Creating Chefs : A Journey Through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons

ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Gold Award

With a camera and tape recorder in one hand and a saute pan in the other, Carol W. Maybach recorded recipes and lessons of culinary school, photographed the simple beauty of food, and captured the wisdom and cooking secrets of her chef instructors in their own words. These culinary experts, among them an ex-record producer who cooked for Frank Sinatra and a secret serviceman''s son who grew up in the White House kitchen, have helped shape staff at such top restaurants as The French Laundry, Jean-Georges, and Charlie Trotter''s. They also teach the unsung heroes of the cooking world--the young man in a chef''s toque working his way up at a local hotspot, the woman searching out the best homegrown produce at a bed-and-breakfast--people who are passionate about creating delicious food.

In Creating Chefs, readers learn how to prepare basic and more complex dishes through the eyes of a student. Each recipe comes complete with notes from the chef instructor, emphasizing the crucial points of preparation. Original illustrations not only provide a peek into a student notebook as if the recipes were presented in class but also help readers to master technique.

For those who know food, cooking is not a job; it''s a love affair. It''s not the prestige that brings them to the kitchen, it''s not the corner office, and it''s definitely not the paycheck. But, as revealed in this unique cookbook, in the hearts and minds of chefs, they do have it all. Every passionate cook, beginner and professional alike, will cherish Creating Chefs.

Carol W. Maybach graduated with honors and a degree in the Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute with an externship at the Arizona Culinary Institute. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Glenn Humphrey, chef and teacher to thousands of young chefs now cooking around the world, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1974. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.