A Return to Cooking at Chef2Chef

The settings (and fresh food ingredients) are spectacular. Sag Harbor in summer. Puerto Rico in winter. California's Napa Valley in spring. Vermont in fall. Rent a house, shop for food, and make the meals happen. For anyone who has ever wanted to understand how a great cook looks at ingredients and settles on a plan, A Return to Cooking is it. In Puerto Rico the reader is treated to Caramelized Pineapple Crepes with Crème Frâiche; Shrimp with Fresh Coconut Milk, Calabaza, and Avocado; and Seared Tuna with Escabeche of Pear Tomatoes.

What Ripert does with food, the Rothsteins do with photos, Cortazar does with paints, and Ruhlman does with words. The stimulating recipes rise out of a young lifetime of experience. This is a big, lush book (330 pages, 150 recipes, nearly 400 color photos and illustrations) dense with information, technique, and flavor. For anyone who has wandered far from the kitchen and the pleasures inherent in cooking, A Return to Cooking will bring you right back home. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
What happens when chef Ripert exchanges the rarefied atmosphere of New York City's Le Bernardin for the sometimes melodramatic company of artistes- photographers Shimon and Tammar Rothstein, Valentino Cortazar, a Colombian painter who doesn't rise until noon and writer Ruhlman (Soul of a Chef) -to experiment in four locales and get back to his roots as a cook? Readers get a peek at the spontaneous inspiration behind such imaginative recipes as Halibut with Grapes and Red Wine-Port Sauce, along with tips for preparation, and colorful paintings and elegant photographs. Ripert cooks in four locales-Sag Harbor, N.Y., Puerto Rico, Napa Valley, and Cavendish, Vt.-though recipes do not always correspond to local produce (a lobster dish in Vermont, eels and frogs legs in Napa, and truffles in Puerto Rico). In Puerto Rico, Ripert's love for everything Latin shines in such recipes as Shrimp with Fresh Coconut Milk, Calabaza. In Napa, emphasizing mushrooms, Ripert makes Portobello and Eggplant Tart and Double-Cut Veal Chops with Morels and Herb Butter, and on Long Island he prepares Snapper with Caramelized and Braised Shallots and Shallot Jus. Ripert offers invaluable insights into sauces-practically everything has a sauce or a pesto. Interspersed throughout are sections on, for example, how to make Lemon Confit and how to humanely kill a lobster. The narrative can become precious: Ripert says "I touch an onion, and something happens inside me." Overall, however, this is a practical and rare look into what happens when a chef comes out of the industrial-sized kitchen and into the fire of his reativity.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
This is the second cook-book that Michael Ruhlman has taken part in if I'm not mistaken (the first being "The French Laundry",) and yet another smashing success! Eric Ripert is one of New York's finest chef's, and in this, his second cook-book, he shows us exactly why he and Le Bernadin have been given the honor of "Best Chef" and "Best Restaurant" by several different sources! Ripert shows us his inner thoughts, his soul if you will, in many of the recipes that you will find here within this tome. Dishes such as: "Figs Wrapped in Bacon", "Seared Tuna with Escabeche of Pear Tomatoes" and "Mussels with Spicy Italian Sausage" show us how simple and yet exactly how refined Eric Riperts cooking and tastes can be! Beyond the recipes, this 320 page book includes intermitant stories of Eric Ripert and fiver other friends and their experiences living together in four different locations during four different seasons! At the same time, readers will find commentary from the authors as they watch Ripert cook, or preparing his ingredients; Riperts own wistful thinking of Food and the Food Culture; many BEAUTIFUL photographs, equally beautiful paintings by Valentino Cortazar, and culinary advice from all involved in the making of this wonderfully crafted tome! The most important aspect that I have to say about this book before I finish is that virtually ALL of these recipes are scaled to portions adequate for the home cook; and that they are often easy enough for nearly any novice or home cook to re-create for themselves, and yet refined and inspired enough that a professional would want to use them at their own restaurant! Bon Appetit! Comment | Permalink | (Report this)