Synopsis
Two chefs measure, mix, chop, simmer, and season their way through preparations for a sumptuous feast, baking bread, tossing salad, grilling fish, sauteing vegetables, and serving the tasty meal to their hungry guests.
Reviews
Kindergarten-Grade 2. One of the wonderful things about this book is that it does not try to do too much, thus giving children an opportunity to create their own understanding. Two chefs, a man and a woman, work at the Top Notch Restaurant. The text, 31 words, is all verbs. Bright, friendly gouache illustrations expand the meaning: on the page accompanying the word "peel" is a large square picture of hands peeling a potato with a metal peeler; the border below shows onions, apples, carrots, pears, and oranges, all of which can also be peeled. At first glance, the cooking verbs appear to be random, but with attention readers can see a specific dinner being created: home-baked bread, cake, vegetable soup, mashed potatoes, garnished fish, sauteed vegetables, and tossed salad. The close-up points of view in the pictures enable children to stick a vicarious finger into the mashed potatoes and see the individual bits of pepper coming out of the grinder into the soup. The restaurant is a tiny place of simple elegance, filled with red-and-white checked tablecloths and people of all races and ages enjoying good food. A culinary delight.?Carolyn Jenks, First Parish Unitarian Church, Portland, ME
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Brandenberg (I Am Me!, 1996), a book of illustrated cooking verbs--one per page--showing two chefs (one of them strongly resembling the author's photo on the jacket flap) preparing the following menu for a tiny, homey restaurant: fresh baked breads, minestrone, tossed salad, grilled trout with harvest vegetables, and three different desserts. Many of the gouache paintings provide close-ups of the chefs' hands sifting, mixing, beating, chopping, seasoning, peeling, or slicing (all by hand--no food processors or electric mixers in this restaurant). The bottom borders show tiny pictures of the ingredients being used: An observant reader who is also an experienced cook could extrapolate recipes from these (e.g., the ``harvest vegetables'' are a saut‚ of red onion, sweet red pepper, zucchini, and yellow squash with olive oil, lemon juice, white wine, thyme, salt, and pepper). An attractive, brightly colored look at an extremely busy dawn-to-dark kitchen, but it's difficult to imagine the book's audience: Preschoolers won't grasp the isolated culinary operations and older readers will want the recipes. Tuck it into story hours on work and careers, and get ready to argue whether salads are tossed before dressing, or after. (Picture book. 4-7) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Ages 4^-6. Two workers arrive at a restaurant, cook a meal, serve it to customers, clean up, and leave. Attractive, brightly colored, naive-style pictures, each labeled with the appropriate term, show various aspects of what goes on--from peeling, filleting, and sauteing to garnishing, serving, and eating. The paintings aren't equally effective in catching the energy or activity of preparation, but this cheerful look at terminology will work just fine when shared with Mom or Dad while they're waiting for the cookies to bake or the water to boil. Stephanie Zvirin
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