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Rating: 
Summary: Good Entertaining Recipes for Skilled Cooks. Recommended
Review: Celebrity chefs write books oriented towards teaching you important elements of cooking, as with Paul Bertoli's 'Cooking by Hand' or Tom Colicchio's 'How to Think Like a Chef'; giving you interesting, simple recipes for home cooking as with 'Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home' or Guy Savoy's 'Simple French Recipes for the Home Cook'; or, like this cookbook by Daniel Boulud, it offers fancy, unusual recipes which can be done at home when entertaining family or friends.Unlike Guy Savoy's book, Boulud makes no pretense that these dishes are simple, and they are not. They are quite as complicated, on average, as the recipes in 'Café Boulud Cookbook'. On the other hand, true to it's 'at home' orientation, it avoids the more extreme recipes in a book such as 'Chef Daniel Boulud: Cooking In New York City'. In the introduction, Boulud makes a small claim to have branched out beyond his roots in French cuisine, but he has not branched very far. Almost all recipes have a French, or at very least, a European style. Since this is a book about entertaining, it is quite appropriate that Boulud includes beverage recommendations from his expert restaurant sommelier Jean Luc Le Du. Credit to Jean Luc for not limiting his suggestions to wines. He is quite willing to recommend beer where it is appropriate, for an accompaniment to hamburgers, for example. Also appropriate to a book on entertaining, the first chapter is devoted to mixed drinks and appetizers. There are five mixed drinks, one of which is non-alcoholic, and all of which appear to be specialities of Boulud's restaurants. If your crowd sticks to Jack Daniels and Scotch, these are a waste of space. I have mixed feelings about the appetizer recipes, as they all require a long to very long list of ingredients, prep time or cooking time. As someone who has made both, blinis and latkes may seem like simple dishes, but they are not something you want to do for a party of eight when you are the only cook. The four tarts appear to require more ingredients, but they have the more novelty value and they are easier to make for six to eight portions than the blinis and latkes, especially if you have a way with piecrust. The carrot and custard tart is especially unusual. If your crowd is packed with foodies, make the artichoke and radicchio clafoutis. The notion of clafoutis alone will fuel conversation for at least an hour, as the name originally applied only to a fruit flan with black cherries. Boulud extends the notion to a sort of savory vegetable tart sans crust. One of the most valuable recipes in the book is the omnibus recipe for four different ways of preparing asparagus. Boulud repeats this technique with other recipes such as his four different ways of making hamburgers. Monsieur Le Duc makes wine recommendations for both artichokes and asparagus without missing a beat. The starters chapter has more recipes than any of the other chapters, and most of the starter dishes could easily serve as a vegetable or starch side to a protein main dish. The chapter of thirteen (13) fish recipes is a very nice mix of relatively simple dishes with cod and sea bass to eye catchers like fancy lobster rolls and Vietnamese spring rolls. The vocabulary word in this chapter is mariniere, usually applied to cooking mussels. Boulud bends the dictionary again by applying the white wine technique to clams, tuna and potatoes. The oddly short chapter on meat, poultry, and side dishes, with a bare seventeen (17) recipes gives some unusual dishes such as Guinea Hen casserole, but almost all of the recipes are souped up versions of well known dishes such as cassolet, lamb stew, duck a la orange, pork tenderloin, and roasted turkey breast. The most interesting recipe in this section is for roasted venison, where making the spice mixture; the marinade, the date sauce, and the garnish together take a lot longer than roasting, then broiling the meat. I would not make this dish for anyone who was not very interested in his or her food. True to the entertaining theme of the book, the dessert chapter has twenty-one (21) recipes, most of that are unusual and challenging, but only two three of which involve yeast doughs. The word for this chapter is chamonix, which is so arcane, it doesn't even appear in my Larousse Gastronomique. Boulud's version is a muffin with lots of 'cookie spices' and an orange sauce. Many of the recipes have simple names, such as phyllo apple tart, chocolate cakes, frozen strawberry souffle and chocolate mousse. Trust Boulud to turn each simple idea into a conversation piece. Some familiar desserts are really taken to an entirely different place as with the chocolate and pistachio crepes Suzette. You will be happy to find a very traditional clafoutis recipe with black cherries and hazelnuts. Many recipes are interesting variations on well-known standards. So, like the clafoutis, many dishes will spark a lot of interest if your guests get into talking about the food. Not every dish has a photograph, but those that are photographed are competent and lend some value to understanding the dish. Unfortunately, I suspect some lapse of honesty with some of the photographs, as they do not seem to match the dishes. The kiwi pate photo lacks all trace of the characteristic kiwi green color. Appendices give sources for both unusual foods and cookware. They also include menus for entertaining and seasonal menus. It is beyond me why Boulud could not do 'seasonal menus for entertaining', but there you are. If you entertain for people who really appreciate their food and wine, and you are competent in the kitchen, this book is a great resource. Almost all of the recipes require long ingredient list, lots of prep work, and good skills with sauces and custards.
Rating:
Summary: Gourmet Home Cooking
Review: This is a beautifully designed and well laid out cookbook. "Daniel's Dish" contains about 70 recipes, many of which were first published in Elle magazine, and others which were written especially for the book. The dishes are varied, with French, Mediterranean, Asian and American influences. If you are the sort of vegetarian who eats eggs and dairy there are quite a few things in this book you can eat, and even more if you eat seafood. This book is recommended for:
1. "Foodies" who love food, love to cook, have appreciative guests and are prepared to spend some time in the kitchen.
2. Cookbook collectors.
3. Those who are interested in gourmet cooking & famous chefs. This is the food that a world class French chef makes at home when he is entertaining. If you are a novice cook or wanting some quick and easy down home cooking, this book probably isn't for you. A few recipes are simple, some are elaborate, some are classics and others are up-market versions of popular home dishes such as stews and roasts. I've made several recipes from this book and they were all delicious - the flavors are exquisitely balanced and our guests were suitably impressed. (Incidentally, I've eaten at his restaurant Daniel and the food there is absolutely wonderful). The layout is excellent, with each recipe taking up a double page, so that you don't have to turn the page in the middle of cooking. Each recipe is accompanied by a color photo of the completed dish. Many photos are full page and all of them give you a good close-up of the food without any arty effects or distractions. The food is presented nicely in a manner that can be done at home, not in grand restaurant style. The cooking instructions are clear and well set out. Each recipe comes with a colored text box containing wine recommendations. The wine list is also indexed at the back so that you can choose a meal to go with the wine you have at hand, as well as the other way around. Three quarters of the recipes call for items you can find in a good supermarket or deli, but about one quarter call for more exotic items such as swordfish, caviar, lobster, venison, praline paste, quail eggs, fresh sorrel and savory. Some people enjoy using these ingredients, others do not. Personally, I tend not to use high-end ingredients like that, and can't find them where I live anyway, but I still found enough other things in the cookbook to make me happy that I bought it. The recipes are divided into four large chapters: Cocktails, Small Bites and Starters
Fish and Shellfish
Meat, Poultry and Side Dishes
Breads and Desserts Other chapters include suggested menu plans, pantry basics, kitchen equipment, food sources and even a source guide for the tableware used in each photo, which is useful if you want to duplicate the presentation. The level of difficulty in these recipes is similar to those found in Gourmet or Bon Appetit magazine. If you can make a tart or know how to roast and fry, you will have no problems. However, the recipes look harder at first glance than they actually are, and this may put some people off. This is because: 1.The recipes for fish, meat and poultry take several pages. This is not because they are tricky, its because they are actually complete main courses. Most of them include salad or vegetables plus sauce or garnish. 2.Some recipes call for a list of ingredients that looks horrendously long at first glance, but many of them turn out to be condiments or chopped vegetables that are added all at the same time. For example, there are 23 ingredients listed for the Shrimp Cakes. Which looks very scary, until you realize that you mix together 20 of them together at the same time, then dip in flour (21), egg (22) and fry in oil (23). The accompanying Goat Cheese Sauce has 10 ingredients, but all you do is put them all in a bowl at the same time and stir. So rather than doing anything too difficult, its mostly chopping up odds and ends.
The upside - great flavor. The downside - shopping and chopping. Even if the items are inexpensive, this can make your grocery bill add up quickly if you don't have all of them on hand.
Sample Recipes: Caramelized Bay Scallops with Clementines and Cauliflower
Carrot Mirror Tart
Seed Crusted Rack of Pork
Parmesan Baskets with Herbed Goat Cheese
Saffron Infused Mussel Veloute with Mussels Gratins
Classic Hamburger and Three Variations
Vietnamese Crab Spring Rolls
Stuffed Artichokes with Dungeness Crab and Chanterelles
Roasted Turkey Breast with Endive, Apple and Walnuts
Lamb Stew with Rosemary and Orange
Kiwi Pate de Fruits
Chocolate Ginger Pound Cake
Squash (pumpkin) Panna Cotta with Cranberry Compote & Walnut Tuiles Some criticisms:
1. It would have been a good idea to add a glossary of ingredients for items which not everyone may be familiar with.
2. In recipes calling for ingredients which may not be readily available to everyone, its a good idea to recommend a substitute. What should I use if I can't buy Reblochon cheese locally?
3. The recipe for Mini Baguettes and Butter Balls needs a picture to illustrate the dough folds.
4. One or two photos (eg Creme Boulud) had minor presentation features that were not included in the recipe.
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