Building upon Timothy Ferriss's internationally successful "4-hour" franchise, The 4-Hour Chef transforms the way we cook, eat, and learn. Featuring recipes and cooking tricks from world-renowned chefs, and interspersed with the radically counterintuitive advice Ferriss's fans have come to expect, The 4-Hour Chef is a practical but unusual guide to mastering food and cooking, whether you are a seasoned pro or a blank-slate novice.
With Think Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio has created a new kind of cookbook. Rather than list a series of restaurant recipes, he uses simple steps to deconstruct a chef's creative process, making it easily available to any home cook. He starts with techniques: What's roasting, for example, and how do you do it in the oven or on top of the stove? He also gets you comfortable with braising, sautéing, and making stocks and sauces. Next he introduces simple "ingredients" -- roasted tomatoes, say, or braised artichokes -- and tells you how to use them in a variety of ways. So those easy roasted tomatoes may be turned into anything from a vinaigrette to a caramelized tomato tart, with many delicious options in between. In a section called Trilogies, Tom takes three ingredients and puts them together to make one dish that's quick and other dishes that are increasingly more involved. As Tom says, "Juxtaposed in interesting ways, these ingredients prove that the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts," and you'll agree once you've tasted the Ragout of Asparagus, Morels, and Ramps or the Baked Free-Form "Ravioli" -- both dishes made with the same trilogy of ingredients. The final section of the books offers simple recipes for components -- from zucchini with lemon thyme to roasted endive with whole spices to boulangerie potatoes -- that can be used in endless combinations. Written in Tom's warm and friendly voice and illustrated with glorious photographs of finished dishes, Think Like a Chef will bring out the master chef in all of us.
Daniel Boulud is a pioneer of our contemporary food culture-from the reinvention of French food to the fine dining revolution in America. A modern man with a classical foundation and a lifetime of experience, Boulud speaks with passion about the vocation of creating food. Part memoir, part advice book, part recipe book, this updated edition celebrating of the art of cooking will continue to delight and enlighten all chefs, from passionate amateurs to serious professionals.
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME The back must slave to feed the belly. . . . In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen. Here readers will find all the details, in rapid-fire succession, of what it takes to deliver an exceptional plate of food—the journey to excellence by way of exhaustion. Told in second-person narrative, Sous Chef is an immersive, adrenaline-fueled run that offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the food service industry, allowing readers to briefly inhabit the hidden world behind the kitchen doors, in real time. This exhilarating account provides regular diners and food enthusiasts alike a detailed insider’s perspective, while offering fledgling professional cooks an honest picture of what the future holds, ultimately giving voice to the hard work and dedication around which chefs have built their careers. In a kitchen where the highest standards are upheld and one misstep can result in disaster, Sous Chef conjures a greater appreciation for the thought, care, and focus that go into creating memorable and delicious fare. With grit, wit, and remarkable prose, Michael Gibney renders a beautiful and raw account of this demanding and sometimes overlooked profession, offering a nuanced perspective on the craft and art of food and service. Praise for Sous Chef “This is excellent writing—excellent!—and it is thrilling to see a debut author who has language and story and craft so well in hand. Though I would never ask my staff to read my own book, I would happily require them to read Michael Gibney’s.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “[Michael] Gibney has the soul of a poet and the stamina of a stevedore. . . . Tender and profane, his book will leave you with a permanent appreciation for all those people who ‘desire to feed, to nourish, to dish out the tasty bits of life.’”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific nuts-and-bolts account of the real business of cooking as told from the trenches. No nonsense. This is what it takes.”—Anthony Bourdain “A wild ride, not unlike a roller coaster, and the reader experiences all the drama, tension, exhilaration, exhaustion and relief that accompany cooking in an upscale Manhattan restaurant.”—USA Today “Vibrantly written.”—Entertainment Weekly “Sizzling . . . Such culinary experience paired with linguistic panache is a rarity.”—The Daily Beast “Reveals the high-adrenaline dance behind your dinner.”—NPR
Learn to cook from the best chefs in America Some people say you can only learn to cook by doing. So Adam Roberts, creator of the award-winning blog The Amateur Gourmet, set out to cook in 50 of America's best kitchens to figure out how any average Joe or Jane can cook like a seasoned pro. From Alice Waters's garden to José Andrés's home kitchen, it was a journey peppered with rock-star chefs and dedicated home cooks unified by a common passion, one that Roberts understands deeply and transfers to the reader with flair, thoughtfulness, and good humor: a love and appreciation of cooking. Roberts adapts recipes from Hugh Acheson, Lidia Bastianich, Roy Choi, Harold Dieterle, Sara Moulton, and more. The culmination of that journey is a cookbook filled with lessons, tips, and tricks from the most admired chefs in America, including how to properly dress a salad, bake a no-fail piecrust, make light and airy pasta, and stir-fry in a wok, plus how to improve your knife skills, eliminate wasteful food practices, and create recipes of your very own. Most important, Roberts has adapted 150 of the chefs' signature recipes into totally doable dishes for the home cook. Now anyone can learn to cook like a pro!
James Beard–award-winning pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini returns to basics in this complete baking course in a book with everything a home baker needs to confidently turn out 150+ sweets with sophisticated flavors. Iuzzini starts by sharing his expert tips on fundamentals such as making caramel and mixing butter cakes, with accompanying step-by-step photographs, before moving on to recipes for Salted Caramels and Sticky Caramel Date Cake. After mastering the simple method for making light-as-air meringues, anyone can make ethereal espresso marshmallows, mile-high soufflés, and chewy French macaron sandwich cookies. Readers can finally expand their cake and ice cream horizons to embrace flavors as thrilling as those in Brown Sugar-Molasses Layer Cake and Bitter Orange Ice Cream. The 250 photographs include both instructive technique shots to reassure bakers at every turn as well as stunning photographs of the ready-to-eat treats. With Sugar Rush, baking at home has never been easier—or more inviting.
Get an advance sneak peek at Once Upon a Chef, the Cookbook by Jenn Segal! Once upon a time Jenn Segal went to culinary school and worked in fancy restaurants. One marriage and two kids later she created Once Upon a Chef, the popular blog that applies her tried-and-true chef skills with delicious, fresh, and approachable ingredients for family-friendly meals. Today, Jenn cooks dinner for her family every night. In this special sneak preview, she shares 5 recipes from her new book, with 95 additional recipes in the full cookbook. With the authority of a professional chef and the practicality of a busy working mom, Jenn teaches you to improve your cooking one recipe at a time, with helpful tips on topics such as how to season correctly with salt, how to balance flavors, and how to make the most of leftovers.
The creator and host of Food Network’s Good Eats updates his award-winning primer on essential cooking techniques—now with fifteen new recipes! First published in 2002, Alton Brown’s I'm Just Here For the Food received the James Beard Foundation/KitchenAid Book Award for best reference book. This revised and updated edition features fifteen brand-new recipes, along with everything that made the original a classic kitchen instruction manual. Each of the book’s fifteen sections is a mini-master class on a given cooking method—from pan searing to pressure cooking, stewing, steaming, and more. And each includes a "master" recipe that epitomizes the technique along with a selection of recipes that demonstrate its range. Plus Brown shares a plethora of fascinating food facts, history, lore, and science.
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is a certified "foodie" classic. In it, Fergus Henderson -- whose London restaurant, St. John, is a world-renowned destination for people who love to eat "on the wild side" -- presents the recipes that have marked him out as one of the most innovative, yet traditional, chefs. Here are recipes that hark back to a strong rural tradition of delicious thrift, and that literally represent Henderson's motto, "Nose to Tail Eating" -- be they Pig's Trotter Stuffed with Potato, Rabbit Wrapped in Fennel and Bacon, or his signature dish of Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad. For those of a less carnivorous bent, there are also splendid dishes such as Deviled Crab; Smoked Haddock, Mustard, and Saffron; Green Beans, Shallots, Garlic, and Anchovies; and to keep the sweetest tooth happy, there are gloriously satisfying puddings, notably the St. John Eccles Cakes, and a very nearly perfect Chocolate Ice Cream.
