Cooking by Hand

Rating:
Summary: A great book to read, not to cook from
Review: I pretty much read this book cover to cover, and in that context would give it four stars, but as a practical cookbook for the home cook, would give it two stars. It carries with a bit of pretension and impracticality for the home cook. Still, for those interested in tomatos 12 ways.. then pick it up for a read, and for the adventurous.. try a recipe or two.

Rating:
Summary: A great book to read, not to cook from
Review: I pretty much read this book cover to cover, and in that context would give it four stars, but as a practical cookbook for the home cook, would give it two stars. It carries with a bit of pretension and impracticality for the home cook. Still, for those interested in tomatos 12 ways.. then pick it up for a read, and for the adventurous.. try a recipe or two.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing!
Review: If you enjoy cooking, and wish to establish yourself further in the trade (as an amateur or professional) this book is imperative. I've used and adapted more recipies from this book than any other I own. Bertolli strives to describe what you should be looking for, smelling, and feeling in a product. However, you'll find his writing much easier to deal with if you've already a background in the kitchen, or have some basic knowledge of fundamental culinary techniques. Overall, this is a fantastic book, particulary the chapters on Tomatoes and Balsamico. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: zen cooking
Review: Not so much a cookbook as a meditation on the art of slow food. There are plenty of recipes, but the author concentrates more on the way you prepare the food. A former chef at Chez Pannise, he approches cooking with devout respect. This book could have been called "The Zen of Cooking," and focuses on techniques of fine italian cuisine. A good book, it's probably not appropriate for the casual cook.

Rating:
Summary: Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli
Review: Paul Bertolli's first book, "Chez Panisse Cooking", is a wondrous book of recipes and thoughts, and his years at Chez Panisse produced many meals that helped validate that restaurant's stellar reputation. His new book, "Cooking by Hand", definitely satisfies expectations. The essay style of Bertolli's ideas and approaches goes even broader and deeper than before, with more fascinating information and suggestions for achieving elemental cooking that coaxes the true and utmost tastes from the ingredients. His descriptions of how to find the most flavorful cornmeal for polenta, the curing of prosciutto, and numerous other techniques is seldom shared information that is both fun and instructive to read. My only demerit for the book is the lousy paper that it is printed on. I'm suprised that Clarkson Potter, charging [so much] for this volume, cheaped out on paper where the type bleeds through the pages and the nice black and white photos are not given the resolution they deserve. These deficiences are in marked contrast to the high quality of authorship and overall concept. Hopefully a later edition will remedy these shortcomings. Meanwhile, enjoy this book - a valuable addition to the cook's library.

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: This book is brilliant, at once over-the-top and completely accessible; it will raise the level of anyone's game. It is conceptual, grouping related dishes by modes of thought like Colicchio's "Think Like a Chef", only written at a more literary reading level. It is an unapologetic account of what happens in a particular and remarkable restaurant kitchen like Keller's "The French Laundry Cookbook", only free of that book's pretensions and skyscraper food. While one can only hope to lift the odd stunning technique from Keller, one can aspire to cook from Bertolli cover-to-cover, and be thrilled every step of the way. In short, this book is everything that is right about Italian cooking. For a reader searching for the most insightful words in print on Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and southeast-asian noodles, "Hand" is essential reading for the Italian pasta chapter alone. One immediately craves a hand-turned stone flour mill; improvising a cellar for curing meats will have to wait.

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: This book is brilliant, at once over-the-top and completely accessible; it will raise the level of anyone's game. It is conceptual, grouping related dishes by modes of thought like Colicchio's "Think Like a Chef", only written at a more literary reading level. It is an unapologetic account of what happens in a particular and remarkable restaurant kitchen like Keller's "The French Laundry Cookbook", only free of that book's pretensions and skyscraper food. While one can only hope to lift the odd stunning technique from Keller, one can aspire to cook from Bertolli cover-to-cover, and be thrilled every step of the way. In short, this book is everything that is right about Italian cooking. For a reader searching for the most insightful words in print on Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and southeast-asian noodles, "Hand" is essential reading for the Italian pasta chapter alone. One immediately craves a hand-turned stone flour mill; improvising a cellar for curing meats will have to wait.

Rating:
Summary: Graduate Level Courses on Prima Materia
Review: You buy this book for culinary inspiration and insights into how the very greatest chefs think. It's most proper neighbors on your bookshelf are titles such as Eric Rippert's 'A Return to Cooking', James Beard's 'Delights and Prejudices', and Mario Batali's 'Simple Italian Food'. Each of these volumes, in their own very personal ways explore the authors' inspirations and love of food.

This volume combines monographs on ingredients, personal memoirs, and exacting techniques into a web of very enlightening recipes and insights.

Paul Bertolli is the owner and executive chef of the restaurant Oliveto in Oakland, California and a former head chef at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse. Unlike Jeremiah Tower, Bertolli makes no mention of Waters except for the obviously shared devotion to fine, local ingredients. Instead, I am delighted to see him acknowledge assistance from Harold Magee and several other culinary academics.

If Mario Batali gives us the college courses in proper Italian cuisine, then Paul Bertolli gives us the post-graduate training, citing in the introduction the Elizabeth David epigram that 'Good Cooking is Trouble' meaning that good cooking requires painstaking effort with lots of circles and switchbacks in one's path to mastery.

The book is in no way a traditional cookbook and anyone who buys it just for the recipes will be missing over half the value. The eight chapters comprising the bulk of the book deal with some materials and techniques at the heart of Italian cuisine.

The first topic deals with respect for fresh ingredients. This begins Bertolli's illuminations on the life of ingredients such as polenta, artichokes, zucchini, spring vegetables, eggplant, olives, mushrooms, and pears. The book reveals something new and exciting about each material and breaks a few rules along the way. In explaining the methods for curing olives, the author also begins offering the reader an entrance into a wonderland of new ways to be involved with our food.

The second main topic is an essay on 'Ripeness'. It stresses that good cooking does not come from recipes but from looking at and listening to your ingredients.

The third topic is tomatoes and looking at them for color, juice, essence, shape, sauce, conserva, complement, braise, container, condiment, and side dish. This section contains many tomato based recipes, but the real gem is the discussion of 'conserva', a preparation similar to tomato paste, but a much more potent carrier of flavor.

The fourth topic is an essay on the techniques for making balsamic vinegar plus the ways of using young, middle-aged, and old balsamico.

The fifth topic is a primer on pasta making. This takes one beyond Mario's well method into a world of fussiness about the quality of the wheat which rivals the obsessions of the very best artisinal bakers. This chapter is worth the price of admission.

The sixth topic is entitled 'Bottom up cooking' and introduces at the reader to meat 'sugo' which is created by the repeated browning and deglazing of meat and broth until you reach a concentration of flavor I have never seen discussed before in depth, although it is similar to the French notion of 'jus'.

The seventh topic treats pork and the many ways of curing pork including the making of sausage and ham. While there is enough information here to give one a credible start at salume, the author points out that this is a skill which requires a substantial amount of practice. Even if one never touches a sausage casing or a meat grinder, this chapter is well worth the background it gives to assist one in respecting their ingredients.

The last major topic is devoted to menu building, mostly by working backward from the dessert. This section should be very familiar to Chez Panisse devotees, where daily menus were built upon the produce of the day. Like Chez Panisse and some other very high end restaurants, Olivato presents fixed price tasting menus with several courses, each paired with an appropriate bottle of wine.

I suspect there are people who will buy this book and be disappointed because all they wanted was a book of good Italian recipes. If that is what you want, check out Marcella Hazan, Lidia Bastianich, or Giuliano Bugialli. This book has very good recipes, but it includes so much more. I give Bertolli and his editors extra credit for giving a complete list of all the recipes at the beginning of the book, since the recipes are not organized by chapters one commonly uses to find them.

The book also includes a better than average list of sources to support the author's emphasis on excellence. There are few photographs and very few color photographs. I don't miss them.

Rating:
Summary: Graduate Level Courses on Prima Materia
Review: You buy this book for culinary inspiration and insights into how the very greatest chefs think. It's most proper neighbors on your bookshelf are titles such as Eric Rippert's `A Return to Cooking', James Beard's `Delights and Prejudices', and Mario Batali's `Simple Italian Food'. Each of these volumes, in their own very personal ways explore the authors' inspirations and love of food.

This volume combines monographs on ingredients, personal memoirs, and exacting techniques into a web of very enlightening recipes and insights.

Paul Bertolli is the owner and executive chef of the restaurant Oliveto in Oakland, California and a former head chef at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse. Unlike Jeremiah Tower, Bertolli makes no mention of Waters except for the obviously shared devotion to fine, local ingredients. Instead, I am delighted to see him acknowledge assistance from Harold Magee and several other culinary academics.

If Mario Batali gives us the college courses in proper Italian cuisine, then Paul Bertolli gives us the post-graduate training, citing in the introduction the Elizabeth David epigram that `Good Cooking is Trouble' meaning that good cooking requires painstaking effort with lots of circles and switchbacks in one's path to mastery.

The book is in no way a traditional cookbook and anyone who buys it just for the recipes will be missing over half the value. The eight chapters comprising the bulk of the book deal with some materials and techniques at the heart of Italian cuisine.

The first topic deals with respect for fresh ingredients. This begins Bertolli's illuminations on the life of ingredients such as polenta, artichokes, zucchini, spring vegetables, eggplant, olives, mushrooms, and pears. The book reveals something new and exciting about each material and breaks a few rules along the way. In explaining the methods for curing olives, the author also begins offering the reader an entrance into a wonderland of new ways to be involved with our food.

The second main topic is an essay on `Ripeness'. It stresses that good cooking does not come from recipes but from looking at and listening to your ingredients.

The third topic is tomatoes and looking at them for color, juice, essence, shape, sauce, conserva, complement, braise, container, condiment, and side dish. This section contains many tomato based recipes, but the real gem is the discussion of `conserva', a preparation similar to tomato paste, but a much more potent carrier of flavor.

The fourth topic is an essay on the techniques for making balsamic vinegar plus the ways of using young, middle-aged, and old balsamico.

The fifth topic is a primer on pasta making. This takes one beyond Mario's well method into a world of fussiness about the quality of the wheat which rivals the obsessions of the very best artisinal bakers. This chapter is worth the price of admission.

The sixth topic is entitled `Bottom up cooking' and introduces at the reader to meat `sugo' which is created by the repeated browning and deglazing of meat and broth until you reach a concentration of flavor I have never seen discussed before in depth, although it is similar to the French notion of `jus'.

The seventh topic treats pork and the many ways of curing pork including the making of sausage and ham. While there is enough information here to give one a credible start at salume, the author points out that this is a skill which requires a substantial amount of practice. Even if one never touches a sausage casing or a meat grinder, this chapter is well worth the background it gives to assist one in respecting their ingredients.

The last major topic is devoted to menu building, mostly by working backward from the dessert. This section should be very familiar to Chez Panisse devotees, where daily menus were built upon the produce of the day. Like Chez Panisse and some other very high end restaurants, Olivato presents fixed price tasting menus with several courses, each paired with an appropriate bottle of wine.

I suspect there are people who will buy this book and be disappointed because all they wanted was a book of good Italian recipes. If that is what you want, check out Marcella Hazan, Lidia Bastianich, or Giuliano Bugialli. This book has very good recipes, but it includes so much more. I give Bertolli and his editors extra credit for giving a complete list of all the recipes at the beginning of the book, since the recipes are not organized by chapters one commonly uses to find them.

The book also includes a better than average list of sources to support the author's emphasis on excellence. There are few photographs and very few color photographs. I don't miss them.