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Title: Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate by Alice Medrich, Deborah Jones ISBN: 1-57965-160-7 Publisher: Artisan Pub. Date: November, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: For serious chocophiles more than casual bakers
Comment: This book is an unusual mix of biography and cookbook. How useful or entertaining it will be to you depends on what you're looking for.
Alice Medrich is undoubtedly one of the pioneers of the chocolate revolution which is elevating Americans' palates away from mass-produced factory chocolates and toward the kind of diversity and quality we began to see with wines a couple of decades ago. "Bittersweet" tells the story of the author's role in that, from her first discovery of chocolate as a child to the chocolate czarina she is today.
The heavy admixture of the author's life story means that there's a lot more of the first-person pronoun than is usual in most cookbooks. If what you're looking for is a comprehensive chocolate cookbook, you may find this title a little heavy on extraneous personal information and a little light on photos. As is becoming the trend in chocolate cooking, the recipes here range far beyond desserts, and include entrees (chopped chicken livers with sherry-cocoa pan sauce, for example), soups, salads, and the like. Most of the emphasis, however, is on baking, mousses, soufflés, and the rest. A generous "Before You Begin" section includes useful notes on buying, storing, and melting chocolate, tools of the trade, and other relevant information. "Chocolate Notes" accompanying most recipes offer additional tips and variations.
Personally, I didn't know that Alice Medrich was, in the dust jacket's breathless description, "synonymous with chocolate." And so I found the biographic sections somewhat less than compelling. But her expertise is hard to deny, and the recipes themselves are interesting and frequently tantalizing. This may not be the best cookbook for picking up and browsing through. But for chocophiles interested in learning more about one of the celebrities of the gourmet chocolate world, I'm sure there's more than enough here to whet your appetite.
Rating: 5
Summary: Creating singularly memorable desserts
Comment: Bitter Sweet: Recipes And Tales From A Life In Chocolate is far more than a run-of-the-mill chocolate-themed recipe book, even though it does feature 150 mouth-watering, easy-to-prepare chocolate treats. Bittersweet also showcases chocolate expert Alice Medrich's skills and experiences as the owner of the California pastry shop "Cocolat" in the fine art and joyous craft of preparing chocolate. Anecdotes and remembrances aplenty pepper the explicit instructions for creating singularly memorable desserts which range from Homemade Chocolate Chunks; Classic Ganache Truffles; Sarah Bernhardt Chocolate Glaze; and Marble Cheesecake; to Bittersweet Hot Fudge Sauce; Buckwheat Cocoa Crepes with Honey; Sicilian Chocolate Gelato; and Black-Bottom Pecan Praline Bars. No dedicated chocolate lover's cookbook collection can be considered complete without the addition of Alice Medrich's Bittersweet.
Rating: 3
Summary: Pick and Choose
Comment: This book didn't really speak to me. I was disappointed with the amount of photos and boring commentary in much of the text. The chapter on the social influence of chocolate was a total snooze for me, but other readers may like it.Many of the chapter catagories were bland with mediocre recipes. As far as the cocoa nibs...I say, who cares.Out of the 90 or so recipes, I saw only 19 that looked interesting.
On a brighter note, some of the aforementioned recipes were really astounding though. I have been looking for a milk chocolate recipe for ice-cream forever and this book delivers.The information on truffles has never been covered before with such depth and was greatly appreciated.
If you want to have more technical knowledge on the workings of chocolate, then this book might be useful to own-otherwise, I suggest borrowing it from the library.
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Title: The Secrets of Baking: Simple Techniques for Sophisticated Desserts by Sherry Yard ISBN: 0618138927 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
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Title: A Passion for Desserts by Emily Luchetti, Minh Wass ISBN: 0811831787 Publisher: Chronicle Books Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum ISBN: 0393057941 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook by King Arthur Flour ISBN: 0881505811 Publisher: Countryman Pr Pub. Date: 25 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Great Cookies : Secrets to Sensational Sweets by CAROLE WALTER ISBN: 0609609696 Publisher: Clarkson Potter Pub. Date: 04 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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