Product Description

For the past six decades, Gourmet magazine has shaped the tastes of America, publishing the best work of the foremost names in the world of food. To create this landmark cookbook, editor in chief and celebrated authority Ruth Reichl and her staff sifted through more than 50,000 recipes. Many were developed exclusively for Gourmet's test kitchens. Others came from renowned food writers and chefs and from the magazine's far-flung readers. Then the editors embarked on an extraordinary series of cook-offs to find the most unforgettable dishes, testing and retesting each one to ensure impeccable results.
This collection, the only one of its kind, spans a vast range of cultures and cuisines. With it, you can go back to the time when Beef Wellington ruled the table or prepare something as contemporary as Crispy Artichoke "Flowers" with Salsa Verde. And whether you're cooking a simple supper for two or throwing a cocktail party for fifty, you'll make every dish with more flavor and more flair using The Gourmet Cookbook. It includes

* 102 hors d'oeuvres, dips, chips, pâtés, and first courses
* exciting vegetable dishes -- more than 120 in all -- using everything from artichokes to yuca
* versatile recipes for every available kind of seafood, with many suggested substitutes
* hundreds of simple but exceptional dinners
* festive dishes for every occasion, including a perfect roast turkey with stuffings, the ultimate standing rib roast, and even a gorgeous (but easy) wedding cake
* definitive versions of all the classics, from Chicken Kiev to Crème Brûlée and from Bouillabaisse to Pad Thai
* more than 50 pastas and risottos, from quick everyday meals to party dishes
* scores of soups, salads, breakfast dishes, and sandwiches, including the editors' all-time favorite pizza
* a wealth of sauces and salsas, to transform ordinary meals into spectacular ones
* more than 300 desserts: cookies, pies, tarts, pastries, buckles, crumbles, ice creams, puddings, mousses, and cakes galore, including cheesecakes and the nine best chocolate cake recipes Gourmet has ever published

With engaging introductions to each chapter by Ruth Reichl, entertaining headnotes, indispensable information about ingredients and techniques, hundreds of tips from Gourmet's test kitchens, and an extensive glossary, The Gourmet Cookbook is the essential kitchen companion for anyone who wants one-of-a-kind recipes and spectacular results every time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67664 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1056 pages

Amazon.com
When Gourmet magazine opened shop in 1941, it addressed a small epicurean audience. In those days, fine dining was French, seafood specialties always seemed to include cream and sherry, and game made the meal--or so the magazine preached. The bill of fare has changed since then, and fine dining now includes dishes from the world's four corners, commanded by a broad, food-aware audience. Over the years, Gourmet has chronicled all this, changing to reflect a wider, more democratized food scene that has also, paradoxically, raised the bar on what's expected of the average, too-busy cook. The Gourmet Cookbook is the most comprehensive of the magazine's recipe anthologies--a mega-tome offering more than 1,000 formulas drawn from Gourmet since its birth.

The statistics are indeed impressive: more than 100 hors d'oeuvre recipes; an equal number of vegetable dishes; 200 desserts--21 chapters in all, touching all courses and including stops at breakfast and brunch specialties; breads and crackers; plus sauces, salsas, and preserves. Included are recipes from Gourmet contributors like James Beard and Jean-Georges Vongericten, and hundreds of sidebars like "Salad Greens Primer" and "Blind Baking," all useful and informative. There are classic dishes like onion soup gratiné, gefilte fish, corn fritters, and peanut butter cookies; "new classics" such as fried calamari and spaghetti alla carbonara; and the "modern," including oatmeal brûlée with macerated berries and grilled lobster with orange chipotle vinaigrette--"every recipe you'd ever want," says the text, something of an understatement.

Cooks should know, however, that this is not a basic cookbook, despite its Noah's ark of formulas. Rather, it's a Gourmet cookbook, which means that, notwithstanding some rudimentary recipes, the focus is on the stylishly up-to-date (which is not to deny the excellence of the formulas), resulting, often, in refinements. Thus its recipe for mac and cheese calls for dijon mustard and panko; its beef stroganoff requires cremini mushrooms; its grilled chicken calls for brining; and so on. Recipes can also run to over 450 words, and require unusual ingredients. (A list of sources is provided.) Of all its chapters, those for sweets are the most immediately attractive.

For all the praise, though, there's one major goof. The recipe titles are printed in a light butter-yellow color, making them almost illegible. For many readers, this will be a deal-breaker; others will find it merely annoying. Should you own the book? For dedicated cooks and foodies the answer will be, How can I not? --Arthur Boehm

From Booklist
The monthly magazine Gourmet played no small part in the birth of America's gastronomic renaissance of the late twentieth century. Through pictures and intelligent articles by noted food and travel writers, Gourmet made its readership aware of refined food traditions that made everyday American fare seem narrow. Editor Reichl and staff have painstakingly compacted Gourmet's vast reserve of recipes into an anthology of just 1,000 recipes sure to inspire cooks to get to work in their kitchens. The book's coverage of world cuisine is breathtaking, but it has a few omissions, most notably the cooking of sub-Saharan Africa and South America. An exhaustive index serves admirably to guide the reader through the recipes' complexities, analytically referencing recipes by major or unique ingredients. (One of its rare missteps is its conflation of Georgia the nation and Georgia the state.) Both recipes and their instructions are clearly laid out and easy to follow for the knowledgeable cook. A few line drawings illustrate special techniques, but recipes such as that for individual b'stillas could use illustration to give the cook an image of the finished product. The only serious triumph of aesthetics over practicality, the low-contrast pale yellow type of recipe titles burdens anyone with even minor vision impairment. A glossary and a directory of specialty food and equipment distributors round out the volume. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Very cook-friendly... An exhaustive record of the... explosion of America's food culture... A fascinating and tasty cultural artifact." (The New York Times )

"This is the sort of cookbook you want by your side whether you're attempting cucumber sandwiches or coq au vin" --Lisa McLaughlin (Time Magazine )

"A classic... encyclopedic yet enticing." (Time Magazine )

"Brings American cooking into the 21st century." (Boston Globe )

"New Gourmet tome aims to sizzle its rivals... the appetizing recipes will send you scurrying into the kitchen." (Boston Herald )

"Has it all... Reichl et al. have done an admirable job." (The San Francisco Chronicle )

"Ideas for every course, occasion, and budget." (USA Today )

"the end-all recipe encylcopedia." (Entertainment Weekly )

"If you could dream up the perfect cookbook, it might look something like this: easy recipes for days when you're spent and just want something quick and filling; pull-out-all-the-stops recipes for when you want to spend an entire week working on Saturday night's meal; instructions for tasks like cleaning mussels and making pastry dough; introductions and mini-essays explaining recipes' origins and the techniques they involve; and an overall panache and intelligence." (Publishers Weekly, Starred )

Customer Reviews

If there's a recipe you want, it's in here
I was concerned when I read the complaints about the yellow type in the book. Oh no - I've wasted all that money.

Oh no! No I didn't waste anything except the time it took me to finally get to this cookbook. The gold/yellow type that is in the book did not phase me. I had no problems reading it. Years of searching for the best recipes paid off for the authors. I have yet to make a recipe from this book that didn't get terrific reviews from my fiance' for whom I cook. Nearly any recipe you would want you'll find in this book. True gormet taste without needing culinary school gormet skills. Mmm...great stuff.

Only the finest recipes here
Sure many of the recipes require exotic and sometimes expensive ingredients, and every spice known to man, but that is the level of cooking I enjoy. Everything I've tried has been wonderful. Highly recommended.

A good buy for upper class cooks
I received this book for Christmas of 2006 from my father, who knows about my love of cooking. I'm not a pro by any means, but I do ok. The book is organized well and covers all the standard topics from meats to grains to desserts and soups and salads. After living with it for a year, I've tried probably 30 of the recipes inside it, and they were all tasty and fairly easy to prepare.

My main complaints are these: the ingredients are often "upscale," such as sirloin tip for beef stroganoff and obscure peppers for southwest dishes. This makes the average meal cost about $25 instead of $10-15. Also the ingredients seem to be east-coast based. The seafood section is pretty much entirely made up of east coast fishes that are simply not available here in Vancouver, BC. Highly disappointing. There are also many quite advanced recipes that I haven't tried because they seem to be too daunting or too much work for the payoff.

If you're into gourmet style cooking though and some impress-your-friends recipes, this book is good for you!