Creating Chefs: A Journey Through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons

by Carol W. Maybach

Book Overview

Go behind the kitchen doors of America's finest culinary institutes and learn how to prepare dishes like Pan-Seared Sea Bass Puttanesca and Roasted Banana Tiramisu from the instructors... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592281834
• ISBN13: 9781592281831
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 2.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 8.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

I Love It

This book conveys the passsion of the chefs' culinary skills in addition to having recipes. Each chapter features a different chef and a section of what their lesson is to you. Then there are additional recipes by each chef. I give this book a big "thumbs up".

A guide exploring the basics of culinary school lessons

Carol Maybach and Glenn Humphrey's Creating Chefs: A Journey through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons deserves ongoing special mention as an intriguing, personal journey through culinary school which blends insights and lessons with recipes. Maybach is an accomplished writer, culinary school grad, and photographer, Humphrey a graduate himself of the Culinary Institute of America: the pairing of their talents here makes for a guide exploring the basics of culinary school lessons, whether it be on producing the perfect meringue to understanding advanced baking tips and tricks.

Best New Book for Real Chefs

As a professional chef cooking for years in some very fine restaurants, I was amazed and thrilled to find this book, Creating Chefs, on the shelf. Finally a book spoke to me, to my thoughts, to my loves in the kitchen. Other books on celebrity chefs have so little to do with my life, their stories are too big, too out of reach for my life everyday in the kitchen. Not only did I buy this book for me but I bought it for all of my co-workers who felt the same way after reading each of the chef's stories. This book not only validated my work, but gave me something I can look at again and again (the photos are amazing, with each one capturing the beauty of the natural ingredients in the recipes) to inspire my next move in the kitchen. It is one of a kind, a true gem.

Lush Culinary Metaphors Gush Love about Food

This new book by the photographer and writer Carol Maybach, with (culinary) contributions and writing credits by Glenn Humphrey is an ambitious attempt to document culinary passion and culinary education in a novel fashion, different from the journalism of Michael Ruhlman and Tony Bourdain on the one hand and the culinary memoir / recipes of, for example, Eric Rippert and Thomas Keller on the other.Since the authors have set their sights very high, they are less successful than the works of the four authors mentioned above. Their shortcomings are primarily due to a concept, which just doesn't seem to work and a failure by the primary author to succeed in the very difficult subject of talking about an artistic endeavor rather than simply doing it. Where Ruhlman and Bourdain succeed so well by talking about people and classes and techniques and their own experiences, Maybach tries to reach some metaphysical level of understanding which any journeyman philosopher of the last several generations will tell you is simply an impossible task to do with any real success. What happens, to quote the book, is to `become intoxicated by culinary metaphors'. All the text attributed to Maybach has a breathless quality about it. She sounds like she is almost overwhelmed by the beauty and effervescence of dealing with food and it's preparation. There comes a time when you have to remember that we are talking about turnips and pork chops. This activity is roughly comparable to fine cabinet making and not to the still life paintings of Cezanne.Note that the primary author's occupation is writer and photographer so it is probably reasonable to believe she is responsible for the photographs in the book. All of the photographs are in black and white and have the look about them of all being taken in ambient light with no staging or dressing. They all look like stills from a lost Cinema Verite work by Francois Truffaut on the drudgery in the life of an aging prep chef in a no star Paris bistro in Montmarte. Well, maybe not, but they are arty and contribute practically nothing to communicating the culinary information to you dear reader. Oddly enough, they are not out of step with the arty tone set by the primary author. They are brooding and heavy with photographic artistry and import. They simply do nothing to support the recipes being discussed on facing pages, as in the case of a crème broulee recipe facing what looks like a split coconut shell and roses still life or a recipe for Kobe beef facing a picture of radishes.If this book had set it's sights a bit lower and left the writing to the chefs and the copy editors, this would have been a more rewarding book, especially at the budget list price asked for by this totally unknown (to me) publishing house.All the recipes in the book are interesting. They are also all examples of haute cuisine restaurant fare, but that should not discourage you, as restaurant practice has a lot to teach the amateur chef. Each of the th

YA GOTTA READ THIS BOOK!!!

As one of Carol's many Instructors, I was quite anxious to see this project "come out of the oven". It literally spills over with the passion of the Author,the many Chef/Instructors and students in the text. The pictures are tremendous and the recipes all WORK!! {try the Brie soup, it rocks!!]I HIGHLY recomend this book to anyone considering Culinary School. It gives great insight into the process of starting the road to becoming a Chef.