Mastering Simplicity: A Life in the Kitchen

by Christian Delouvrier and Jennifer Leuzzi

Book Overview

Presents a portrait of the life and cooking of Lespinasse's Christian Delouvrier, the four star chef who has defined French cuisine for the American dining public. Part memoir, part cookbook, this work captures the things that have brought Chef Delouvrier to the top of his profession as Executive Chef of the acclaimed four star restaurant."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471413593
• ISBN13: 9780471413592
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 2.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

great book

typical cookbook for cooks who have background in the field. The book breaks down the recipe in a simple manner, but at times a new cook may have a hard time following.

A very good chef

This is a book written by a very professional chef who does not seek the limelight in any way. I have not studied the book in great detail but the minute i saw it I bought it without hesitation. Sure enough it was filled with anecdotes and a review of his years in various restaurants . I was also happy to see recipes for things like fish stock. Does anyone make fish stock anymore? If you want to learn the complicated and the simple this is the book for you.

Another Life in the French Kitchen

`Mastering Simplicity' by Christian Delouvrier is a combination celebrity chef memoir and restaurant cookbook with the intended spin of making simple the apparent complexity in the canon of standard French cuisine. On the one hand, the book succeeds in presenting a well-written and interestingly presented sequence of classic French or French style recipes. On the other, it fails in presenting its primary contention that it can simplify French cooking. As the author and his cowriters admit in more than one recipe, this is long with lots of ingredients, but you can do it if you just break it down into its (many) individual steps. All the author has succeeded in doing is to show that the complexity can be broken down into a lot of steps and that what may look simple to a talented professional chef who has been in the business for over thirty years, still looks daunting to the amateur. The observation by Daniel Boulud on the difference between amateurs and professionals still holds. Professionals simply see things differently by virtue of having done the same preparations thousands of times over.Since Delouvrier fails in making his primary contention, which can set his book apart from all the others, what is the value of the material otherwise? As always, it all depends on what you are looking for.The book is organized in almost exactly the same style as Daniel Boulud's `Café Boulud Cookbook' with seven chapters of recipes instead of Boulud's four. The chapters are chronological, each dealing with a different stage in the author's career, beginning with his fairly straightforward versions of dishes from la cuisine Bourgeoise such as cassoulet and coq au vin through the author's interpretation of haute cuisine dishes at his very expensive Manhattan venues. The chapters are:Family Cooking, Boulogne-SurGesse, FranceHotel School and the Early Years, Toulouse, FranceCafé de la Paix, Paris, FranceJournet Through Discovery (Montreal)Les Celebrites, New York CityLesPinasse and Four Stars, New York CityBasic Recipes (Pantry preparations)The book does have the author's reminiscences which are entertaining and have a strong family resemblence to memoirs written by several other French chefs.So the question remains, `Why should I buy this book'.First, I think the recipes are very good, with the ones in the first four chapters being much more accessible to the amateur than the fifth and sixth recipe. The pantry recipes are interesting in that they show the chef is doing high end French technique. Stock recipes, with a few little twists, may have come right out of the Culinary Institute of America.Second, the recipes in the first two chapters include some regional specialities outside of Provence and Lyon. The recipes in the last three chapters do include some Oriental influences, but not much.Third, almost all the recipes are for entrees. Not too much space spent on desserts or salads. The mix of meat, fowl, fin, and shellfish is about right, with very few recipe