On Cooking: Techniques From Expert Chefs, Trade Version ... (ISBN 0130618659)

Amazon.com Review:
On Cooking is a celebration of the culinary arts that will benefit anyone considering cooking as a profession, as well as serious amateur cooks who want to improve their skills--particularly in butchering and charcuterie. Wolfgang Puck, Mark Miller, and Alfred Portale are just 3 of the 30 chefs who share with us their combined wisdom and know-how. This mighty encyclopedia covers a wealth of subjects, including nutrition, food safety, and standardizing a recipe. The book does assume a fair amount of culinary knowledge and expertise when it comes to proper textures, cooking times, and accurately judging "doneness." There are recipes for more than 700 dishes, including classics such as Turnedos Rossini and Crabcakes Benedict--as well as the basics for making great sauces, stocks, soups, pastry, and so forth. New-style cooking also features prominently, with a delicious recipe for Duck Prosciutto with Fresh Mango being a fine example. On Cooking: Techniques from Expert Chefs is quite an achievement.

Culinary Arts.:
One of the many neat features of studying at Cornell University is that, even if you're not enrolled in its famous School of Hotel Administration, you can attend one of the cooking and wine tasting classes organized especially for non-Hotel School students, and get at least a flavor of the five star culinary instruction provided by the chefs teaching at that school. (That is, you can do so if you're willing to get up an extra hour or two early on the morning of non-Hotel School student enrollment, and if you're lucky enough to beat the crowds or at least slip in as a substitute participant.) In addition to numerous recipes and pieces of valuable advice, information and memories - particularly of the last night, on which we had to put together a four-course meal, fine dining style, complete with menu, garnishments and perfectly laid table - Cornell's "cooking class" has enriched my kitchen by two items I have since found it very hard to do without: A professional grade chef's knife, and Sarah Labensky's and Alan Hause's "On Cooking," which we used as our textbook. Much more than that, however, "On Cooking" is in fact a near-complete reference on everything related to the culinary arts, from the history of cooking to new foods developed in the 20th century, from sanitation and safety to nutritional values, from recipe writing to menu composition, from knifes and other pieces of equipment to edible kitchen staples, from the principles of cooking to various techniques and food presentation - and of course, on every conceivable kind of food, from coffee, tea, spices and condiments to dairy products, stocks, sauces, soups, red and white meats, charcuterie, fish and shellfish, eggs, vegetables, potatoes, grains, pasta, salads, fruits, sandwiches, hors d'oeuvres, canapes, breads, pies, pastries, cookies, cakes, custards, creams and frozen desserts. Along the way, numerous tables, diagrams and pictures illustrate and exemplify the given information, making it easy to digest and memorize. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography and recommendations for further reading, and a detailed glossary of essential culinary terms. Recipes are chosen to match individual chapters, and provide both a practical application and a more profound understanding of the respective chapters' subject matter. They include everything from American and international classics (assorted muffins, scrambled eggs and eggs benedict, focaccia, club, Reuben and other sandwiches, minestrone, French onion soup, gazpacho, New England clam chowder, Cesar, Roquefort, Thousand Islands and other dressings, various mayonnaises, coleslaw, cobb salad, Asian chicken salad, salade Nicoise, potato salad, Thai noodle salad, spanakopitta, grilled portabella mushrooms, carpaccio, lemon curd, hummus, various salsas, guacamole, pesto, hollandaise, bolognese, barbecue, bordelaise, bearnaise, Madeira, mornay, tartar, bechamel and other sauces, various stocks, broths and consommes, polenta, various kebabs, pilafs and risottos, paella, falafel, quiche lorraine, pizza, cannoli alla siciliana, macaroni and cheese, fettuccine Alfredo, clams casino, gravlax, oysters Rockefeller, fillet of sole bonne femme, matzo balls, duck confit, chorizo, chicken cacciatore, coq au vin, chicken curry, pico de gallo, chicken and veal fricassees, osso buco, chili con carne, Swedish meatballs, assorted burgers, meatloaf, T-bone, pepper and other steaks, cassoulet, chateaubriand, tournedos Rossini, beef Stroganoff, entrecote bordelaise, boeuf bourguignon, Hungarian goulash, ratatouille, baked beans, spaetzle, gnocchi, hush puppies, roesti potatoes, gratin dauphinois, baked potatoes, crepes, applesauce, New York cheesecake, sabayon, frangipane, assorted pies, tarts and tortes, various meringues and sorbets, creme brulee, chocolate mousse, chocolate angel food cake, sponge cake, brownies, ladyfingers, Madeleines, toll house cookies, gingerbread cookies, buche de noel, and spiced cider) to more unusual dishes such as: Chilled cherry soup Perfumed shrimp consomme Beet vinaigrette Shallot curry oil Walnut pesto Nopal cactus salsa Pink peppercorn beurre blanc Crayfish butter Zucchini bread Potato cheddar cheese bread Salmon and sea bass terrine with spinach and basil Salmon croquettes Grilled red snapper burger with mango ketchup Tex-Mex turkey sausage Sauted pork medallions with red pepper and citrus Marinated loin of venison roasted with mustard Roast pheasant with cognac and apples Stuffed wontons with apricot sauce Wild rice and cranberry stuffing Goat cheese ravioli in herbed cream sauce Spicy sweet potato and chestnut gratin Grits and cheddar souffle Potato-ginger puree Cilantro puree Grilled seckel pear with sherry bacon vinaigrette Balsamic raspberries Figs with berries and honey mousse Kirsch mousse Pistachio citrus cheesecake Chocolate flourless cake English muffin loaves Oatmeal stout ice cream Quince jam At 1100+ pages a veritable brick, despite its size "On Cooking" has become as much a key part of my kitchen as my chef's knife, my tea infusers, and various other pieces of equipment. I don't harbor any intentions of becoming a professional chef (nor any aspirations to even remotely that level of culinary skills), but I love to cook, and this is one of the cookbooks I'd be least likely to part with - ever. "Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen." - Robert Burton, British author (1621). Also recommended: Around the World Cookbook Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant: Ethnic and Regional Recipes from the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant (Cookery) Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006

For future chefs and instructors:
I use this book as a guide in my cooking school. This is a book with a professional focus, not for the home cook. Most of the recipes are made in large quantities. Great for chefs, culinary arts students, caterers or anyone running a food operation looking for excellent reference and techniques.

Excellent resource:
On Cooking is an excellent resource for basic and mid level food knowledge. Besides recipes, On Cooking provides insights into food safety, nutrition, menu planning, history, knife skills and many other basics. On Cooking also contains many useful and tasty recipes to reinforce the skills presented in the book. On Cooking is an excellent "general" cookbook containing everything from salad dressings to desert. You should note that if you are a student and this is a required text, there are 2 versions of On Cooking under each edition. One being the complete version sold to institutions and another (probably available on Amazon) with a couple chapters removed and having a green cover instead of white. I'm not sure why this is done but you should know what your getting when you but it.

On Cooking:
Excellant how to text. Covers all cooking methods and foods. We used it as a text in Intro to Culanary Arts at the local Vocational School. I will use it forever as a reference.

Good for learning or re-learning the basics:
If you are interesting in learning the basics of cooking, this is a great buy. The book goes into great detail about sauces, desserts, main courses, etc., and builds a good foundation for learning more complicated cooking methods. Recipes for classic dishes are included, though they are in "bulk" quantities. If you're not cooking for at least 25, you'll need to adjust the quantities to suit your needs. This is a textbook, and it reads like one, but if you're interested in learning the fundamentals, I recommend this book.