This book though… art in cooking? You bet.
What an amazing handbook for any chef, professional, or of the home cooking type.
I went to culinary school some years back, that’s when one of my great chef instructors recommended this book to me and about 99 other eager to-be chefs, as thee most important book to get our hands on. I bought it that first week of culinary school.
I’ve been using it ever since.
It works like this… it’s all about pairing foods well together. When you have a specific main ingredient (main dish or side dish) in mind to use, you look that ingredient up, what you’ll find is a list of other ingredients that are known to go well with what you are working with. Award winning chefs know what they are doing, know that! Trust the recommendations, unless it’s an ingredient you really don’t care for, I don’t even go there.
Here’s a page out of the book so that you can begin to get a feel for how the book works.
It really allows for creating your own spin on things. Your friends will think you’re a rock star in the kitchen, your hungry loved ones will love you even more.
After awhile (sure maybe a long while) you might begin to know, on your own, with your new found chefing it up instincts of course, what ingredient combinations just might work well together.
Use the book, trust me it’s great. You will really begin to see that there truly is art in cooking!
Today I looked up lima beans. I just happened to be serving up some leftover lima bean soup. I discovered that lima beans go well with parsley, sour cream and olive oil. (among other things) I topped the soup with these 3 suggested ingredients that I had on hand. At service (chef speak for when I served it) I added some crushed dried parsley flakes (fresh would have been better sure, but I had none on hand), a fancified dollop of sour cream and I finished it with a few drizzles of some good quality extra virgin olive oil.
The soup I served up today was really kicked up in presentation and flavor, it was a marvelous thing.
Click here for a link to the book. You can begin to discover how to pair well too…
Gina's Joys 