The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques, and Science of Good Cooking

There are only half a dozen or so cookbooks that I trust implicitly and recommend without hesitation; this book is one of them, and is clearly king of the hill. That makes this cookbook the best ever written. Not until I re-read this second edition did I realize what a terrible cook I am. Now, when I wish to know how something should be done, this is the book I reach for. This is not a comprehensive collection of all common recipes you will ever need, so I do not always find the recipe I need here. Note that many 'standard' recipes are absent; recipes are chosen for training value. Upon reading this book, it is rather hard not to be inspired to go out and become a better cook, no matter what your skill level. The original version of this book was a terse, didactic affair. Her information was so impeccable, that it began to be used in cooking schools as a text. With this in mind, the author re-wrote the book, adding a mountain of educational information, making a real textbook suitable for use in professional cooking schools. It is the best of its type. This new version, at 1200 pages, is double the length of the original. You will find many clever things not found anywhere else, viz a still-frozen sorbet, and a trick to measure the Baume of a syrup without a saccharometer. Almost all recipes have a sidebar that recommends specific wines to serve with each recipe. It has the courage to regularly recommend beer instead of wine due to the strong flavors of the respective recipe. The chapter on eggs was excellent. The first 20 pages have more stuff on properly cooking eggs than all of my other cookbooks put together, and this includes a couple of professional ones. It gives you much info that can only be learned from experience as a breakfast cook (and stuff you certainly will not find in any cookbook I know of), e.g. an egg cooked en cocotte is not only easier for kitchen staff to make, but looks a heck of a lot better than a real poached egg on the plate. Several times in the egg chapter, the author sent me dashing into the kitchen to check out her info. Some of her info was very different, and even exactly opposite of how I was trained in various restaurant kitchens. Darn if she wasn't right every time. If you have some foodservice experience, check out her recipes for creme anglaise, bavarian cream, and folding order for foam-based cakes. This chapter also has what amounts to a souffle master class. The sauce chapter has special merit. Kamman offers a complete discourse about history, preparation techniques, and proper usage of classic sauces. Interestingly, she offers very few actual recipes; contrast this with a standard cooking textbook with dozens of recipes with the student's head swimming with mother and secondary sauces and remembering what ingredient turns what sauce into what other sauce. This is the only book that admits reality: sauce espagnol is too expensive to make in a restaurant, brown stock is of academic interest to cul

Your spouse is gone for the weekend with your children. How do you spend your time? If it is drinking a little too much wine and looking through cookbooks, this is the book for you. Kamman is a little self important, but she really loves to cook. Her love of food is infectuous and inspiring. I was bored with following cookbooks that telll you how to do things (any idiot can follow instructions). Kamman tells you WHY you need do things. I was looking for a book that would take me to the "next step" of cooking, and this is it. This book goes into a little too much detail, even for me. But I love it. I would rather have the information and not need it, than need the information and not have it. Please take notice that I am a little weird.

If you only want to buy one cookbook, you must buy this one. It's got absolutely everything you could ever want to know about cooking. The really great thing is that it goes from very simple to amazingly complex, so you don't necessarily have to jump straight into making a veloute sauce from scratch right away. You can sort of adjust for complexity. Also, I really like the wine recommendations that come alongside most of the recipes. They're dead on. It's a great book for the money. Just try comparing it to any of the other really exhaustive cookbooks out there.

This is the best transatlantic summary of French cooking since Julia Child's _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_. It goes a step beyond that book (and those like it) by providing exhaustive technical and historical information on the recipes and products, and the author's distinct opinions on cooking and eating. The new edition differs from the first one in many respects, including the elimination of pates (terrines only in this one) and the recipe for demi-glace (the real thing, not the fake stuff found in restaurants these days). She also adds new recipes to address contemporary tastes for Asian and Latin American flavors, but the core is still French. The cover depicts Kamman whisking a generous amount of butter (hooray!) into a sauce. Great reading too, and no glossy pics.