designdog

Thanks! Customer service is not dead! I will send photos tomorrow. Note to other post: I think the jus chart was where my pages were joined!

Got mine from Amazon yesterday, and am both amazed and disappointed. Amazed, well all of the praise is pretty much true, so no need to repeat it. Here is why I am disappointed: As the title, and reputation, states, this is cutting edge cuisine. Sous vide, high tech equipment, etc. but guess what? All that food has to be cut, and there is nothing on kitchen knives. Nada. Unusual, with the focus on other equipment. There is some interesting new technology in knives as well... After a while I thought they were channeling cook's illustrated. You know, the shocking " the least expensive pan is the best pan," etc. The knock on copper pans, for example, neglected to mention the benefit of rapid temperature response in making pan sauces, etc. Volume 2 of my edition has several ink smears and an uncut folio page... Still a great effort, but I like Ducasse' Encyclopedia better. Another example of a big and expensive book, and one from which I do not cook the specific recipes, but from which I learn and can apply much to my every day cuisine...

Let this post go for a few days in hopes I would find something, but have not really satisfied my needs. Perhaps another take on it: how about a reference for garnishes by entrée/preparation? In other words, you look up chicken saute, and you get several vegetable/garnish recipes that would go well with that dish. Kind of a reverse directory concept. Of course this still does not address the issue of managing vegetable/garnishes in a small home kitchen... -ddog

Hello. By all repute, I am a fairly good home cook. My interest is French home cooking, which I perform daily for my wife and I - as I have been doing for twenty years or so. A recent visit to an old favorite French restaurant, however, confirmed that I have been missing the boat so to speak. I seem to focus on the entree, be it a roast chicken, seared scallops, beef tenderloin steak, or even something more involved like a chicken fricassee or beef stew. What I am missing are interesting French garniture, or vegetable sides. I tend to simply cook one vegetable, depending on the entree, and it is getting repetitive. Back to this restaurant. One thing that always impressed me here was that every plate contained several small servings of vegetables and starch. Perhaps the restaurant cooked these up from scratch each morning, perhaps not. What I am looking for is a good book - a guide to the matching, preparation, and re-use of this kind of garniture for a small home kitchen. I have literally, hundreds of cookbooks, most of them about French cooking. I can certainly find several on the classic French garnitures. What I need, however, is something with advice and technique on a continuous garniture process for a small kitchen. Any thoughts? Thanks, -ddog

The Balthazar Cookbook Balthazar, while technically a "brasserie" should provide a good reference. Also Linda Dannenburg has a good travel style book with recipes. In French, try the encyclopedic Ducasse Ducasse, which is quite good save the avant garde photographs...