
Manufacturer: Bantam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Low-calorie French cookbook,: With season-by-season diet menus

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Low-calorie French cookbook,: With season-by-season diet menus
BeÌhoteÌguy de TeÌramond
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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