Any Chefs - Book suggestion

[TeeDee]

If there are any trained / experienced professional cooks/chefs here.

I would like to learn more about cooking - I would like to be able to watch Master chef and understand all the various esoteric terms used , either the process of cooking or just the jargon / terminology from classis French /Italian to more contemporary methods.

So any suggestions on how to start? good book / guide ? How to better understand the alchemy and science of cooking.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Kepis]

Here ye go, my uncle (a trained chef - ex Cunard, New York, Miami) swears by it, i also used it as a reference when i first left school and wanted to be a chef, link goes to Amazon

Larousse Gastronomique

 

[TeeDee]

Here ye go, my uncle (a trained chef - ex Cunard, New York, Miami) swears by it, i also used it as a reference when i first left school and wanted to be a chef, link goes to Amazon

Larousse Gastronomique

Apart from the super early starts, late finishes , high stress - high demand situations , super hot & tend-to-be-cramped working conditions and structural hierarchy that would make a banana republic blush - what put you off this career path?

And what did you go into ?

 

[Kepis]

Apart from the super early starts, late finishes , high stress - high demand situations , super hot & tend-to-be-cramped working conditions and structural hierarchy that would make a banana republic blush - what put you off this career path?

And what did you go into ?

I decided that as much as i loved to cook and still do, that i didn't really want to do it as a career, I ended up working in the aerospace industry (aircraft being my other love), so i still ended up with the early starts, late finishes, high stress and high demands.

 

[TeeDee]

I decided that as much as i loved to cook and still do, that i didn't really want to do it as a career, I ended up working in the aerospace industry (aircraft being my other love), so i still ended up with the early starts, late finishes, high stress and high demands.

LOL!! My background is/was Aerospace engineering. You missed out massive egos to contend with!

 

[Kepis]

LOL!! My background is/was Aerospace engineering. You missed out massive egos to contend with!

yup, there were a fair few "characters" around, most commonly seen preening themselves at Farnborough/Paris airshows and the many different conferences and Expo's.

 

[British Red]

There are some magnificent YouTube channels TeeDee that I find really helpful (happy to make suggestions), for a fantastic foundation in cooking, I strongly suggest this

https://amzn.to/3OmPQZ2

 

[Tengu]

Pardon our interruption...

These are a super series aimed at the serious cook but I doubt suited to a professional.

(They also use a lot of french words...)

The only pro chef book I ever saw (Cant recall the title) started with a lobster.

I kid you not.

 

[Limaed]

The standard text for UK colleges for the last 50 years teaching catering is Practical Cookery by Cesserani & Kinton.

 

[Brizzlebush]

The standard text for UK colleges for the last 50 years teaching catering is Practical Cookery by Cesserani & Kinton.

Can't go wrong.
As a professional chef for over 24yrs and teacher for 15, Practical Cookery is the bible. It's been updated umpteen times with more modern recipes, but all the classics and their skills are there.
Good foundation recipes, techniques and information that work.
I recommend it to all students starting their careers.
It's not flashy like a lot of books, but it doesn't need to be, because it works.

Leith's is the domestic equivalent, also good, and as mentioned Larousse. Larousse is excellent as a reference book, less as a cookbook, but has all of the French classic repertoire.

 

[Keith_Beef]

I decided that as much as i loved to cook and still do, that i didn't really want to do it as a career, I ended up working in the aerospace industry (aircraft being my other love), so i still ended up with the early starts, late finishes, high stress and high demands.

McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, ISBN-13 978-0-684-80001-1

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, ISBN-13 978-0393081084

And of course the Larousse Gastronomique. I've not looked at the English translation since I finished uni (there was a copy in the house where I lived in my final year) but from what I remember it was very good.

 

[plastic-ninja]

Plus one for Larousse Gastronomique. Also for Food Lab. Michel Roux Sr’s book Pastry is a classic for patisserie also.
That should at least get you started. Then probably Modernist Cuisine to catch up on the molecular stuff. Great British Chefs online is also good for keeping up to date.

 

[Broch]

On a more amateur level (that's me ), I first started cooking (as in making full meals and baking etc.) at ten or eleven but this book was my tutor in my later teens. I have the original 1973 edition and, although now slightly out of date, it still covers all the basics but without the 'chefy' terminology

 

[demented dale]

If there are any trained / experienced professional cooks/chefs here.

I would like to learn more about cooking - I would like to be able to watch Master chef and understand all the various esoteric terms used , either the process of cooking or just the jargon / terminology from classis French /Italian to more contemporary methods.

So any suggestions on how to start? good book / guide ? How to better understand the alchemy and science of cooking.


Thanks in adva

If there are any trained / experienced professional cooks/chefs here.

I would like to learn more about cooking - I would like to be able to watch Master chef and understand all the various esoteric terms used , either the process of cooking or just the jargon / terminology from classis French /Italian to more contemporary methods.

So any suggestions on how to start? good book / guide ? How to better understand the alchemy and science of cooking.


Thanks in advance.

- Forager | Chef

Wild food tutorials, recipes and techniques from Chef Alan Bergo Recent Posts Foraging Tutorials Recipes by Mushroom Type Spring Favorites Seasonal Ramps / Wild Leeks Nettles Morels Wild Fruit Meat and Game Offal and Organ Meats Recently Updated

foragerchef.com

This guy is good. I have watched his vids. he has written books also. xx

 

[Moondog55]

As one with over 30 years of professional experience I second the Cessarani and Kinton and/or Kracknel and Kaufman but for pure love of cooking the original Joy of Cooking [ Not any of the updates --- The first edition] but the best teacher is experience, both cooking and eating. Larousse is for dilettantes and many editions are Francocentric and out of date

 

[Keith_Beef]

I was mooching around the charity shops on Christmas Eve and picked up a copy of professional chef level 2 S/NVQ (ISBN 978-1-84480-505-1) for £1.

614 pages, health, safety and hygiene; techniques; teamwork and communication; glossary; hundreds of recipes with quantities for 4 portions or 10; extensive index.

 

[Keith_Beef]

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, ISBN-13 978-0393081084

This morning, I picked my first edition copy of this book of the shelf and it fell open at page 17; I started reading.

Imagine my disappointment when I turned the page and this jumped out at me.

g&#amn salad

This led me on an hour and a half of searching for a list of errata for the book and discovering, through Reddit posts, that the book contains a great many mistakes...

Some of then are trivial and relatively important or well be instantly spotted and maybe even unconsciously corrected by seasoned cooks.

But some posts mention wrong quantities, temperatures or cooking times that can result in total failure.

I eventually found a link to the errata, on the author's website, but the file was no longer there.

Luckily for me, the Wayback Machine has an archived copy of errata for the first printing of the first edition.

Errata — J. Kenji López-Alt

web.archive.org

This didn't list the misprint on page 17 but it has a few others; I spent a few minutes going through the book checking them.

In the end, I only corrected one, where the quantity 1½ was missing (but "tablespoons of ground cumin", was marked).

So it looks like my copy is a later printing... And a quick look at the copyright page shows that mine is the 18th printing.

Printer's key - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

When I'm sat at a computer, I'll poke around a bit more