Product Description

The bible of French home cooking, Je Sais Cuisiner, has sold over 6 million copies since it was first published in 1932. It is a household must-have, and a well-thumbed copy can be found in kitchens throughout France. Its author, Ginette Mathiot, published more than 30 recipe books in her lifetime, and this is her magnum opus. It's now available for the first time in English as I Know How to Cook. With more than 1,400 easy-to-follow recipes for every occasion, it is an authoritative compendium of every classic French dish, from croque monsieur to cassoulet.

Clear, practical and comprehensive, it is an essential guide to the best home cooking in the world: no cuisine is better than French at bringing the very best out of ingredients to create simple, comforting and delicious dishes. The recipes have been carefully updated by a team of editors led by Parisian food writer Clotilde Dusoulier, to suit modern readers and their kitchens, while preserving the integrity of the original book. The great reputation of I Know How to Cook has been built over three generations by the fact that it is a genuine cookbook: each recipe has been cooked many times, and because it is used by domestic cooks rather than chefs. And with its breadth of recipes and knowledge of techniques, I Know How to Cook doesn't just teach you how to cook French, it teaches you how to cook, period.

In the tradition of Phaidon's other culinary bibles, The Silver Spoon, 1080 Recipes and Vefa's Kitchen, I Know How to Cook offers menus by celebrated French bistro chefs at the end of the book, including recipes by Daniel Boulud and Francois Payard.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #704 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 976 pages

About the Author
Ginette Mathiot (1907-1998), Officier de la Legion d'honneur, taught three generations how to cook in France and is the ultimate authority on French home cooking. She wrote more than 30 best-selling cookbooks, covering all subjects in French cuisine I Know How to Cook was her definitive, most comprehensive work, which brings together recipes for every classic French dish.

About the Contributor

Clotilde Dusoulier lives in Paris. Her award-winning blog, Chocolate & Zucchini, first launched in 2003.

Customer Reviews

French Classic in U.S. Edition at Last
Last July, the Washington Post excerpted a recipe from Ginette Mathiot's French classic and, in the covering article, compared it a French "Joy of Cooking" and compared it the books of Julia Child. On the strength of that article, I ordered the book, and my copy arrived yesterday. I am going to enjoy cooking from it. It is a classic of great depth and we can be thankful to Phaidon for publishing this huge volume. And yet, in my opinion, it is not quite what the Post article touted it to be. It lacks the extraordinary technical precision of Julia Child and "Joy of Cooking." Nor, do I think that, as an introduction to cooking technique, it can be compared to Madeleine Kamman's "New Making of a Cook." The closest American comparison I would make to it is the classic "American Woman's Cookbook," which was my mother's cooking bible and the cook book I first learned to cook from. As a collection of recipes, the Mathiot book deserves a place of honor in the kitchen. Yet the book suffers from some odd editorial shortcomings. As a translation from the French, ingredients are given in equivalent U.S. measurements (mostly by weight); but straight metric conversions lead to odd amounts in the ingredients columns. For example, one recipe calls for 4 1/4 ounces of bacon, 9 ounces of chestnuts, and 1 1/4 cups of Madeira. Readers would have been better served by a list of the original metric amounts and a parallel column that recalculates the recipe in more standard U.S. measures--as for example the U.S. editor of Elizabeth David's books has done with her British measures. Secondly, there is no French-to-English glossary; and, in some cases, trying to find a technique known by a French name is hopeless. Where is "poele," for example? Equally annoying is the lack of information about some ingredients or ingredient substitutions. Recipes often call from creme fraiche, an ingredient not as yet found in many U.S. markets. It is easy to prepare at home, but no instructions are given. Readers should also be aware that many of the recipes call for main ingredients not easily found--for example, where does one get hare? Finally, the many photos on matte paper are not particularly inviting. Yet with all these limitations, I hope this book will sell well enough for the publishers to invest a little more editorial effort in a second edition. As good as this book is, it hasn't quite made it all the way across the Atlantic. We need a U.S. edition, not just a U.S. translation.

Beautiful edition of a classic, but a few rough edges
My jaw hit the floor when I saw this book. I have the French version and I had no idea that Phaidon was working on one of their now-classic spruced-up translations. If nothing else, Phaidon has the cookbook thing down by now -- this is a typically beautiful cookbook, with stunning photography and illustrations derived from the blocky line art typical of books from the 50s and 60s.

The original book is certainly not a learner's book; if anything it's more of a complement to something like Mastering The Art of French Cooking, to be used as a reference after working through the more technique-oriented books. Comparisons to Joy of Cooking are apt; while very few books on the market are quite as ambitious as Joy (which has a level of information density that is intimidating even by most professional standards), Mathiot certainly cast her net wide for traditional French cooking, even adding a few foreign recipes (one situation where the book sadly underachieves). This book does take some liberties, fleshing out some of the recipes for overseas audiences and adding the now-traditional selection of specialties from overseas French chefs (including, among others, Daniel Boulud, but sadly fewer other A-listers than you'd expect).

What does irk me, though, is something I thought Phaidon had abandoned with Vefa's Kitchen -- the practice of translating all the measurements into American terms while dropping the metric measurements entirely. Overall, though, if you're a fan of Phaidon's international cookbooks, or Phaidon's books in general, "I Know How to Cook" makes for a rather nice addition to the bookshelf.

Count me out on this one
Either this is one poor translation or everyone in France has a culinary knowledge they hardly need this book to help them with.

Do you know what it means to lard a roast? The recipe for roast beef in "I Know How To Cook" tells you to do so without explaining how or why. The ingredients listed on the side of the recipe call for small bacon-cubes while I have never seen anyone lard beef with anything but long strips of fat pulled through the meat on skewers. But there are no directions on exactly how to do it. Or even what a lard skewer looks like.

Do you know just how much batter to put into a madeleine mould? This book won't tell you. I guess you're expected to know. You're also expected to know that you should leave a mound of the batter in the center of the mould if you want your madeleines to have their characteristic hump. Oh, the book also doesn't mention that you should refrigerate the batter for at least a half hour before using it either. Or to thump the edge of the pan against the side of the counter when you take it out of the over to loosen them. None of this is in the book and all of this is important in making madeleines, one of the most treasured little cakes in France.

I could go on and on. The entire book is like this. It just assumes you already know how to do everything. Quaint, yes, but it reads like a cookbook from the 19th century when the house cook already had the necessary skills and just needed some direction and ingredients. Don't let the hip graphics fool you. Except for a some exotic things you'll probably never see in many other cookbooks (Tripe Parcels Provencale, anyone?), this is not much of an addition to my culinary shelf.

If you're already a pretty good cook, I see no reason to shell out $30 for this book. You don't need it. Check it out of the library first or leaf through a friend's copy to see if it's for you. If you're a beginning cook, this book will leave you completely in the cold. Don't even think about it. Get yourself a copy of "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" and "The Joy of Cooking" and start there.

When they called this one "I Know How to Cook", the author wasn't kidding. But aren't cookbooks supposed to show us how to cook?