Bouchon
by Thomas Keller
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas KellerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-15
ISBN: 1579652395
Number of pages: 360
Publisher: Artisan
Book Reviews of Bouchon
Book Review: A Gold Standard For French Bistro Cuisine
Summary: 5 Stars
Bouchon is a beautifully photographed coffee table cookbook. Its 360 pages are filled with some of the restaurant's most popular recipes that have been tested for the home cook. Keller provides detailed instructions, essays and informative tips and techniques to achieve French bistro perfection.
Keller, chef and proprietor of The French Laundry, opened Bouchon in Napa Valley in 1998. Unlike The French Laundry, Bouchon is fashioned after the many bistros in France, with bistro comfort food that Keller truly enjoys. Keller explains in his introduction that "bistro food is not about specialized ingredients, rather it is about precision of technique brought to bear on ordinary ingredients."
Bouchon covers the vast array of classic French bistro fare, everything from hors d'oeuvres, onion soup, frisee salad with bacon and poached egg, quiches, savory tarts, croque madame and other sandwiches, mussels, stews, roasts, and steak frites to cr?me caramel, chocolate mousse, dessert tarts and even profiteroles. Dishes are stylishly photographed. Close-up photos allow the reader to see proper techniques and results.
Recipes titles are in both English and French. The recipe for My Favorite Simple Chicken-Mon Poulet Roti has only six simple ingredients. Keller explains to salt and pepper the cavity, how to truss the bird, and provides valuable tips and techniques to achieve a crisp, salty and flavorful skin. The adventurous cook will find recipes, like boeuf bourguignon and duck confit, well laid out.
"The Importance of Onion Soup", one of the twelve informational essays, demonstrates Keller's passion for his craft and a true respect for high-quality ingredients. His sidebars, tips and techniques offered throughout the book, explain how the home cook can achieve perfect, satisfying results. A mini cooking lesson captured on each page that will engross the reader.
The last chapter, "Basic Preparation and Techniques", will allow the home cook to lay the foundation that so important to build upon. It includes recipes to prepare stocks, sauces, aioli, butters and sweet dough and creams. How to prepare a bouquet garni or sachet is also covered, as well as, instructions for brining.
Like Julia Child's, Mastering the Art of French Cooking; Keller and his collaborators have created the gold standard for classic French bistro cuisine. This alluring book will have the reader starting at the beginning and working their way through to the end. A must-have for any lover of French food.
Summary of Bouchon
Thomas Keller, chef/proprieter of Napa Valley's French Laundry, is passionate about bistro cooking. He believes fervently that the real art of cooking lies in elevating to excellence the simplest ingredients; that bistro cooking embodies at once a culinary ethos of generosity, economy, and simplicity; that the techniques at its foundation are profound, and the recipes at its heart have a powerful ability to nourish and please.So enamored is he of this older, more casual type of cooking that he opened the restaurant Bouchon, right next door to the French Laundry, so he could satisfy a craving for a perfectly made quiche, or a gratin?ed onion soup, or a simple but irresistible roasted chicken. Now Bouchon, the cookbook, embodies this cuisine in all its sublime simplicity.
But let's begin at the real beginning. For Keller, great cooking is all about the virtue of process and attention to detail. Even in the humblest dish, the extra thought is evident, which is why this food tastes so amazing: The onions for the onion soup are caramelized for five hours; lamb cheeks are used for the navarin; basic but essential refinements every step of the way make for the cleanest flavors, the brightest vegetables, the perfect balance-whether of fat to acid for a vinaigrette, of egg to liquid for a custard, of salt to meat for a duck confit.
Because versatility as a cook is achieved through learning foundations, Keller and Bouchon executive chef Jeff Cerciello illuminate all the key points of technique along the way: how a two-inch ring makes for a perfect quiche; how to recognize the right hazelnut brown for a brown butter sauce; how far to caramelize sugar for different uses.
But learning and refinement aside-oh those recipes! Steamed mussels with saffron, bourride, trout grenobloise with its parsley, lemon, and croutons; steak frites, beef bourguignon, chicken in the pot-all exquisitely crafted. And those immortal desserts: the tarte Tatin, the chocolate mousse, the lemon tart, the profiteroles with chocolate sauce. In Bouchon, you get to experience them in impeccably realized form.
This is a book to cherish, with its alluring mix of recipes and the author's knowledge, warmth, and wit: "I find this a hopeful time for the pig," says Keller about our yearning for the flavor that has been bred out of pork. So let your imagination transport you back to the burnished warmth of an old-fashioned French bistro, pull up a stool to the zinc bar or slide into a banquette, and treat yourself to truly great preparations that have not just withstood the vagaries of fashion, but have improved with time. Welcome to Bouchon.
Bouchon, chef Thomas Keller's bistro cookbook, offers 180-plus recipes from his eponymous restaurants--there are two. Readers perusing the near-prosciutto-size book will be dazzled, first, by its great looks (there are many beautiful photos), then, perhaps, wonder why so many of its typically homey bistro dishes are so fussy to prepare. Why, for example, must the onions for onion soup be caramelized for five hours, or the muscles of a leg of lamb separated so that each can be cooked to an exact, presumably optimal, temperature.
They should, however, trust this justly celebrated chef, whose sometimes-painstaking refinements reflect a better way. Apart from the excellence of the dishes, the reason to own Bouchon is to discover the richness of Keller's technical understanding. Readers learn, for example, not to baste chicken while it roasts, which creates skin-softening moisture, and to allow the base for cr?me caramel to sit before baking, thus permitting its flavors to deepen. Keller's sensitivity to ingredients and their composition is profound; and he and his collaborators have presented it so deftly that one finds oneself engrossed again and again. Whether Keller is talking about vinaigrettes (in their balance of fat, acid, and saltines, the perfect sauce) vegetable glazing, or the creation of brown butter, his insights are fascinating.
The dishes cover a wide range of courses, and include the traditional--poule au pot, veal roast, pommes frites, and so on--and the "new," such as Gnocchi with Summer Vegetables, Skate with Fennel-Onion Confit and Tapenade Sauce, and Grandma Sheila's Cheesecake Tart with Huckleberries. All are, as the French might say, impeccable--and can be accomplished by anyone willing to take the time to do so. Like his cooking, Bouchon is a sui generis treat. --Arthur Boehm
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