Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180050 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1080 pages

Synopsis
Today, Ducasse feeds his passion for cooking through restaurants all over the world and a professional-level cooking school. He is now ready to bring his know-how and enthusiasm to professional chefs and experienced home cooks, providing 700 recipes from French and Mediterranean cuisine that incorporate 100 basic ingredients and use 10 major cooking styles. Each dish is described in full, with recipes for accompaniments included; complete instructions for plating the entire dish are given as well. An extensive appendix offers an encyclopedia of ingredients as well as basic recipes (sauces, stocks, compound butters, and so on). Written in collaboration with five acclaimed French chefs and illustrated with more than 1,000 photographs and original drawings, Grand Livre de Cuisine will be an indispensable reference - and inspiration - for years to come.

Customer Reviews

This book is not for inexperienced cooks
Alain Ducasse is one of the greatest chefs in the world. Therefore, when the book is described as being for, "..professional chefs and experienced home cooks" it means just that. However, follow the recipes closely and you will create some amazing meals. There may be techniques of which you are not aware, but isn't one of the wonders of cooking the ability to learn new things? If you learn how to use this book properly, you cannot help but become a much better cook. This is not for the part-time, 5 minute, cook. There are many excellent books to cover that area of cooking.

Bon Apetit!

Alain Ducasse's Culinary Dictionary
Review of Alain Ducasse's Culinary Dictionary

Hard to know how far culinary gods can go for further recognition when their empires are booming. I was truly disappointed by this tome, which should have been ambitiously wonderful had it been given more consideration and time to perfect.

Perhaps it would like to be an encyclopedia but rather seems to this reader to be intense cookbook trying to cover all fancy gastronomic bases. One can, of course, get ideas but recipes appear not properly tested so you need to have a serious command of the kitchen to find your way with stocks, sauces, details of the dish etc. In this way, the average serious cook may feel intimidated. After seven hundred recipes, I rather doubt too many copies will have that worn-in feeling a great cookbook develops when used and loved.

The translation into English is full of mistakes. Once remaindered for a good price - the book will be worth it for gorgeous photographs. The original or updated Larousse Gastronomique from 1996 is full of cross references, fun, traditional, inspiring and anything you want it to be in comparison except perhaps his presentation of so-called `haute, haute' cuisine. Hard to know how much Ducasse wanted to look like the king along with the five chefs who assisted in this endeavor. How much more does he need to show off.

As a serious foodie, serious amateur chef for thirty-five years and writer, I prefer to rave not demote. In this case, sadly, the book might do better as an impressive doorstop with a top brand name.

Victoria Oscarsson
oscarsson@utanet.at
Vienna Austria