Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques by Jacques Pépin
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Book Reviews of Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques
Book Review: Get the hardcover edition if you can afford it
Summary: 5 Stars
There are many many b&w photos and the book is worth it for the reassuring pain de mie recipe alone.Book Review: Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques
Summary: 5 Stars
This is simply the best. Easy to understand and use. Every serious cook should own a copy.Book Review: Exceptional
Summary: 5 Stars
I was delighted with this book. It is very detailed/thorough, yet easy to follow.Book Review: A spectacular, must-have book marred by serious organizational flaws
Summary: 4 Stars
I'll start with this: the average cookbook buyer is not going to have the money or the justification for The Professional Chef, The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Cuisine, or the like. For someone learning to cook and wanting a basic reference on the techniques of professional cooking, this book is far less expensive and friendlier to a home cook. It's not quite suitable as a basic text on cooking unless you want to specialize in classic French cooking, but it should certainly be in your library.
Pépin's approach in this book is an interesting one. He's not wedded to sacred cows -- arrowroot and beurre manié rather than roux in his sauces, for example, an approach advocated by none other than Escoffier himself, but largely ignored. It is of course the case that the source material that Pépin built this book from was published in the 1970s, and the recipes and techniques reflect that era -- aspics, carefully constructed installations of bread and fruit figures, and the like abound, but that isn't really a criticism -- just because a technique isn't widely used anymore doesn't mean it a) is completely useless or b) might not come back some day (a friend of mine's boss still makes aspics for parties for example). The point is not to give recipes but to teach technique, and this book is certainly an excellent choice for that.
And it does cover a lot of ground as well -- in addition to expected things like braises, cutlets, and the like, Pépin includes things like how to make a prosciutto-style ham, how to make numerous garnishes that would make your grandmother proud, and how to glaze fruit like strawberries to place on top of an Old World-style cake. The black-and-white photos, while it would be nice to see them updated to color, aren't the handicap many other reviewers think, and unlike many other so-called picture cookbooks, which seem to use pictures as window dressing, are carefully arranged to match up to the steps. Overall, the effect is as close to a well-produced cooking show as it's possible to be without moving images.
The major flaws of the book aren't the author's fault. It can be argued that at least part of it was sloppy integration of La Methode and La Technique into a coherent whole, but even then that doesn't really justify the weirdly claustrophobic feel in the book. That's because it's not a browsing book -- the table of contents is small, the index is recipe-oriented rather than technique-oriented, and the page headings are simply technique numbers rather than titles. This last is a major liability in a book where any given entry can be three to five pages in length. There are a few techniques that would have been useful as well; while almost everything in classical French cuisine is adaptable to other cuisines, it still would have been nice to have coverage of things like batter-frying (breadings are used, though). Marginal chapter tabs would also have been nice, since it's not very straightforward to tell what section you're in when you simply flip to a random page. A third edition with these changes, as well as color photos, would be nice, though not at the expense of a drastic price increase; fortunately Workman (of which the publisher, Black Dog and Leventhal, is a subsidiary) seems to have done a fairly effective job of doing precisely this to other flagship titles like the Silver Palate Cookbook and The Barbecue! Bible without impoverishing readers.
Overall, though, for a home cook that needs a good reference on techniques, this is a very good choice, and indispensable for someone who wants to know a little about professional cooking (at least in the French tradition) without spending outrageous amounts of money on a culinary textbook. I would also recommend it highly for anyone who has a more visually-oriented learning style; it's perhaps a bit text-heavy, but the pictures are excellent.
Book Review: A photographic how-to-do-it guide to French culinary techniques
Summary: 4 Stars
This is NOT a recipe book. It's a photographic how-to-do-it guide to basic French culinary techniques.
As I mentioned elsewhere (re: Julia Child) this is another one of those special interest books intended primarily for serious home cooks and novice pros, who'd like to broaden their inventory of classic culinary prep-skills (i.e., basic butchery, and fruit/veg preparation, processing, and presentation, etc.)
STRENGTHS:
* Jacques Pepin is classic old school. That means he doesn't roast chickens unless they've been properly trussed, poussins unless they've been spatchcocked and/or deboned, and racks of lamb unless they've been properly 'Frenched' ... and this book does an excellent job of showing (with words and photos) the basics for those techniques, along with many others. Wanna learn how to clean & truss a whole fillet mignon for grilling & roasting ? It's in there.
NITS:
* The verbal descriptions are a bit too sparse and ambiguous in places, due to poor culinary editorial oversight.
* The photographs are rather disappointing at times ... especially the fact that they're all black and white, and that they're all cold, clinical and lifeless. There is neither photographic artistry nor joy to match the artistry and joy of the chef being photographed ... and that's sad, because everyone who loves to cook deserves to be exposed to Jacques (one of my favorite chefs). I could have done a better job of the photography myself, and I'm not even a photographer.
* I think this book would have benefited from being less purely procedural oriented, and a little more recipe oriented ... without the latter, it falls a bit flat. As it, the book has a dry, surgical-like feel to it, and the black and white photos left me with a somewhat colorless impression.
Bottom line is that this book needs an expanded 2nd edition, featuring better edited and polished descriptions, and (more importantly) high quality full-color photod, by someone with an eye for both instruction, fun and artistry.
Very useful, and exhaustive, but uninspiringly photographed.