On My Bookshelf
All us foodies love to talk about food; amateur stay-at-home cooks or professional high-end chefs, we all share this great passion.
Many of the questions I am asked revolve around the same thought – where did you get that idea? How did you decide what goes with what? Where can I get a great recipe for ______ ?
Experience is a great teacher, but every cook truly owes a huge debt of gratitude to those dedicated foodies who have meticulously documented their work by writing about food, giving us the benefit of their mistakes, successes, experiments and flashes of genius.
I have been studying, collecting, and depending on food books since I was a student. I add to my library constantly, looking for new ideas and ways to improve my work – I am always looking to improve my sweet dough recipe, for example.
That is why I am starting this regular feature, called ‘On My Bookshelf’. I am going to regularly review books that I use, and try to give you some idea of their value to me and my work. My reviews won’t be scholarly, with researched details about the writers, or history, or any of that; it’s not my goal here to become a professional book reviewer – there are lots of places to go for that kind of reviews. Rather, I will just let you know about each book’s usefulness to me, so you can decide for yourself if you need this book on your bookshelf.
I am going to use three basic criteria to tell you the pros and cons of each book, and determine whether I recommend it – the book’s content, it’s usefulness, and it’s ability to inspire me.
Content – I will try to let you know what kind of book it is, and what makes it different from other books available out there. I will let you know if it carries classic recipes, or modern techniques, or any other important information you may need.
Usefulness – I am a pastry chef, and i don’t really have much time for books which are not useful. When I was in school it used to bother me to hear the saying ‘pastry is a science, cooking is an art’, because I feel I am more an artist than a scientist! But as I get older, I realize it is true – pastry is completely reliant on recipes. So I will try to always let you know if the book is useful to me, and how it is useful; or what need it fills. I will tell you if I refer to it often, or hardly at all; and most importantly I will tell you whether the recipes work or not.
Inspiration – this is very important to me, and to most advanced chefs – it is why some pastry books sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars! Does the book have new ideas or techniques that I have used? Does it give me ideas that I can use in other situations, and add to my skill set?
After looking at these factors, I will rate it, and let you know if I recommend it.
The first book I am going to review is my latest favorite, the Flavor Bible; then I will add new reviews as I can. If you have any books that you want to recommend to me, or any comments on how you feel about these books, please let me know!