Cooking with Pomiane (Modern Library Food) - Softcover

De Pomiane, Edouard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375757139 ISBN 13: 9780375757136

Publisher: Modern Library, 2001

Synopsis

First published in France in the 1930s, Cooking with Pomiane continues to inspire today's chefs with its inventive simplicity. Edouard de Pomiane turned classic French cuisine on its head, stripping away complicated sauces and arcane techniques to reveal the essence of pure, unadorned good cooking. A food scientist, he offers lucid explanations for why food behaves as it does. Read him and the cream in your gratin dauphinois will never separate, your pot au feu will never be stringy, and your choux pastry will puff to astonishing proportions. Pomiane's great accomplishment was to restore confidence to the cook, and joy to the kitchen. Cooking with Pomiane spills over with amusing stories and more than three hundred superb and streamlined recipes; it is as much a delight to read as it is to cook from. This Modern Library edition is published with an Introduction by the renowned food writer Elizabeth David.

About this title

Review:

Gourmet, scientist, and cookbook writer of endearing prose, Edourad de Pomiane's revolutionary approach to French food and diet of his day involved sane, perceptive simplification--a distinctly modern tactic. Cooking with Pomiane, first published in the 1930s and reissued in the Modern Library Food series, encapsulates Pomiane's debunking methods: away with complicated techniques and elaborate sauces; in their place, find concise formulas that discover the essence of their ingredients and celebrate them in simple preparations. Though Pomiane provided precise, even scientific cooking rationales ("Everyone agrees that [fish] must be served [before] the meat course," he writes, "...but such as meal is far too rich in nitrogenous substances"), he is also a beguiling instructor. "Take a bunch of parsley," he advises, "the size of a bunch of violets." Any reader interested in cooking and its modern history will treasure the book.

Beginning with useful information for the host or hostess (for a dinner party, "one should prepare only one good dish," Pomiane advises sensibly), the book then presents over 300 recipes, arranged by course or type, and "a few drinks." Pomiane's revolutionary approach is embodied in his formula for Noodles with Mushrooms, which requires only noodles, mushrooms, butter, and grated Parmesan. Use good ingredients and you have a feast. Though he includes many, albeit streamlined, recipes from the classic canon, such as Artichauts à la Barigoule (artichokes braised with a ham, bread crumb, and onion stuffing), he also supplies recipes that were unconventional in his day, including Choucroute Salad and Piroshki. Readers will also want to prepare such treats as Mousse au Chocolat (chocolate, sugar, eggs, cream) and Pumpkin Gratin (pumpkin, almonds, sugar, an egg, and macaroons). With an introduction by Elizabeth David, the book provides a rare opportunity to meet and learn from an original cooking master. --Arthur Boehm

From the Back Cover:

"Unburdened with excess detail but invariably embodying the vital touch of the artist....I know of no cookery writer who has a greater mastery of the captivating phrase."—Elizabeth David

"To prepare dinner for a friend is to put into the cooking pot all one's affection and good will, all one's gaiety and zest, so that after three hours cooking a waft of happiness escapes from beneath the lid."—Edouard de Pomiane

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375757139
• ISBN 13: 9780375757136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304