Product Description

"Leith's Techniques Bible" is the ultimate cookery reference book. Here is all the information taught during the year-long diploma course at Leith's School of Food and Wine. Learn how to prepare meat and fish, make perfect pastry and bread, as well as equip a kitchen. Understand what makes recipes work and what has happened when they haven't. With answers to every cookery question from how to make perfect mashed potatoes to making a spun sugar cage, this is an indispensable book for everyone from the novice cook to the experienced chef.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15090 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 800 pages

Review
Founded in 1975, Leiths School of Food and Wine has trained many professional and amateur cooks and is now recognised as a centre of culinary excellence mixing classical tradition with fresh innovation. This is the ultimate reference guide to culinary techniques. Rivalling the indomitable Le Cordon Bleu, it offers advice on every facet of the chef's world: menu planning and quantity calculation, using specific ingredients such as chocolate, caramel and custard, how to prepare and carve meat and what knife to use, pastry making and much, much more. In clear, concise prose it imparts the years of knowledge and expertise of the two authors, both Leiths educated, who in Leiths tradition are keen to encourage a genuine enthusiasm for the subject. Including recipes and advice on why things can go wrong and how to correct them, this would be a gem of a gift for a serious cook keen to learn more on the subject. - Lucy Watson

Synopsis
"Leith's Techniques Bible" is the ultimate cookery reference book. Here is all the information taught during the year-long diploma course at Leith's School of Food and Wine. Learn how to prepare meat and fish, make perfect pastry and bread, as well as equip a kitchen. Understand what makes recipes work and what has happened when they haven't. With answers to every cookery question from how to make perfect mashed potatoes to making a spun sugar cage, this is an indispensable book for everyone from the novice cook to the experienced chef.

About the Author
Susan Spaull trained as a chef at Cordon Bleu and Leith's School of Food and Wine, London . After running her own catering and cookery demonstration business for 10 years, Susan returned to Leith's in 1995 as a teacher and demonstrator. She is also the author of IDEAL HOME ENTERTAINING. Susan lives in London and Colchester with her family. Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne trained at Leith's School and then worked at the Bibendums Restaurant in London. She also ran a free-lance catering business before joining Leith's as a teacher. Lucinda currently lives Edinburgh with her family.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive quide.
This is a fantastic book that covers cooking and cooking skills. It is a fantastic reference, a great example of this is I wanted a hollandaise sauce recipe and the book mentions three differnet methods depending on the amount of people you are cooking for. Excellent is the only word for it and it allows you to cook in your own style with the tips/knowledge of a chef. I would like to read the book in bed from cover to cover, but I think my wife would leave me if I did.... It is a little bit sad I suppose.

Cooking course made easy
If you master Leiths techniques, baking and cookery bible you will have become one of the great cooks. I'm still working on it.

A useful addition to your collection
My reason for purchasing this book was to break away from most cook books that teach you little more than how to replicate a certain recipe. I wanted to spread my culinary wings and have some useful knowledge to allow me to "go it alone" and this was recommended to me. Alas I found this book dissapointing from that perspective.

The book does contain some techniques, and it does have a useful few lines after each section tellling you "what went wrong if", however I found the book in general to be more of a history of certain ingredients followed by pages and pages of recipes. The so called "techniques" are rarely encountered and too poorly illustrated to allow you to actually learn whats being described.

There are very useful sections on menu creation, kitchen planning and time planning. The sections on equipment and preparation are frankly awesome. If the authors applied that level of attention to the recipes I would be a happy bunny. If it included chapters on techniques rather than the odd paragraph and clear colour photos rather than line drawings I would have happily paid twice RRP for it.

As it is, the book will be an expensive reference piece sitting on my book shelf. It will absolutely come in handy for you, however if you want a book that will teach you the fundamentals of cooking (rather than recipe recreation) then I would suggest you look elsewhere.