Most of us would like to be better cooks. Most of us also have day jobs that occupy our time and most of our energy so we don't all have the ability or desire to attend culinary school. Nor do we generally have direct access to a top professional chef to oversee our efforts, provide instruction, and correct our mistakes. Our efforts to improve generally need to fall into our leisure activities: cooking, reading, or watching TV. Maybe we'll ask a friend with a particularly good barbecue sauce for his secret, but in general, if it's too much like work, well who wants more work at the end of a busy day. If, however, you're a famous actor/ director with a strong track record, you get to tell your company (the studio), that you'd like them to get you a top chef to train you and that you would like them to pay both of you. That is pretty much what Jon Favreau did with the 2014 movie Chef . I'm not going to review the movie, but I bring it up because it served as t
The Larousse Gastronomique is a valuable addition to your kitchen library and, incidentally, makes a great gift for anyone who takes cooking seriously. Cooking, like any art-form or highly technical pursuit, comes with its own jargon, or terms which may be unfamiliar to those not formally trained. Can you cook well without knowing these specialized words? Of course, but understanding the language used by the great chefs can make following and creating recipes much easier. The Gastronomique gives easy to understand explanations for thousands upon thousands of specialized cooking words. For example, if you go to a restaurant and have a dish called estouffade of beef and decide that you'd like to try to recreate it at home, it is helpful to know that "estouffade" means that the dish is stewed for along time. Armed with that knowledge, you'd plan for several hours of cooking time for this dish instead of getting caught short of time and going to plan B. The Larou