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Title: Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells, Judy Kleiber Jones ISBN: 0-89480-623-8 Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Pub. Date: November, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.94 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Absolutely the best
Comment: My wife and I own many cookbooks, but none has come close to giving us the pleasure we have found in so many of the recipes in Bistro Cooking. We are both rank amateurs in the kitchen, but we have been able to handle virtually every recipe we've tried in this book (I did give up after three attempts at the potato pie from L'Ami Louis). The book includes Ms. Wells' favorite recipes from France's great bistros. Mind-blowing potato gratins, delicious fish recipes, hearty stews, unbelievable roast chicken, a strange but fantastic dish of poached eggs served with a simple red wine sauce, winning desserts, it really goes on and on. Ms. Wells is a great writer, very entertaining, and the book is full of wonderful tips. Even seven years or so after we bought our copy of Bistro Cooking, it's always a special day at our home when we make something from this cookbook.
Rating: 5
Summary: Still the best
Comment: This is one of my favorite French cookbooks. This is not haute cuisine, but instead is the friendly family cooking of France's famous bistros. This is roast chicken and beef daube, potato gratin and vegetable tian. This is hearty, earthy delicious food to feed your soul as well as your stomach. Patricia Wells has lived long enough in France to know the ins and outs of French cooking, but still retains her American perspective. Scattered throughout the book are trucs or tips on everything from how to tell if your eggs are fresh to how to store leftover peeled garlic. Not to be missed:
Sauteed Potatoes with Garlic and Walnut Oil, Bistro d'a Cotes Chicken in Wine Vinegar.
Rating: 5
Summary: French for Comfort Food. Warm, Easy, Delightful
Comment: This is Patricia Wells' third book on French cooking and the fourth of her books I am reviewing. Of her four books I have seen, this seems the most accessible and most useful to the largest number of people. This book presents recipes from small eating establishments from all regions of France, including Paris, Lyon, Provence, and southwest France. Therefore, it's contents are a much broader sampling of recipes than the books I have seen on Joel Robuchon, Paris restaurants, and Provence home cooking.
Like all of her other books, the table of contents and selection of recipes therein follows a conventional pattern with chapters on Appetizers, First Courses, and Palate Teasers; Soups of the Day; Market Basket Salads; Pastas; Seasonal Vegetables; Potatoes; Eggs, Cheese, Terrines, and Tarts; Fish and Shellfish; Poultry, Chicken, Duck, Guinea Hen, and Rabbit; Meats, Roasts, and Daily Specials; Homemade Desserts; and Pastries, Bread Dough, Sauces, and Stocks.
The first thing that stands out is the wide variety of dishes. The next is the relative simplicity of the recipe techniques without sacrificing anything to quality and respect for ingredients. I compared Wells' pot-au-feu recipe in this book with the recipe in Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and found the attention to detail was as good or greater in Wells' book. At the same time, Wells is not entangling us in a lot of complex preparations. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wells and Child agree on a method for making Crème Fraiche that does not require day or more to wait for the result.
Wells succeeds in evoking the feeling of the bistro experience in the selection of her recipes, the chatter in the headnotes explaining the source of the recipes, the consistent presentation of a French title for each recipe, even if the dish is a local favorite at a small establishment (such as 'Maggie's Roasted Red Peppers') and not an established standard dish. The photographs and layout of the book also enhance the subject, making the book a lot of fun to read without going too far, destroying the utility of a book you have to read and follow it's directions.
The emphasis on simplicity and utility extends to the pantry recipes in the last chapter. I especially like the distinction between the three different types of pastry crust. If you are new to pastry, however, I recommend you consult a book such as Alford and Duguid's 'Home Baking' specializing in a discussion of pastry to become aware of the subtleties of pastry dough. I also suggest that for stocks, the reader consult a fuller discussion of the subject such as Cooks Illustrated's volume 'The Best Recipe'.
One thing I did not find in this book which I expected was an explanation of the distinction between a bistro and a brassiere. Wells cites several recipes that originate from brassieres and includes bistros, brassieres, and restaurants in her list of establishments in the back of the book.
Three other small aspects of the book did annoy me. One was the numerous references on unfamiliar terms to an index which, in some cases, did not include the term on which the reference was made. Another was the inaccuracy of some English to metric unit conversions. I found a few which were consistently off by about 10%. A third was the use of the metric unit centiliters in place of milliliters. Almost all American metric measuring devices for the kitchen are graduated in milliliters. I can anticipate a lot of blank stares at the abbreviation 'cl' for metrically challenged cooks.
All of these caveats are small matters when weighted against the great good fun to be found in preparing recipes from this book. This book will go to the top of my list when I am looking for ideas to fill out a menu and I have no clue to what I want to eat. At the list price of less than $14, the cachet of genuine bistro food makes this book a real gem.
Highly recommended to all.
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Title: The Paris Cookbook by Patricia Wells ISBN: 0060184698 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 23 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Patricia Wells' Trattoria : Simple and Robust Fare Inspired by the Small Family Restaurants of Italy by Patricia Wells, Steven Rothfeld ISBN: 0060936525 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Patricia Wells at Home in Provence : Recipes Inspired By Her Farmhouse In France by Robert Freson, Patricia Wells ISBN: 0684815699 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 07 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Simply French by Patricia Wells ISBN: 0688143563 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 25 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: French Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis, Patricia Wells ISBN: 1563054884 Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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