Books about Artisans from Amazon.com

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Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

To eat at Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, is to experience a peak culinary experience. In The French Laundry Cookbook, Keller articulates his passions and offers home cooks a means to duplicate the level of perfection that makes him one of the best chefs in the U.S. and, arguably, the world.

This cookbook provides 150 recipes exactly as they are used at Keller's restaurant. It is also his culinary manifesto, in which he shares the unique creative processes that led him to invent Peas and Carrots--a succulent pillow of a lobster paired with pea shoots and creamy ginger-carrot sauce--and other high-wire culinary acts. It offers unimagined experiences, from extracting chlorophyll to use in coloring sauces to a recipe for chocolate cake accompanied by red beet ice cream and a walnut sauce. You are urged to follow Keller's recipes precisely and also to view them as blueprints. To keep them alive, they must be infused with your own commitment to perfection and pleasure, as you define those terms.

Keller's story, shared through the writing of Michael Ruhlman, shows how this chef was both born and made. After winning rave reviews when he was still in his 20s, it took a more experienced chef throwing a knife at him because he did not know how to truss a chicken to open his eyes to the importance of the discipline and techniques of classical French cooking. To acquire these fundamental skills, he apprenticed at eight of the finest restaurants in France.

Grounded in classic technique, Keller's cooking is characterized by traditional marriages of ingredients, assembled in breathtakingly daring new ways, such as Pearls and Oyster, glistening caviar and oysters served on a bed of creamy pearl tapioca. Continually piquing the palate, his meals are a procession of 5 to 10 dishes, all small portions vibrantly composed. For example, Pan Roasted Breast of Squab with Swiss Chard, Seared Foie Gras, and Oven-Dried Black Figs require just three birds to serve six. The result: you are never sated, always stimulated.

The 200 photographs by Deborah Jones include more than just beauty shots: they show how to prepare various dishes; how Keller, shown stroking a whole salmon, respects his ingredients; and how the perfection of baby fava beans still nestled in the downy lining of their succulent pod, or the seduction of an abundance of fresh caviar, calls out the best from the chef. --Dana Jacobi.
Price: $31.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A revolution in cooking

Sous vide is the culinary innovation that has everyone in the food world talking In this revolutionary new cookbook, Thomas Keller, America's most respected chef, explains why this foolproof technique, which involves cooking at precise temperatures below simmering, yields results that other culinary methods cannot. For the first time, one can achieve short ribs that are meltingly tender even when cooked medium rare. Fish, which has a small window of doneness, is easier to finesse, and shellfish stays succulent no matter how long it's been on the stove. Fruit and vegetables benefit, too, retaining color and flavor while undergoing remarkable transformations in texture.

The secret to sous vide is in discovering the precise amount of heat required to achieve the most sublime results. Through years of trial and error, Keller and his chefs de cuisine have blazed the trail to perfection—and they show the way in this collection of never-before-published recipes from his landmark restaurants—The French Laundry in Napa Valley and per se in New York. With an introduction by the eminent food-science writer Harold McGee, and artful photography by Deborah Jones, who photographed Keller's best-selling The French Laundry Cookbook, this book will be a must for every culinary professional and anyone who wants to up the ante and experience food at the highest level..
Price: $47.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A bold and eye-opening new cookbook with magnificent photos and unforgettable stories.

In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet, the Silk Road oases of Xinjiang, the steppelands of Inner Mongolia, and the steeply terraced hills of Yunnan and Guizhou. The peoples who live in these regions are culturally distinct, with their own history and their own unique culinary traditions. In Beyond the Great Wall, the inimitable duo of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid—who first met as young travelers in Tibet—bring home the enticing flavors of this other China.

For more than twenty-five years, both separately and together, Duguid and Alford have journeyed all over the outlying regions of China, sampling local home cooking and street food, making friends and taking lustrous photographs. Beyond the Great Wall shares the experience in a rich mosaic of recipes—from Central Asian cumin-scented kebabs and flatbreads to Tibetan stews and Mongolian hot pots—photos, and stories. A must-have for every food lover, and an inspiration for cooks and armchair travelers alike..
Price: $19.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With this whole grain follow-up to the acclaimed BREAD BAKER'S APPRENTICE, home and professional bakers will be making whole grain loaves so delicious that they put white breads to shame. After much tinkering and trial and error (with help from more than 250 recipe testers), beloved baking instructor Peter Reinhart has improved and simplified his groundbreaking delayed fermentation method to successfully meet the whole grain challenge with less hands-on time in the kitchen. Including recipes for both partial and 100-percent whole grain hearth, sandwich, and specialty breads, PETER REINHART'S WHOLE GRAIN BREADS is the definitive guide to baking incredible and healthful artisan-quality bread..
Price: $21.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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 crème 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.
Price: $28.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Chocolate and candy making today is undergoing a renaissance in public awareness and status. This comprehensive book combines artisan confectionery techniques with accessible explanations of the theory and science as well as formulas for use in production. Fundamental information for the confectioner includes ingredient function and use, chocolate processing, and artisan production techniques. The book contains 140 formulas and variations for beautiful confections, including dairy-based centers, crystalline and noncrystalline sugar confectionery, jellies, and nut center and aerated confections..
Price: $37.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From two acclaimed, award-winning restaurants came two of the most acclaimed, award-winning cookbooks ever published—now packaged together in a luxurious slipcased boxed set, the ideal gift for any food lover.

First there was French Laundry in Napa Valley, setting a new standard for American fine dining. Then there was The French Laundry Cookbook, setting a new standard for American cookbooks. In 1998, Chef Keller opened Bouchon, “so that I’d have a place to eat after cooking all night at the French Laundry,” and that restaurant, too, gave birth to a groundbreaking cookbook. Now, fifteen years after Thomas Keller first set foot in what would become a landmark restaurant, these two extraordinary books are offered in a striking new slipcased edition. With this year’s opening of the Bouchon Bakery in New York City, and last year’s momentous Michelin guide that awarded Keller’s Per Se the top honors, Keller is increasingly in the limelight—and his inventive, delicious food is increasingly in the consciousness of a national audience. The Complete Keller is the perfect gift for anyone who loves fine food..
Price: $63.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Dan Snow builds stone walls without benefit of mortar or other binding material. This ancient dry-stone method is experiencing a revival, and Snow's In the Company of Stone is full of moody photos of recent landscape projects, some of which look as if they'd been part of the scenery for centuries. Snow's poetic commentary and a helpful appendix of design detail make for an inspiring, informative book. .
Price: $7.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Recipes from the back rooms and basement bakeries that produce Europe's best breads.

When Daniel Leader opened his Catskills bakery, Bread Alone, twenty years ago, he was determined to duplicate the whole-grain and sourdough breads he had learned to make in the bakeries of Paris. The bakery was an instant success, and his first book, Bread Alone, brought Leader's breads to home kitchens.

In this, his second book, Leader shares his experiences traveling throughout Europe in search of the best artisan breads. He learned how to make new-wave sourdough baguettes with spelt, flaxseed, and soy at an organic bakery in Alsace; and in Genzano, outside of Rome, he worked with the bakers who make the enormous country loaves so unique that they have earned the Indicazione Geografica Protetta (IGP), a government mark reserved for the most prized foods and wines. Leader's detailed recipes describe every step that it takes to reproduce these rare loaves, which until now were available strictly locally. 32 pages of color illustrations..
Price: $16.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]