Fantastical Feature: Jacques Pepin: New Complete Techniques

Publish Date: 13 November 2012

Pages: 784

Synopsis via Barnes & Noble:

Jacques Pépin is universally hailed by professional chefs and home cooks as the grand master of cooking skills and methods. Now, his classic seminal work, Jacques Pépin’s Complete Techniques, is completely revised and updated with more than 1,000 color photographs and 30% new techniques.

Based on Pépin’s 1978 and 1979 archetypal works La Méthode and La Technique, Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques has become a cookbook classic in its own right, selling more than 140,000 copies. Comprehensive and authoritative, New Complete Techniques includes more than 600 techniques and methods and 160 recipes that are demonstrated by Pépin in thousand of step-by-step photographs. It is a culinary course on every aspect of classic cooking, from the basics (how to sharpen a knit or peel an onion) and the practical (how to properly bone a chicken (to the whimsical (how to make decorative swans and flowers out of fruits and vegetables) and the complex (how to use an old refrigerator as a smoker for trout).

The time-tested recipes show everyone, from the greenest home cook to the seasoned professional, how to put techniques into practice. This completely revised edition includes thousands of color and black-and-white photographs throughout and is redesigned to make it even easier to follow the step-by-step techniques.

My Thoughts:

New Complete Techniques is a very thorough handbook for every basic technique you could think of in the kitchen. The design is simple and doesn't take away from what is important: the content. There are chapters for equipment, vegetables, eggs, fish and shellfish, poultry, meat, offal and charcuterie (organ meats and prepared meats like bacon, ham, pates, etc.), carving, bread and pasta, pastry and dessert, and presentation. Each chapter has a wide array of information on foods in the category. The equipment and presentation chapters are incredibly informative. Pepin drives home the point that learning the basics opens up so many different possibilities in the kitchen and is something that cannot be skipped in order to be successful. You can make a dish look pretty, but it's all about knowing how to make it that will keep people raving and coming back for more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Dog & Leventhal for letting me preview this amazing book.

Preorder on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.