Review: Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, Alan Richardson

Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours
Dorie Greenspan, Alan Richardson
http://www.doriegreenspan.com/

Cook Book
NetGalley

When Julia Child told Dorie Greenspan, “You write recipes just the way I do,” she paid her the ultimate compliment. Julia’s praise was echoed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which referred to Dorie’s “wonderfully encouraging voice” and “the sense of a real person who is there to help should you stumble.”
Now in a big, personal, and personable book, Dorie captures all the excitement of French home cooking, sharing disarmingly simple dishes she has gathered over years of living in France.

Around My French Table includes many superb renditions of the great classics: a glorious cheese-domed onion soup, a spoon-tender beef daube, and the “top-secret” chocolate mousse recipe that every good Parisian cook knows—but won’t reveal.
Hundreds of other recipes are remarkably easy: a cheese and olive quick bread, a three-star chef’s Basque potato tortilla made with a surprise ingredient (potato chips), and an utterly satisfying roast chicken for “lazy people.”

Packed with lively stories, memories, and insider tips on French culinary customs, Around My French Table will make cooks fall in love with France all over again, or for the first time.



REVIEW:


Beautifully Illistrated and Easy to Follow Recipes

Excellent Cook Book to have in your kitchen. Tired of the everyday same old meal, then this is the cook book to have. If you are an American like me who usually cooks something quick from your basic meats chicken, beef, pork, or fish that you have either bought precooked or bought from a fast food joint then you are totally missing out on the fine cooking and taste that you can create from your own kitchen.

This cook book is wonderfully illustrated with personal instructions and comments from the author. Here are just a few example recipes you will find inside. I could not list everything so I just listed two from each group:

Nibbles and hors d’oeuvres – such as gougers’ - pg 4 or David’s seaweed sables – pg 14

Soups – such as spiced squash, fennel, and pear soup – pg 80 or garbure from the supermarket – pg 86

Salads, starters, and small plates – orange and olive salad - pg 117 or spinach and bacon quiche - pg 160

Chicken and Duck – m. jacques’ Armagnac chicken – pg 204 or duck breasts with fresh peaches - pg 230

Beef, veal, pork, and lamb – boeuf a la mode (great pot roast) – pg 252 or veal Marengo - pg 264 ; pork roast with mangoes and lychees - pg 278 or braised cardamom-curry lamb - pg 283.

Fish and shellfish – Mediterranean swordfish with frilly herb salad - pg 297 or shrimp and cellophane noodles - pg 322

Vegetables and grains – brown-sugar squash and Brussels sprouts en papillote - pg 352 or creamy, cheesy, garlicky rice with spinach - pg 380

Desserts – crème brulee - pg 422 or double chocolate and banana tart - pg 467

Fundamentals and flourishes – cream puff dough - pg 502 or hot fudge sauce - pg 509