Top Chef The Cookbook - Hardcover

The Creators Of Top Chef

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811864308 ISBN 13: 9780811864305

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2008

Synopsis

Top Chef presents the official companion cookbook to the No. 1 rated food show on cable television! Featuring 100 fabulous recipes from the first three seasons of the show, including dishes from the Elimination Rounds and the Quick-Fire Challenges, Top Chef: The Cookbook invites fans into the hottest kitchen on prime time. In-depth discussions with contestants, judges, and crew reveal the inner workings of the show, and lavish photographs take readers behind-the-scenes into the Top Chef pantry and the competition sites. Handsomely packaged with a canvas cover inspired by the chef's jacket worn by each of the Top Chef contestants, this cookbook will have aspiring culinary contenders reliving classic show moments and relishing new recipes just in time to obsess over Padma's outfits in Season 4.

About this title

About the Author

In addition to his job as lead judge on Top Chef, Tom Colicchio is one of America's most influential chefs. He won the James Beard Award as the best chef in New York when he was at Gramercy Tavern. He is currently the chef/owner of Craft in New York and Craftsteak in Las Vegas. His seminal cookbook Think Like a Chef won the James Beard Cookbook Award.

From Publishers Weekly

Part fanzine, part cookbook, this volume will appeal to the anyone who tunes into Top Chef each week to see contestants out-cook each other, using vending-machine ingredients to make appetizers or preparing lunch for the cast of a telenovela. Replete with dozens of glamour shots of contestant/contributors and sweetly old-fashioned profiles of the judges (host Padma Lakshmi is "a no-nonsense kind of gal"), this volume feels like a guide to a strange, food-obsessed cult. The author sighs over pretty, eccentric Betty Fraser, "it was always hard to know what to make of Betty," and notes that season two winner Ilan Hall was "good at falling into the kind of cliquish drama you might find in a high school cafeteria." The recipes themselves, taken directly from the show's "quickfire" and elimination challenges, are dauntingly involved, much more suited to cooking competitions than the average home kitchen: they never use one ingredient when three will do, nor do they shy away from expensive options like foie gras, truffles and abalone. Even simple-sounding dishes like Chiles Rellenos are accented with complicated sauces and garnishes. It's hard to imagine anyone consulting this book to whip up dinner, but it's easy to see how a Top Chef obsessive would get much satisfaction out of it, if not necessarily a full stomach.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Chronicle Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0811864308
• ISBN 13: 9780811864305
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256