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We LOVE this cookbook!! I bought Cooking at Home with the Culinary Institute of America (as well as its companion book... Baking at Home) for my daughter who would like to go to culinary school in the future. The recipes in it are definitely high-end dishes, but the book is written so that even a beginner can prepare them. The introduction chapter explains types & uses for everything from cookware & tools to spices & oils. It also explains how to perform many of the basic cooking methods & the science behind them. Some of the methods covered are grilling, broiling, roasting, baking, sauteing, stir-frying, pan-frying, steaming, shallow poaching, poaching, braising, & stewing. Each chapter (soups, poultry, meat, fish/shellfish, pasta, vegetables, potatoes/grains/legumes, eggs, starters/salads, & kitchen desserts) begins with detailed instructions for various cooking techniques used within those dishes. Techniques range from boiling eggs to making souffles, selecting vegetables to making fresh stuffed pastas, types of soups to making a spice sachet, butterflying chicken breasts to trussing poultry, filleting fish to shucking oysters, & choosing cuts of meat to carving a leg of lamb. The chapters covering meat, fish & poultry each include a chart explaining the various cuts of meat & the best cooking methods for each cut. The fish chart also includes the characteristics (flaky, oily, fatty, lean, firm, sweet, etc) of many varieties of fish. EVERY recipe has tips in the margin. The tips range from presentation ideas, to possible variations to the recipe, to simply tips on how to achieve the best possible dish. EVERY recipe also includes a cross-reference page number for any techniques that are used within that dish. For example, on the recipe for Prawn Curry, you will find the cross-reference info explaining braising & stewing on page 40, how to make clarified butter on page 26 & how to prepare shrimp on page 129. This is a fabulous feature!! How often do you come across something in a recipe & wondered how you are supposed to do that technique? This takes the guess work out of everything. The book easily links every recipe to the techniques required to complete it & is very user friendly!! Cooking at Home is filled with lots of great photos, especially within the instructional sections It gives you a good visual to go along with the written instructions. This cookbook has many, many great recipes! However, even if you never cook a single recipe from the entire book, just the instructional information alone is worth it's weight in gold!!Read full review
I bought this book because it was recommended to me by my daughter-in-law, who graduated from the Cordon Bleu School of Culinary Arts. My daughter's girls are really into cooking, and my daughter-in-law thought that this book would give the girls more of the "whats, whys, and hows" of cooking. And she was right. This book has information on the various utensils and their use, as well as the different terms used in cooking, and also many hints that the "pros" use when cooking. In addition, there is information on different seasonings. This book is easy to understand, which was a must for the tween girls I bought it for. My grand-daughters love it! This is not a recipe cookbook - chock full of recipes. So if that is what you are after, it may disappoint you. It IS, however, a very good learning tool, that includes several recipes. This book was exactly what I was looking for!Read full review
You've seen the movie, read the book or heard the story of the young woman who cooked every item in Julia Child's most famous recipe book and had it appear just as the pictures. With this book, you are part student, learning why it is that you are tying, wrapping, skinning, soaking over night, and then with that first forked portion into your mouth your breath escapes you, your eyes close and tears eek from the sides as flavor's you never thought you would be able to produce colorfully fill your palette.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
great cookbook even for a grad from the CIA, I plan on using it a lot
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
I bought this book as I couldn't attend culinary school. Though I haven't had a lot of time to read through I could see by leafing through the pages that this was a very informative book from "The Culinary Institute of America". I have more than a few cook books but this book goes into detail about the chopping techniques and preparation. Since I couldn't enroll in culinary classes this Spring, this book does give me some "hands-on" information.
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