In this magnificent new cookbook, illustrated with full
color throughout, Julia Child gives us her magnum opus--the
distillation of a lifetime of cooking. And she has an
important message for Americans today. . .
--to the
health-conscious: make a habit of good home cooking
so that you know you are working with the best and freshest
ingredients and you can be in control of what goes into
every dish --to the new generation of cooks who have not
grown up in the old traditions: learn the basics and
understand what you are doing so cooking can be easier,
faster, and more enjoyable --to the more experienced
cook: have fun improvising and creating your own versions of
traditional dishes --and to all of us: above all, enjoy
the pleasures of the table.
In this spirit, Julia has
conceived her most creative and instructive cookbook,
blending classic techniques with free-style American cooking
and with added emphasis on lightness, freshness, and simpler
preparations. Breaking with conventional organization, she
structures the chapters (from Soups to Cakes &
Cookies) around master recipes, giving all the
reassuring details that she is so good at and grouping the
recipes according to method; these are followed--in
shorthand form--by innumerable variations that are easily
made once the basics are understood.
For example,
make her simple but impeccably prepared sauté of chicken,
and before long you're easily whipping up Chicken with
Mushrooms and Cream, Chicken Provençale, Chicken Pipérade,
or Chicken Marengo. Or master her perfect broiled
butterflied chicken, and next time Deviled Rabbit or Split
Cornish Game Hens Broiled with Cheese will be on your
menu.
In all, there are more than 800 recipes,
including the variations--from a treasure trove of poultry
and fish recipes and a vast array of fresh vegetables
prepared in new ways to bread doughs (that can be turned
into pizzas and calzones and hamburger buns) and delicious
indulgences, such as Caramel Apple Mountain or a Queen of
Sheba Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Leaves. And if
you want to know how a finished dish should look or how to
angle your knife or to fashion a pretty rosette on that
cake, there are more than 600 color photographs to entice
and instruct you along the way.
A one-of-a-kind,
brilliant, and inspiring book from the incomparable Julia,
which is bound to rekindle interest in the satisfactions of
good home cooking.