Foodies and amateur cooks alike may find one of the latest cookbooks to hit the shelves a perfect addition to their cookbook collection: Cooking with Les Dames d’Escoffier: At Home with the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat and Drink.
Les Dames D’Escoffier, the exclusive organization of more than 1,300 women who are considered leaders in the dining and hospitality industries, have recently put together a hefty compilation of special recipe selections from Dames past and present (including Julia Child and Alice Waters), excellent wine pairings, and informative cooking tips.
Though the book has a somewhat inordinate amount of introductory prefaces—a foreword by Alice Waters (a queen of the sustainable food movement) and Jerry Anne De Vecchio, a preface on who Les Dames D’escoffier are, another preface on who August Escoffier was, acknowledgements, AND a formal introduction—once you get to the actual cookbook portion, you’ll find a fantastic repertoire of recipes and notes.
This comprehensive collection of everything from chilled cucumber buttermilk soup to veal and wild mushroom ragout will give beginner cooks some great challenges to experiment with. (Texans will enjoy the nod to Tex-Mex-style chiles rellenos) Desserts are also well covered—HELLO Peach Tree Country Kitchen bread pudding with Jack Daniels caramel!!!
Pros:
1) The beginning of the book (after the myriad introductions) has a helpful intro to basic ingredients such as salt and olive oil. It gives excellent info on what types to use as well as when and how to use them.
2) Each chapter opens with a list of dishes—all from Dames, of course. The best part of the chapter list is the right side of the page, where there is a separate listing of all of the great cooking tips you’ll find in that chapter such as: how to use a whole chicken carcass and how to choose the perfect artichoke.
3) Most of the recipes have wine pairing blurbs as well as “make ahead” tips, giving readers an idea of how to time their food preparation.
Cons:
1) There seem to be a lot of bios of the different contributing Dames and the writing can seem a bit self-indulgent with regards to the organization. Some of this gets in the way of the actual cooking part of the COOKbook.
2) If a recipe has a main part as well as a sauce, or second portion of the dish, the ingredients are all listed together. For beginners, and those home cooks that thrive on organization, such as myself, it would have been more helpful to break out these ingredients by category with a list of ingredients for the main portion of the dish and a second list of ingredients for the sauce.
Overall the book is probably best for former or existing Dames or for those Foodies looking to capitalize on food tips and who can’t help themselves but read lists of ingredients when perusing recipes. The lack of photography makes this book not as approachable for beginning cooks. But the notes and tips on how to make your cooking skills better make this an advantageous addition to the cookbook collection.