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Title: From Emeril's Kitchens: Favorite Recipes from Emeril's Restaurants by Emeril Lagasse ISBN: 0-06-018535-X Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Very Good Meals, Well Presented
Comment: Emeril's new book is different from many other recent celebrity restaurant recipe books, mostly in very good ways.
First, while Emeril is definitely the star, he liberally shares credit for the work with all senior members of his large organization spread across nine restaurants plus 'Emeril's Homebase' in New Orleans. Emeril even goes so far as to credit all of his administrative staffs and sommeliers. The last is odd because there is no mention of any wine pairings to the food. Not being a great fan of fine wines, I don't miss this and do not hold it against the book. I point it out because it may be a feature important to some potential buyers of this book.
Second, there is none of the coffee table look to this book. It is all business, devoted exclusively to the presentation of recipes. Following this theme, all the color plates are together in the center section of the book. I find this much more audience friendly, as the photographs are better placed to assist one in choosing an attractive dish from the selection available. The quality of the color photographs is good, but not excellent. The camera is a bit too close for my taste,as the front of a pizza is in focus while the back of the pizza is hazy.
Third, the recipes in the book are much more organized around dinners, with recipes for both supporting dishes and major components being presented together with the recipe for the entrée. In spite of the entrée centric presentation, there is still a large and, to my eyes, a more useful than usual section at the beginning of the book on 'Basics'. This organization makes the book much more suitable to it's typical audience than many others. I believe people buy celebrity chef books primarily aes a resource for planning entertaining menus and to generally make their Sunday and holiday dinners more interesting. This book is a great help for that objective, with the bonus that you can throw out the fact that 'this meal is served at Emerils!'
Fourth, Emeril makes it very clear that the recipes were created by many different chefs. I recognize only a very few recipes from his TV shows, and Emeril takes personal credit for very few of the recipes. This does not lead to a hodge podge, as all of Emeril's restaurants seem to be firmly based in the Cajun / Creole / Gulf Coast / Southern cuisine, with a bit of New York / Chicago steakhouse and Fall River Portuguese thrown in to leaven the mix.
Fifth, this book is not overpriced. List price is reasonable, and with a discount I suspect it can be had widely for not much more than $20. I believe this is because this book is not a salvo to help garner Emeril a James Beard or IACP award, it is to bring people into his restaurants. This is why the book promotes the restaurants' ample wine cellars and sommelier staff, but says nothing about wine pairings in the style of Ming Tsai or Tom Colicchio.
Sixth, I have found no errors which would typically be found and corrected by a copy editor. More than one upscale culinary coffee table denizen has been infected by such errors. The folks at William Morrow, the publisher, earned their place in the acknowledgments.
In general, there are some simple recipes, but not many. I give Emeril and his collaborators credit for not making any claims that this is simple cooking, because it isn't. Most of the protein entrees require one or more secondary preparations of stocks, sauces, ingredients, and garnishes. Even if one replaces the stocks with commercial products, the number of pantry preparations is still large. On the other hand, with a few exceptions, I believe few of the preparations are hard for a dedicated foodie. I would caution people who use this book that there is some cooking expertise assumed here. Warnings for symptoms for which the cook should check to determine doneness or other culinary endpoints are rare.
As stated above, the cuisine is classic American, with reliance on over the top quality beef, crab, shrimp, lamb, crawfish, and the like ingredients rather than on obsessively fine technique to achieve tasty results. There are few of your fussy French greens, replaced with a high reliance on Bibb lettuce. The Caesar salad, for example, is less fussy than Martha Stewart may like. It is certainly less fussy than you will find in a big ticket New York steakhouse.
The observation on the Caesar salad recipe is typical of what I found in many recipes. The mashed potatoes recipe, for example, is several notches below what one would find under a roof of a major French restaurant. Another clue is the treatment of mustard in sauces. The sauce au pauvre recipe cooks the Dijon mustard for 10 minutes on moderate heat before plating. Every authority from Jaques Pepin on down warns against cooking mustard to avoid it's turning bitter. But, this type of over the top technique is not what Emirl is all about.
Oddly, the only real disappointment I took from the book is that there were very few recipes from Tchoup Chop. This is the one cuisine which would diverge the most from Emeril's Cajun / Creole center of gravity. I would recommend any prospective buyer to ignore any connection with the flamboyant character on 'Emeril Live' and take the book on its merits.
Rating: 4
Summary: Another yummy Emeril book
Comment: I really like Emeril. I've made a few of his recipes and they've always turned out to be yummy. So when I got this book, I had high hopes, and Emeril did not let me down. The book has a lot of recipes and they are all very original, interesting recipes (often quite complicated, but again this are the best recipes from his restaurants). The only reason I didn't give the book 5 stars, it's that in the other Emeril's books tradition, this book also didn't have a lot of photos. I just really prefer seeing what the end result should look like before I cook, especially with appetizers and entrees.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hits the spot!
Comment: I cooked several of Emeril's recipes from his website before buying this cookbook. Excellent eats every time! Some basic skills required, but they are not as difficult as some previous reviewers whine about. If you cannot make chicken broth, better stay away and order in a pizza.
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Title: Food Network Kitchens Cookbook : Recipes, Tips & Tricks for the Home Cook by Food Network Kitchens ISBN: 0696218542 Publisher: Meredith Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Emeril's TV Dinners: Kickin' It Up a Notch with Recipes from Emeril Live and Essence of Emeril by Emeril Lagasse ISBN: 0688163785 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 29 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Emeril's New New Orleans by Emeril Lagasse ISBN: 0688112846 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 22 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Prime Time Emeril: More TV Dinners from America's Favorite Chef by Emeril Lagasse ISBN: 0060185368 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 07 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Emeril's There's a Chef in My Soup! Recipes for the Kid in Everyone by Emeril Lagasse, Charles Yuen ISBN: 0688177069 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 26 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.99 |
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