At Home With the French Classics

Rating:
Summary: At Home Cooks!
Review: Move over Betty Crocker. Not just a cookbook, Richard Grausman's "At Home with the French Classics" contains interesting text and approachable recipes. Compared to others, my joy of cooking with Richard's cookbook is that his didactic style, honed by his years of teaching, offers detailed explanations, warnings of potential problems, and the step by step guidance of a well-marked trail.

Take his recipe for genoise. Before listing the ingredients, he recommends warming the eggs in hot water instead of beating them over heat. He also describes the classic French preprations and why his vary. Usually less butter or eggs for health concerns. Or just because he thinks his way is better. Less sugar if it's too sweet.

Many of his recipes contain a short list of ingredients and are easy to prepare. His chocolate mousse calls for chocolate, eggs, butter, and cream of tartar. That's it. And you'll enjoy reading about all the wonderful dishes that you can create with this versatile mousse.

I think Richard's book is a classic.

Rating:
Summary: foolproof and fun!
Review: Move over Betty Crocker. Not just a cookbook, Richard Grausman's "At Home with the French Classics" contains interesting text and approachable recipes. Compared to others, my joy of cooking with Richard's cookbook is that his didactic style, honed by his years of teaching, offers detailed explanations, warnings of potential problems, and the step by step guidance of a well-marked trail.

Take his recipe for genoise. Before listing the ingredients, he recommends warming the eggs in hot water instead of beating them over heat. He also describes the classic French preprations and why his vary. Usually less butter or eggs for health concerns. Or just because he thinks his way is better. Less sugar if it's too sweet.

Many of his recipes contain a short list of ingredients and are easy to prepare. His chocolate mousse calls for chocolate, eggs, butter, and cream of tartar. That's it. And you'll enjoy reading about all the wonderful dishes that you can create with this versatile mousse.

I think Richard's book is a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and accessible
Review: Note to the beginning French chef: begin here, not with Julia Child. In "At Home with the French Classics" author Richard Grausman presents a tutorial on French cooking that is both unified and accessible. It is unified in that the recipes all work together and make use of the same types of ingredients. It is accessible in that both the recipes and the techniques used to create them are described in an easy-to-follow manner that takes all the mystery out of French cooking. The book provides such a solid foundation to an everyday cuisine, that it could quite easily be the only cookbook you'd ever need. It will come as a relief to many readers of French cooking texts that there aren't any 'eye of newt' recipes - recipes that require you to search far and wide for some exotic ingredient. Grausman takes great pains to ensure that virtually everything you will ever need is available at your local supermarket. No trips to the gourmet store are required (though some might be desired!). For example, the brown stock essential for many red meat dishes is made from easy-to-find beef bones rather than the more traditional and exotic veal bones. And if you don't have time to make stock, Grausman presents canned equivalents along with the dilutions required for various name brands. Along with the recipes, the margins are filled with notes presenting a wealth of background information on tools and techniques. Grausman discusses which techniques are necessary and which are outdated holdovers from a different era. He frequently presents modern refinements to classic techniques that often make the recipes much easier to execute. He also respects modern dietary sensibilities by reducing or eliminating excessive butter, eggs, and cream whenever it is possible to do so without sacrificing essential flavors.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and accessible
Review: Note to the beginning French chef: begin here, not with Julia Child. In "At Home with the French Classics" author Richard Grausman presents a tutorial on French cooking that is both unified and accessible. It is unified in that the recipes all work together and make use of the same types of ingredients. It is accessible in that both the recipes and the techniques used to create them are described in an easy-to-follow manner that takes all the mystery out of French cooking. The book provides such a solid foundation to an everyday cuisine, that it could quite easily be the only cookbook you'd ever need. It will come as a relief to many readers of French cooking texts that there aren't any 'eye of newt' recipes - recipes that require you to search far and wide for some exotic ingredient. Grausman takes great pains to ensure that virtually everything you will ever need is available at your local supermarket. No trips to the gourmet store are required (though some might be desired!). For example, the brown stock essential for many red meat dishes is made from easy-to-find beef bones rather than the more traditional and exotic veal bones. And if you don't have time to make stock, Grausman presents canned equivalents along with the dilutions required for various name brands. Along with the recipes, the margins are filled with notes presenting a wealth of background information on tools and techniques. Grausman discusses which techniques are necessary and which are outdated holdovers from a different era. He frequently presents modern refinements to classic techniques that often make the recipes much easier to execute. He also respects modern dietary sensibilities by reducing or eliminating excessive butter, eggs, and cream whenever it is possible to do so without sacrificing essential flavors.

Rating:
Summary: THIS JUST CAN'T COMPETE. THERE ARE SO MANY BETTER ONES.
Review: People who aim to be good cooks read and try things out. They learn about food traditions and classic dishes. They learn little tricks to make these dishes and experiment with variations. It takes quite a few years of reading and quite a few mistakes before people can call themselves fantastic cooks. I for one have often wished, when the sauce has curdled or the meat won't brown properly, that a chef would step into my kitchen and just show me how to get the desired result. Well, I found the next best thing when I acquired Richard Grausman's book "At Home With the French Classics". Reading this book is really like having someone talking to you in the kitchen. That's because it's written by a person who has tried every recipe several different ways and can give you little practical suggestions that really make sense. For making tart pastry, for example, he tells you how to go about it using the food processor as well as using the traditional hand method (which needs a little more water). And there is a panel of pencil drawings down the side of the page, to show you the different techniques, which is almost as good as looking over a French chef's shoulder. Often as I was reading, little surprises kept me saying: "Well, I never knew that!" I didn't know that you could bake chocolate mousse and end up with a cake - a moist, luscious chocolate cake that has no flour in it. I like the flavour and texture of Grausman's Gratin Dauphinois. That's because he soaks the fine potato slices in the milk they will be cooked in, rather than water, and so the final dish has a lovely, creamy, almost cheesy, finish. Food stains are the most telling things in cook books. My copy of "At Home With the French Classics" has food stains on the pages for Tarte Tatin, (upside down apple tart), Canard au cidre (duck with apples and cider), Marinated mushrooms (I spilled the tomato paste here!) and the courgettes Farcies, (zucchini stuffed with mushrooms and ham). That leaves hundreds of pages and hundreds of recipes to go before this comprehensive book is exhausted. By that time, I'll be completely at home with the French classics. I'll be a French chef in my own kitchen.

Rating:
Summary: Provides clear, easy instructions
Review: Thirty years ago I took cooking classes with Richard Grausman. I was unable to boil water, but by the end of the week, I could make Profiteroles Au Chocolat, Souffle Au Grand Marnier, Mousse Au Chocolat, Poule Portugais and much more. As long as I did things exactly as he tought and demonstrated, my results came out perfect, every time. My career, however, kept me very busy and for the next several decades I had to leave the kitchen.

Now that I have some time, I was very excited to find Rick's book on the shelf. I turned to page 270 and made my favorite dessert, Profiteroles au Chocolat. The instructions and illustrations are so clear and so easy that, for the first time in over 25 years, I made perfect Profiteroles! Armed with this confidence I went on and made all of my favorites, and they came out to perfection. Here is a book filled with foolproof recipes.

Last night I made Chicken with Mushrooms, Tomatoes and Olives, Riz Pilaf and a Grand Marnier Souffle along with Salade Verte. It was so much fun watching my guests enjoy great food.

Step by step, word for word, illustration by illustration - this is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Grausman's book is for the beginner and the experienced cook
Review: We have used this book for over twenty years. It was a gift to us from an Austrian cook while we were living in Europe. At that time we were just beginning to explore French cooking. It was one of our first volumes referencing traditional French cooking techniques and style. We have acquired numerous other French cook books since that time. Richard Grausman's book continues to be a signifigant point of reference for us about French recipes and his approach to cooking. Beginning with interest in a particular dish, we may consult an old Raymond Oliver cookbook, Julia Child's early and recent works, the Larousse cookbooks, Jacques Pepin's work, the Cordon Bleu cookbooks, The Culinary Institute of America's books, and others, but frequently refer to Grausman's distillation of a great amount of information and advice into a simpler manner and method of approach. Some of the advice is limited to the perspective of the time (first edition published in 1988). An updated editon would be welcomed by many of we loyal followers, but the techniques and style probably couldn't be more straight forward than in this cookbook. We continue to give this cookbook as wedding and housewarming gifts for beginning cooks and newly weds. This cookbook is like a Lonely Planet Guide might be to travel and adventure in the French kitchen. It cuts to the chase. There are libraries of more detailed and historically profound works, but Richard Grausman gets you on your way to sucessful French style dishes without delay. Do you want to get started and eat well or write a thesis?