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
I enjoy watching a great many cooking shows on television. Although most of them gloss over the actual cooking in favor of reality show drama, occasionally there is something to be learned there. This blog will detail some of those lessons and provide general commentary of TV chefs and cooking shows, as well as offering some of my own favorite recipes and cooking techniques.