|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Amazon.com
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The genoise is the "Old Faithful" of French pastry chefs. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Restaurant Desserts,
By jerry i h (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Desserts by Pierre Herme (Hardcover)
At first I was skeptical of this book, since Hermé is worshipped by the French press as a demi-god. I am glad to say that this is a source of very good, but not great desserts. There are several things I like about this cookbook. All of the recipes were thoroughly tested, and I had no problem with the ones I tried, although some recipes required more than casual talent and there are no warnings about this in the recipes. Most of the recipes are assembly jobs. That is, the components are prepared at least a day before and assembled that day. The garnishes and plating are also completely described and recipes given for them; this way, there is no question of how to serve them. These are mostly professional restaurant desserts that have been successfully adapted to the American kitchen. So, these recipes are suitable for both restaurant and home. There is nothing here that is very difficult, but some are time consuming and have several preliminary steps. Hermé for the most part eschews decorative, architectural structures and focuses on the flavor of the dish.The chapter "Basic Recipes" contains components used by recipes in the other chapters. It is an interesting collection of recipes, some with curious wrinkles. Some of them, like pâte brisée, meringue or inside-out puff pastry, do not work as well as standard versions. Some, like crème anglaise or pastry cream, are actually better than standard ones because they list actual temperatures rather than a physical description as the end point, meaning that the less experienced will have a good chance of doing them properly. Some recipes, like Lemon Cream, are a lot of extra effort without any discernable improvement. In this chapter, standard French names in addition to the American ones used would have been nice, especially for those who have not had a lot of experience with French patisserie. The next two chapters, "Fruits, Creams, and Cookies" and "Tarts and Tartlets" are much more interesting. Hermé's use of fresh fruits is particularly impressive, particularly in simple fruit plates and tarts. The little tricks he uses are well worth learning and applying elsewhere, like burning off crème chiboust with a propane torch, adding freshly ground pepper to fresh fruits (I believe he is the one who invented this), or using chopped, drained oranges by itself as a tart filling. Some his tricks, however do not really help; draining or drying fruit produced a nice texture, but they lost their fresh fruit flavor. The last chapter on cakes was rather ordinary. In particular, I did not really like the flavor of the chocolate cakes. They have all sorts of other flavors added in, and they did not combine well with the chocolate. The combinations are trendy, and many of them are already out of date (book copyright is 1998). The last chapter is particularly useful: it has explanations of the procedures and equipment used throughout the book. My only complaint here is that marzipan and almond paste certainly are not the same thing, nor are they interchangeable. It is here, buried at the end of the section on measuring, that you discover how flour is measured for the recipes (they use dip and sweep).
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Elegant desserts,
By A Customer
This review is from: Desserts by Pierre Herme (Hardcover)
Whenever I have a lot of time on me and want to me a truly impressive dessert, I reach out for this book on my shelf (and yet, I still give it only 3 points, you will see why.) This book is a great book for people who are looking to make exotic tasting, good looking desserts and have a lot of time to spend as cooking them can be quite time consuming (One dessert usually calls for more than 1 recipe). The recipes usually yield very good and nice looking results (some are really really yummy! e.g. autumn meringue cake, chocolate banana tart). I agree with a couple of the previous reviewers, however, that somes of the recipes are probably somehow not well tested for cooking at home(too much butter and too little salt, e.g. Never try lemon cream. It is definitely like lemon butter!). Another downfall of the book (which I takes 1 point off for) is it is quite hard to follow. The cooking steps are explained in details but words are too much cramped together. If 1 step in here could be numbered such that it could be seperated into 4-5 steps, it would have been much easier to follow. The books have nice cooking techniques, glossary at the end and have really nice pictures. In conclusions, this cook book is not for a novice but it can definitely give you an inspiration! But be careful not to bring your desert to a party if you haven't made it before. The recipes that work, work really great but you don't want to feed your crowd with the ones that don't work well.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seemingly Difficult Recipes in Reality Easy and Delicious,
By
This review is from: Desserts by Pierre Herme (Hardcover)
Master pastry chef Pierre Herme has created a delightful book filled with more than enough taste treats to satisfy even the most sated dessert gourmand. On first glance, each recipe appears difficult to construct; each contains a multiple amount of steps most of which require parchment paper and pastry bag utilization--not the standards of most amateur bakers. Not worth the fuss? Au contraire! Pierre's ultimate products are fabulous--the tastes and textures meld together to form not only a tasty finish to any meal, but create perfect confections that are also a feast for the eyes. The book is divided into 4 main sections: Pierre's basic recipes, Fruits, Creams and Cookies, Tarts and Tartlets and Cakes. A Dictionary of Terms, Techniques, Equipment and Ingredients as well as a Source Guide round out the book. I guarantee that the hands-on experience of creating at least one of these dessert extravaganzas will act as your own personal primer to pastry-making, igniting your passion for the French patisserie and insuring that you purchase all other books by M. Herme. My own interest in the book was cultivated by seeing M. Herme in action on Martha Stewart's kitchen where he piped the beautiful and delicious pear and fig tartlet with such an easy perfection I was astounded. Bought the book the next day and was not sorry!
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
