ChefTalk.com › Cookbooks & Cookware › Cookbooks › Professional Training › Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America › Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America Reviews
Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America Reviews
Community Rating (1 review)
Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America
Featured Review
April 6, 2010 at 11:47 am
Reviewed by KYHeirloomer
Pros: Plenty of how-to and technique instructional material, ideal for the novice cook.
Cons: Recipes were not home-kitchen tested.
Cons: Recipes were not home-kitchen tested.
Written by Brook Elliott
If you’re a regular reader of the Cookbook Reviews forum you know how often there are requests for books suitable to novice cooks. This is understandable. For almost three generations, now, convenience has taken the place of ability, and microwaving has been a synonym for cooking.
For various reasons, men and women in the thousands have decided they need to learn real kitchen skills. Some do it out of health concerns, wanting to feed their families the freshest, highest quality, most chemical-free food possible. Others, influenced by the growing number of cooking shows, realize that preparing their own meals can be fun. Still others have turned to cooking for economic and social reasons.
Trouble is, they lack the gestalt our grandmothers learned at their mothers’ knees. So they search for cookbooks that can help make up that deficit.
Typical is the thread in which a Cheftalk member asked about the best cookbooks for amateurs (http://www.cheftalk.com/forum/thread/57998/best-book-for-amateur). There were several good recommendations made there. But conspicuous in their absence were any of the CIA cookbooks, particularly those in the At-Home series.
This is not unusual. In thread after thread dealing with basic books, the Culinary Institute of America titles get scant, if any, mention. Nor is this syndrome confined to Cheftalk. I asked about these books at several other cooking sites. The response was, for all intents and purposes, zero. Seemingly few people are aware of these books, and even fewer, apparently, have used them.
Those of us involved with Cheftalk’s review section began wondering about that. It’s kind of strange, we thought, that cookbooks from the preeminent culinary school in America are relatively unknown and unused by home cooks. It’s one thing that CIA’s technical and textbook offerings aren’t known to non-professionals. But we’re talking, here, about a group of publications aimed specifically at the home cook. So we decided, with the help and cooperation of the folks at John Wiley & Sons (the official publisher) and the CIA’s Book Publishing Division, to take an in-depth look at the At-Home series---both individually and as a group---to see what it’s all about.
The series started in 2003, when CIA decided to make it’s teaching methods and approaches available to a broader audience. “We wanted to take our professional textbooks to the home cook,” says Nathalie Fischer, CIA’s Director of Publishing. “These aren’t recipe books, per se, but techniques books that take the home cook to a new level.”
There currently are five titles in the series: Cooking At Home; Baking At Home; Hors d’Oeuvre at Home; Chocolates And Confections at Home; and the just published, Artisan Breads at Home.
Nine more titles are in the planning stages, with publication dates ranging from the beginning of next year through 2013. The first seven of these will deal with more tightly drawn topics, such as Healthy Cooking At Home. The final two will be revisions of the first two, under new titles, and are slated to become the flagship titles. We’ll discover why in a little while.
In the coming months we’ll be reviewing each of the extant titles, and will look at the new ones as they appear.
Each edition in the series is formatted the same way. The front of the book is all text, essentially following the lesson plans of the appropriate divisions. In those pages you learn the general techniques of the particular discipline. You’re shown how to manipulate ingredients, to work with the tools of the trade, to judge good products from bad ones. Each chapter is preceded by more in-depth instruction, dealing with the specifics of that topic.
The books are beautifully and amply illustrated with four-color photos, supplemented by charts, sidebars, and appendices that provide additional info.
Recipes each have a side-bar discussing the dish, providing tips for making it better, offering historical tid-bits, explaining culinary trends represented by the recipe, and referring back to the techniques sections where appropriate. Many of the recipes also include variations, so the novice cook learns how to ring changes on them. For example, the master recipe for Pork and Green Onion Stir-Fry includes, as variations, Beef with Red Onions and Peanuts, and Spicy Hunan Lamb. In the sidebars to them we are referred back to techniques for stir-frying, preparing garlic, cooking rice and pilaf, and rehydrating and plumping---all techniques used in those recipes.
When I first glanced through Cooking At Home, I was pleasantly surprised. Recently I’ve developed a specialized cooking school, in which the lessons are taught at the participants’ homes. There are several reasons for this approach, not the least of which is that it instills confidence in the students that they can, indeed, produce great meals using the stoves, and appliances, and cooking tools found in their own kitchens. Rather than merely teaching them recipes---a common method in cooking schools---my course is based on techniques. The fundamental lesson is that if you learn techniques, recipes are practically irrelevant. Good cooking, as every professional knows, consists of applying good techniques to good ingredients. That’s the whole secret.
Or, as the CIA says in the introduction to Cooking At Home, “then, when students of the culinary arts have truly grasped fundamental techniques, their culinary world expands. Instead of depending on the rote following of a recipe, cooking becomes a highly creative act.”
My happy surprise came from this approach. Most cookbooks, at best, give a sop to techniques and focus on recipes. This is all well and good for experienced cooks. But the newbie is often lost, not understanding the various steps. That won’t happen with Cooking At Home. Armed with the techniques and methods learned in the various chapters, no recipe will be intimidating. And, because the student has learned the essence of creative cooking, he or she can easily recognize when a printed recipe has errors, and can correct for them.
As with all the books in the series, Cooking At Home follows the lesson plans of the school itself. Starting with an introduction, which includes discussions of mise en place, choosing equipment, a look at pantry ingredients, and an examination of cooking basics, the rest is divided into chapters based on the type of ingredients or generic dish names. These include soups; poultry; meat; fish and shellfish; pasta; vegetables; potatoes, grains, and legumes; eggs; starters and salads; and kitchen desserts. That’s how it’s taught in the school, and the book follows along.
Is this the best line-up? Who can say? In my classes we group by related techniques, such as frying, moist heat, and roasting, rather than by ingredients, and emphasize knife skills in the first lesson. But fundamentally there is neither right nor wrong. The key to culinary instruction is teaching techniques, and CIA has been doing things that way for a long time.
Each chapter is divided into two sections: techniques, and the recipes themselves. Typical is the Fish and Shellfish chapter. After a general discussion of seafood and how to select it (along with an extensive chart that lists 22 specific varieties of fish and shellfish, summarizes their characteristics, and pairs them with the best cooking methods for that variety), we are presented with specific techniques associated with seafood---most of which have accompanying step-by-step photos.
If you’ve never done it before, seafood prep can be daunting. But with these instructions you learn how to filet a fish in the round, and how to filet a flatfish. There are whole sections on handling salmon filets, on prepping lobster, on peeling, deveining, and butterflying shrimp, on cleaning mussels, shucking oysters, and testing fish and shellfish for doneness. In short, a complete techniques tutorial on working with seafood. By the time you’ve absorbed this material you’re ready to take-on any seafood recipe.
Each of the chapters goes equally in depth, with additional recipe-specific techniques discussed as appropriate.
Is this the same as spending 30-grand to earn a degree at the CIA? Not hardly. But it’s the best learning tool for the novice and intermediate home cook I’ve ever seen. If we could take all the techniques material and bind it in a book, Cooking At Home would be an absolute winner. Unfortunately, we can’t do that, and have to include the recipes. Which is where the book goes downhill.
As many of you know, when any of the review staff works with a book we have one rule: Reviewers must prepare at least two dishes, and we recommend that more than two be cooked. Because of the nature of Cooking At Home, I decided to expand that exponentially. Instead of two recipes I designed two five-course menus: a winter meal and a spring meal. Gameplan was to follow the recipes precisely. After running into problems with all five of the winter dishes, I didn’t bother with a spring feast. Here’s a brief rundown:
Celeraic and Tart Apple Salad. Result is a bland, all but tasteless, salad. A little celery salt or such wouldn’t have hurt; anything to pop it up a bit. The recipe also refers to making a blanc. Not only is the blanc unnecessary (and incorrectly used) here, nowhere is it explained what a blanc is---a serious oversight.
Billi Bi. A recipe that uses expensive ingredients to produce an only so-so version of a classic often called “the most elegant soup ever created.” This version is a long way from fitting that description. It’s not bad. But if you’ve ever eaten a true Billi Bi, this version is disappointing.
Duck Breast with Golden Raisin and Orange Sauce. A basic seared duck breast (which has incomplete instructions) with a sauce. A new cook chances burning the breast the way the searing process is described. Cooking time is seriously understated, and ingredient amounts are incorrect. For instance, the recipes calls for ¾ cup brandy, when ¼ is all that it requires, and is probably what was meant.
Gnocchi with Herbs & Butter. Another classic that suffers from how it’s written. For starters, the recipe calls for far too little flour. I had to add a full cup more than the amount called for; again, a probable typo. The amount of butter in the sauce is insufficient for the volume of gnocchi produced.
Grand Marnier Parfaits. There are reasons that soufflé-like parfaits have fallen out of favor, and this recipe demonstrates all of them. The biggest problem: Parchment paper does not have the gripping “hand” required of a collar, and neither tying nor taping (Taping? On a non-stick surface? Have the folks at CIA ever really tried that?), the two recommended methods, are unsuitable. Result: The overfill merely leaks down the outside of the cups.
Overall I’d have to call the results more than disappointing. It was obvious that none of them had ever been tested using home-kitchen equipment, and I seriously wondered if they’d actually been tested at all.
Turns out I wasn’t too far wrong. According to Nathalie Fischer, until she took over as Director of Publishing there was no test kitchen set up with home equipment. More to the point, the nature of how recipes are taught at the school is not the same as how they’d appear in a published work. “Our recipes are based on a demonstration model, “she notes. “So for the books we had to adapt them to cookbook style, adding ingredient amounts and written instructions.” She adds that as errors and problems show up, they are corrected for new editions of the book.
While I certainly believe her intentions are good, that’s an awfully slow process. My brand-new copy of Cooking At Home is only the second printing. So there can’t have been many corrections. And it explains, I believe, why plans call for a total rewrite in 2013.
Understand that none of the problems I found are things an experienced cook wouldn’t notice, and correct. You know, that “highly creative act” referred to in the introduction. However, here’s the dichotomy. If I’m an experienced enough cook to modify the recipes as needed, then I don’t really need the text dealing with the techniques. Presumably I already know them. Or enough of them to make no never mind. On the other hand, if I’m beginner enough to need the techniques text, then I might not be advanced enough to recognize changes that need to be made to the recipes. Especially when there are egregious errors, as when a recipe says to fry calamari for as much as four minutes at 375F. Yeah, you can do that---if you enjoy eating rubber.
While I'm truly impressed with the techniques and methods material, and find it incredibly valuable for novice (and some not-so-novice) cooks, the question is, is it valuable enough to drop 40 bucks on? Unfortunately, I have to conclude that it’s not; and won’t be until the recipe section is improved.
Recipe:
Duck Breast with Golden Raisin and Orange Sauce
4 duck breast halves (8-10 oz each)
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 tbls golden raisins
¾ cup brandy (reviewer’s note: should be ¼)
3 tbls fresh orange juice (divided use)
¼ cup cider vinegar
1 tbls currant jelly
2 cups chicken broth
2 tsp grated orange zest
Trim the duck breasts of excess fat and season with salt and pepper. Set aside. (reviewer’s note: skin should be cross-hatched first).
Combine the raisins with the brandy and warm in a microwave oven for 40 seconds at full power. Or, combine in a small saucepan and warm over low heat. Allow the raisins to plump for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine the sugar and 1 tbls of the orange juice in a heavy, nonreactive sauté pan and cook over medium heat without stirring. Once the sugar has begun to melt, stir occasionally until the sugar is completely melted and the mixture is golden brown, about 8 minutes. Immediately add the vinegar and continue to cook until reduced by half, 2-3 minutes more. (Reviewer’s note: this will take longer on a home stove).
Add the remaining 2 tbls orange juice to the reduced sugar mixture. Add the raisins, along with any unabsorbed brandy (reviewer’s note: there will be a lot of unabsorbed brandy if you follow the recipe), and the currant jelly. Set aside.
Heat an ovenproof sauté pan over high heat. Add the duck breasts, skin side down. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until the skin is nicely browned and crisp, about 15 minutes (reviewer’s note: cook at lower heat, pouring off fat as it accumulates. Crisp duck will take at least a half hour). Turn the breasts and cook 10 minutes more for medium. Transfer the duck breasts from the pan to warmed plates and cover to keep warm while completing the sauce.
Pour off the fat from the sauté pan and return to medium heat. Add the broth and stir to deglaze the pan, scraping up any browned bits from the pan bottom. Simmer rapidly until the broth is reduced by half, 4-5 minutes (reviewers note: this will take longer on a home stove). Add the raisin and orange sauce and stir. Taste and season with salt and pepper.
Garnish each breast with the orange zest and serve with the raisin and orange sauce.
7 people found this review useful
Post Comment
ChefTalk.com › Cookbooks & Cookware › Cookbooks › Professional Training › Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America › Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America Reviews
