Basics or Louisiana Real and Rustic

Basics: The Foundations of Modern Cooking

Author: Filip Verheyden

"A stylish little cookbook . . . a seductive object, beautifully proportioned and designed, but also remarkably comprehensive. After covering basic kitchen skills, The Basics zips through an overview of savory cooking, then switches to baking and desserts. But while most general cookbooks would stop there, The Basics plunges onward into contemporary cuisine."-Jonathan Hayes, The New York Times Magazine

"This book is written in a clear style and filled with wise advice."-Le Figaro Magazine

"Each page contains one photo, one recipe, and one clever tip. What more could one want?"-Beau & Bon

The book the United Kingdom's Bulletin called "a cooking bible" comes to America: It's the award-winning and best-selling title with the 150 most important techniques used in European kitchens. Unlike US and Canadian cookbooks, The Basics focuses on kitchen skills rather than recipes.

Learn standard European methods to cut and prepare vegetables and meats, make cream sauces, and perfect bearnaise and consomme. And as The New York Times Magazine noted, there is also an impressive collection of newly minted continental techniques-including how to "cook fennel sous vide (slow-simmered in a vacuum-sealed pouch) and recipes for of-the-moment constructions like foie-gras foam and savory jellies."

Readers are encouraged to experiment, and recipes utilizing the book's techniques are provided for just such experimentation. Unlike any cookbook on the market, The Basics is sure to make waves in North America.

Filip Verheyden studied cooking at PIVA in Antwerp and has been afreelance food writer since 1998, contributing to many magazines and newspapers.

Tony Le Duc has been a food photographer since 1984, producing images for some twenty books, including The House of Books.

Read also Cooking 1 2 3 or Cheese Board

Louisiana Real and Rustic

Author: Emeril Lagass

"Nowhere else have I found the passion for flavor that encompasses the lives of Louisianians, day in and day out," writes Emeril Lagasse. In Louisiana Real & Rustic, the prize winning New Orleans chef, cookbook author, and television cooking personality presents the great dishes of his adopted state in 150 down-home recipes--authentic versions of some of Americas favorite regional dishes, gathered from generations of Louisiana cooks. Fricassees, itouffies and grillades, meat pies and oyster fries, red beans and rice, and jambalayas and gumbos in endless, mouthwatering variety--each recipe is spiced with the unabashed joy of cooking and eating that makes every Louisiana meal a feast.

On a delicious tour of back roads and bayous, from country cabins in Acadia to the refined town houses of Creole aristocracy, Emeril, accompanied by co-author Marcelle Bienvenu, finds that Louisiana is more than a geographical state--it's a culinary state of grace.

Louisiana's colorful history has made it an extraordinary culinary crossroads, where the cooking customs of France, Spain, Africa, and the Caribbean meld into a unique New World Cuisine. In charming tales and tempting recipes, Emeril traces the roots of Creole and Acadian (or "Cajun") dishes, and honors the pioneer cooks who blended traditional tastes and techniques with the region's native ingredients. He shows how gumbos can use French roux, African okra, or fili from the indigenous Indians and he features Chicken and Oyster, Duck and Wild Mushroom, Shrimp and Okra, and Rabbit, or even collards, kale, mustard, and turnips. Emeril's explorations reveal that the spirit of culinary improvisation still thrives today.

"Nowhere else have I found the passion for flavor that encompasses the lives of Louisianians, day in and day out," writes Emeril Lagasse. In Louisiana Real & Rustic, the prize winning New Orleans chef, cookbook author, and television cooking personality presents the great dishes of his adopted state in 150 down-home recipes--authentic versions of some of Americas favorite regional dishes, gathered from generations of Louisiana cooks. Fricassees, itouffies and grillades, meat pies and oyster fries, red beans and rice, and jambalayas and gumbos in endless, mouthwatering variety--each recipe is spiced with the unabashed joy of cooking and eating that makes every Louisiana meal a feast.

On a delicious tour of back roads and bayous, from country cabins in Acadia to the refined town houses of Creole aristocracy, Emeril, accompanied by co-author Marcelle Bienvenu, finds that Louisiana is more than a geographical state--it's a culinary state of grace.

Louisiana's colorful history has made it an extraordinary culinary crossroads, where the cooking customs of France, Spain, Africa, and the Caribbean meld into a unique New World Cuisine. In charming tales and tempting recipes, Emeril traces the roots of Creole and Acadian (or "Cajun") dishes, and honors the pioneer cooks who blended traditional tastes and techniques with the region's native ingredients. He shows how gumbos can use French roux, African okra, or fili from the indigenous Indians and he features Chicken and Oyster, Duck and Wild Mushroom, Shrimp and Okra, and Rabbit, or even collards, kale, mustard, and turnips. Emeril's explorations reveal that the spirit of culinary improvisation still thrives today.

Publishers Weekly

Even before his hit show on the TV Food Network and his New Orleans facsimile in Las Vegas (Emeril's New Orleans Fish House), the chef/owner of Emeril's and NOLA's in the Big Easy was a personality. His warm enthusiasm is present in the pages of his latest friendly, punchy book. Quickly covering some standard Louisiana ingredients like roux and Emeril's Worcestershire Sauce, he then moves on to classics like Crawfish Bisque (complete with stuffed crawfish heads) and Chicken and Dumplings. Notes to the recipes explain the origins of foodsuch as the native American roots of Natchitoches Meat Piesand are exuberantly spiked with comments like, "Mon cher, c'est bon, oui." Not for the fat-phobic are such dishes as Praline Cream Pie (a stick of butter in the graham-cracker crust, five egg yolks in the filling, a cup of heavy cream in the topping and crumbled pralines in all three layers) and the Peacemaker sandwich (a baguette split down the middle, slathered with butter and filled with fried oysters and tartar sauce). But this is authentic fare, delivered with irresistible conviction. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Lagasse is the chef/owner of two well-known restaurants in New Orleans, Emeril's and Nola's (as well as another Emeril's in Las Vegas) and the host of a very popular show on the TV Food Network. His first cookbook, Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking (LJ 3/15/93), showcased the innovative food he was serving at his restaurants, a sort of "fusion Creole cooking." This time he explores Louisiana's Cajun and Creole classics and other favorites: Crawfish Bisque, Chicken-Andouille Hash, Praline Cream Pie. Coauthor Bienvenu is a Louisiana native, and some of the recipes for homey dishes come from her extended family. For most collections.

BookList

The national appetite for New Orleans cooking continues to expand. Cable television personality Lagasse's latest offering teams him with Marcelle Bienvenu to explore the origins of contemporary Louisiana Creole cuisine in its predecessor, Cajun cooking. What results is a sort of southern Louisiana church-group cookbook filtered through Lagasse's haute cuisine training. The recipes determinedly focus on simple country cooking, but they assume that the ingredients readily at hand are those of the bayous. Reproducing these recipes in remoter parts of the nation may not be so simple. Lagasse's exposure as a television personality is sure to create plenty of demand for his newest volume.