Think Like a Chef

by Tom Colicchio

Book Overview

WithThink Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio has created a new kind of cookbook. Rather than list a series of restaurant recipes, he uses simple steps to deconstruct a chef's creative process, making it easily available to any home cook. He starts with techniques: What's roasting, for example, and how do you do it in the oven or on top of the stove? He also gets you comfortable with braising, saut?ing, and making stocks and sauces. Next he introduces simple...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609604856
• ISBN13: 9780609604854
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter Publishers
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.8" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Essay on Professional Culinary Thinking. A foodie delight

Tom Colicchio is part of the elite cadre of New York chefs which include Daniel Boulud, Michael Romano, Alfred Portale, and (in the 1980's) Thomas Keller, so he is as qualified as few others are to write a book with this title. Almost all recent books by celebrity chefs have some slant on their presentation of recipes to, I suspect, justify the higher fare for purchasing the book. As the title clearly states, the slant of this book is to help the reader see cooking the way a trained chef sees cooking and develops recipes.For starters, Colicchio says the typical chef does not start with an endpoint, an idea on what sort of dish they wish to create. Rather, they typically start with one or a few ingredients and apply to them a typical culinary technique such as a braise, roast, or blanche. But how do you braise, roast, or blanche? This gives Colicchio his starting point.Like all crafts and professions, cooking has it's own lingo. One can listen to a conversation between two chefs and have no idea what kind of end product they will reach based on the words they use to refer to the methods to be used. `Blanching' is one of my favorites. My rudimentary knowledge of French tells me it is derived from the word for `white'. One may guess from that that the object of blanching is to make something white. Oddly, the actual intended effect of blanching is often to make something more vividly green. So there you have it. We have some techniques to learn. Colicchio does just that in the first part of the book and succeeds in giving some of the best descriptions of stock and sauce making I have seen. It also covers the techniques of buerre fondu, which few other books discuss and none discuss as well. (Be warned, Colicchio really likes to use butter.) Several little gems appear hidden from the Table of Contents. The technique for making vinaigrettes and the explanation of how they work is an excellent little lesson all by itself.From techniques, Colicchio goes on to studies on how to develop ideas about recipes using three different vegetables. And here is one of the more important principles behind Colicchio's thinking. Protein products do vary a bit from item to item and from season to season, but not nearly as much as vegetable products. Fresh tomatoes for example are plentiful and delicious in August and September, and relatively uninteresting for the rest of the year when they come from hothouses or from Florida. For his case studies, Colicchio picks tomatoes, roasted; mushrooms; and artichokes, braised.In the section on tomatoes, the author begins with a lesson on how to roast tomatoes with garlic. He then uses this preparation as an ingredient in six (6) different dishes:Roasted Tomato RisottoClam ragout with pancetta, roasted tomatoes, and mustard greensSea bass stuffed with roasted tomatoesSeared tuna with roasted tomato vinaigrette and fennel saladBraised lamb shanks with roasted tomatoCaramelized tomato tartsIf you don't count the time it takes to p

A thoughtful book for cooking creativity

This book apparently, like his restaurant in New York, Craft, is for people who are curious about how to bring basic ingredient together and create dishes with complex flavors. It is perfect for home cooks who like to do experiments and develope their own recipes. The book went through a series of very useful basic cooking techniques. It highlights all the important detail if you want to bring out the maximum flavor from the ingredient. Then the author shows how he matches few seasonal ingredient together to complement each other. This book not just show you perfect recipes according to the author's taste, but give you the lead to start your own creative process to develope your own signature dishes.

I love this book

First let me say that the roast chicken won me over on the peanut oil issue. Peanut oil and chicken are great together! That recipe is the simplest and if you are a beginner, that is one you should try at least once! I love how simple this book is. It really inspires me to go the the grocery and just wing it. To the reviewer who found him arrogant, I say he is no more arrogant than the NY chefs I've met! At least he's willing to give away his personal point of view so we can all benefit! One other thing, for the reviewer who didn't know what to replace with what -- savoy greens can be easily replaced by other greens or some other cabbage if necessary, as are many of the ingredients. If you have questions about this, see Rose Elliot's 'The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine' -- it has full-color pages of beautiful photographs of all the exotic grains, vegetables, legumes and greens, and how to use them, so you can learn what to replace things with.

More than just a cook book!

The thing I like most about this book is that its written in a way that makes the reader feel like their having a conversation with a good friend. The Chef starts by taking us through his learnings and experiences(I would have bought the book for this section alone, finding it interesting and entertaining) of his craft, then explains in layman's terms culinary phrases and definitions in a pleasant, easy to understand way. He then offers receipes that have few ingredients, yet turn out delicious dishes that are as appealing to the palate as they are to the eye, all while being relativly easy to prepare. I plan on buying this book for friends and family I know that have a passion for food and a desire to expand their culinary knowledge. Thank you Chef Colicchio!

ESSENTIAL FOR THE SERIOUS HOME COOK

Few cookbooks help you to understand how to achieve real excellence; this one does. Colicchio has a profound understanding of the importance of primary materials, and he always knows how best to treat them. His short rib with pickled hot peppers is sheer genius. His maxim "what grows together, goes together" has led him to novel combinations that become perfectly natural as soon as you try them. This is not a cookbook for beginners, or for people who want step-by-step simplicity. It is a book for people who think--for those who appreciate refinement, restraint, and purity of flavor.