Creating Chefs: A Journey through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons

Rating:
Summary: Best New Book for Real Chefs
Review: As a professional chef cooking for years in some very fine restaurants, I was amazed and thrilled to find this book, Creating Chefs, on the shelf. Finally a book spoke to me, to my thoughts, to my loves in the kitchen. Other books on celebrity chefs have so little to do with my life, their stories are too big, too out of reach for my life everyday in the kitchen. Not only did I buy this book for me but I bought it for all of my co-workers who felt the same way after reading each of the chef's stories. This book not only validated my work, but gave me something I can look at again and again (the photos are amazing, with each one capturing the beauty of the natural ingredients in the recipes) to inspire my next move in the kitchen. It is one of a kind, a true gem.

Rating:
Summary: YA GOTTA READ THIS BOOK!!!
Review: As one of Carol's many Instructors, I was quite anxious to see this project "come out of the oven". It literally spills over with the passion of the Author,the many Chef/Instructors and students in the text. The pictures are tremendous and the recipes all WORK!! {try the Brie soup, it rocks!!]I HIGHLY recomend this book to anyone considering Culinary School. It gives great insight into the process of starting the road to becoming a Chef.

Rating:
Summary: YA GOTTA READ THIS BOOK!!!
Review: As one of Carol's many Instructors, I was quite anxious to see this project "come out of the oven". It literally spills over with the passion of the Author,the many Chef/Instructors and students in the text. The pictures are tremendous and the recipes all WORK!! {try the Brie soup, it rocks!!]I HIGHLY recomend this book to anyone considering Culinary School. It gives great insight into the process of starting the road to becoming a Chef.

Rating:
Summary: A guide exploring the basics of culinary school lessons
Review: Carol Maybach and Glenn Humphrey's Creating Chefs: A Journey through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons deserves ongoing special mention as an intriguing, personal journey through culinary school which blends insights and lessons with recipes. Maybach is an accomplished writer, culinary school grad, and photographer, Humphrey a graduate himself of the Culinary Institute of America: the pairing of their talents here makes for a guide exploring the basics of culinary school lessons, whether it be on producing the perfect meringue to understanding advanced baking tips and tricks.

Rating:
Summary: Good looking, but not what I expected
Review: Maybe I'm just not enough of a food snob. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I put this on my Amazon wish list, but after I received it, this struck me as a somewhat pretentious coffeetable type of book. Personally, I just couldn't get interested in this one -- and I have a collection of about 300 books on food and cooking.

There's a lot of writing but no real story (and hence no "journey" as described in the subtitle). Nor is it truly a book you want to cook from if you're a home cook like me. This may be a personal reaction, but it felt more like a collection of profiles about the chefs at the school where the author studied, with some recipes and extra stuff thrown in between the glossy photos and profiles.

My thought is that if you're a chef, wish you were a chef, or you're truly intrigued on why some people became chefs or you just want to hear some chefs philosophical thoughts about food, then this book is for you. The short profiles are interesting, and they're accompanied by some well-composed photos, but they dominate the book. Again, it might just be me, but I just wasn't overwhelmed by things like an arty shot of a chef posed with his motorcycle. The author offered some brief insight about what she learned at school that I found interesting, but there was too little of it or it was too generic. A lot of the recipes scattered among the profiles felt daunting or were written in such an overly complex manner that I thought it really didn't work as a cookbook for most home cooks, either.

It's a good looking book, though. I suppose it is targeted more for people who want to read about food and chefs than those who actually want to read about food and then actually cook something.

I "re-gifted" this to my circle of friends' Christmas gift pool. Maybe one of them will appreciate this better than I did.

Rating:
Summary: Lush Culinary Metaphors Gush Love about Food
Review: This new book by the photographer and writer Carol Maybach, with (culinary) contributions and writing credits by Glenn Humphrey is an ambitious attempt to document culinary passion and culinary education in a novel fashion, different from the journalism of Michael Ruhlman and Tony Bourdain on the one hand and the culinary memoir / recipes of, for example, Eric Rippert and Thomas Keller on the other.

Since the authors have set their sights very high, they are less successful than the works of the four authors mentioned above. Their shortcomings are primarily due to a concept, which just doesn't seem to work and a failure by the primary author to succeed in the very difficult subject of talking about an artistic endeavor rather than simply doing it. Where Ruhlman and Bourdain succeed so well by talking about people and classes and techniques and their own experiences, Maybach tries to reach some metaphysical level of understanding which any journeyman philosopher of the last several generations will tell you is simply an impossible task to do with any real success. What happens, to quote the book, is to 'become intoxicated by culinary metaphors'. All the text attributed to Maybach has a breathless quality about it. She sounds like she is almost overwhelmed by the beauty and effervescence of dealing with food and it's preparation. There comes a time when you have to remember that we are talking about turnips and pork chops. This activity is roughly comparable to fine cabinet making and not to the still life paintings of Cezanne.

Note that the primary author's occupation is writer and photographer so it is probably reasonable to believe she is responsible for the photographs in the book. All of the photographs are in black and white and have the look about them of all being taken in ambient light with no staging or dressing. They all look like stills from a lost Cinema Verite work by Francois Truffaut on the drudgery in the life of an aging prep chef in a no star Paris bistro in Montmarte. Well, maybe not, but they are arty and contribute practically nothing to communicating the culinary information to you dear reader. Oddly enough, they are not out of step with the arty tone set by the primary author. They are brooding and heavy with photographic artistry and import. They simply do nothing to support the recipes being discussed on facing pages, as in the case of a crème broulee recipe facing what looks like a split coconut shell and roses still life or a recipe for Kobe beef facing a picture of radishes.

If this book had set it's sights a bit lower and left the writing to the chefs and the copy editors, this would have been a more rewarding book, especially at the budget list price asked for by this totally unknown (to me) publishing house.

All the recipes in the book are interesting. They are also all examples of haute cuisine restaurant fare, but that should not discourage you, as restaurant practice has a lot to teach the amateur chef. Each of the thirteen chapters contains a featured recipe by a culinary school instructor / chef plus additional, complimentary recipes fitting the theme of the chapter. The chapter also contains one or more essays by the featured chef plus 'lessons' on important techniques such as stock preparation. One conceit of the book is to include in each chapter a double page spread of 'notes' handwritten in block letters and illustrated by drawings which contribute much more to the value of the book as a culinary instruction than do the photographs.

I found no statements about culinary practice which I felt were entirely wrong and I found many which I believe are right. I was especially happy to find the authors echo the Richard Olney belief that achieving simplicity requires a lot of hard work and practice. There are several other little accuracies which other writers overlook or get wrong such as the rejection of the statement that searing meats does something to seal in the juices of the meat. There are a few places where some generalizations may mislead one. In the 'Advice from a Student' section there is a recommendation to heat pans completely before adding fat to saute. There are times when you do not want to do this and this is not recommended for Teflon coated pans.

I think the publisher's copy editors could have done a better job at several places in the book. At one point, a recipe calls for a quarter inch by quarter inch cube. The odd expression of giving the length of two sides of a cube would have been better done by simply saying a 'small dice' as this is defined elsewhere in the book as a quarter inch cube.

I give this book only four stars to warn the prospective buyer that this book may have less substance to it than a cursory look may reveal. The greatest value for this book is as a survey of what one can expect from a good culinary education. The actual lessons contained herein are worthy, but you will get a better coverage of basic culinary techniques by getting the latest edition of the Culinary Institute of America's manual 'The New Professional Chef'. I recommend this book to anyone who is considering a culinary education and who knows nothing about it. An even better text would be Daniel Boulud's 'Letters to a Young Chef'.
Ironically, another reviewer who gave the book five stars got it exactly write when they said the book boils over with enthusiasm. They are also correct when they say that all the recipes work, but you can get great recipes in a less frilly setting from many other sources.