Smokeydoke

It's a fun read. Very kitschy and in-your-face. When T-day winds down, I'll start cooking from it. Some recipes look really good.

Interesting thread, just ordered this book from my local library.

The famous les halles fries (yep, that's what they call them). Labor intensive but I ended up with a good plate of fries. It's a three-part process of soaking them in cold water, blanching them in low temp oil (280F) then frying them briefly at higher temp (375F) oil. Best in New York? I doubt it, they must do something else to them to make them the "best". They taste a lot like In-N-Out fries. But I love how you can control the width and doneness of the fries, so our fries came out crunchy and soft and just slightly thicker than most. Served with steak au poivre, it was a perfect combination.

I've had this cookbook forever but I never cooked from it. I'm glad I found this thread to motivate me. Tonight I made Steak Au Poivre, p. 130. It was very easy, just a task of coating the steak with a thick layer of black pepper (the Kirkland brand worked great), fried up the steak, then reduced it with cognac and added butter. Entire dish didn't take more than 30 mins. I used a cheap sirloin (AB wrote this was standard) and the demi-glace and butter forgave the stringiness of the meat. My personal opinion, it was too much pepper! Next time I'm going to reduce it by half. However Mr. Smokey says that is how Steak Au Poivre is suppose to taste. It was too spicy for me, but the combination of the sauce and potatoes made it tolerable. The taste is delicious. Sorry for the crappy photo, these were taken before dinner was gobbled up.

Honestly, it's not that great. There's lot of errors, there are threads at "that other foodie site" and it'd be a good idea to read through them to see what the errors are. Also, it's an old-ish book, so a lot of the cooking techniques are outdated, so are a lot of the flavor combinations. I did one recipe, then placed it into the non-essential pile. Back to the library it went.

I made a basic Potato and Leek soup. The recipe was from Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, but the Julia Child's recipe is almost identical.

Thanks!

Does anyone want to cook through it? I got a free copy, I will probably try some of their recipes, even though I haven't been impressed with other Lucky Peach recipes.

These photos are gorgeous! I would like to participate in this thread. I just checked LAND OF FISH AND RICE from the library.

Hi, my name is Kathy and I'm a home cook from Las Vegas. I found this site via Eat Your Books and I wanted to participate in the cookbook threads. I have a slight obsession with cookbooks. I'm just starting to blog about my cooking and just starting out on Instagram. Here's my link if you want to check it out. I'll follow you if you follow me! https://www.instagram.com/smokeydoke/