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The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs

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Product Info

• EAN: 9780316118408
• Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company

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Editorial Reviews:

• Winner of the 2009 James Beard Book Award for Best Book: Reference and Scholarship
  
  

  
  

  Great cooking goes beyond following a recipe--it's knowing how to season ingredients to coax the greatest possible flavor from them. Drawing on dozens of leading chefs' combined experience in top restaurants across the country, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg present the definitive guide to creating "deliciousness" in any dish. Thousands of ingredient entries, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a treasure trove of spectacular flavor combinations. Readers will learn to work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients; experiment with temperature and texture; excite the nose and palate with herbs, spices, and other seasonings; and balance the sensual, emotional, and spiritual elements of an extraordinary meal.Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from America's most imaginative chefs, THE FLAVOR BIBLE is an essential reference for every kitchen.

Spotlight customer reviews:

• Customer Rating:
• Summary: AMAZING! Perfect title for this book. .. FLAVOR BIBLE
• Comment: This is AMAZING. I really don't know what more to say that hasn't already been said in the reviews already. I also love the chefs theories on food and flavor in the beginning of the book. Once you figure out how to read it (no worry, there is a chapter on that too), IT ROCKS!

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• Customer Rating:
• Summary: I love this book, even though its not really a book!
• Comment: It's more of a compendium of alphabetical listings of foods that are paired together. The format basically goes something like this:
  
  Blueberries
  Season: spring-summer
  Taste: sour-sweet
  Botanical relatives: huckleberries
  Weight: light
  Volume: quiet-moderate
  Techniques: cooked, raw
  Tips: Can subtitute huckleberries
  
  allspice
  almonds
  apricots
  bananas
  blackberries
  butter, unsalted
  buttermilk
  chocolate, white
  CINNAMON
  cinnamon basil
  cloves...
  
  
  It is like a book that is a giant index, which refers you to things that can pair well. This book is more for people who have a willingness to experiment. It gives pointers on what other people think might go good with an item, such as blueberries. You have to figure out your own proportions. Of course, responsible cooks probably want to taste the food they serve beforehand anyways. ;)
  

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• Customer Rating:
• Summary: Very Helpful Reference
• Comment: I'm a home cook that writes a food blog because I wanted to improve my cooking skills and culinary school seemed too expensive with a family to support. I started out following recipes I found online, but lately I've been profiling more original recipes (my own concoctions). This book has definitely allowed me to be more creative in some of the flavor profiles I use by making educated guesses.
  
  The book itself is easy to understand with about 40 pages of background information. It lists hundreds of ingredients, their complementary flavors, taste (i.e. sweet, salty, sour, etc.), function (i.e. cools the dish, warms the dish), weight (density), volume (the strength the flavor of the ingredient), technique (how the ingredient is best cooked), any tips in using the ingredient, flavor affinities (three or more ingredients that work well together), and flavors to avoid.
  
  You can read more about my book review at:
  
  [...]

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• Customer Rating:
• Summary: Master your tastebuds
• Comment: This is a great book for helping any level chef pair foods and spices to create dishes. The first three chapters explain how your palate works, how the book works, and how other chefs have used pairing to improve their dishes. The rest of the book is a broken up into foods and lists of spices and foods are listed under the titles.

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• Customer Rating:
• Summary: Flavor made easy
• Comment: The Flavor Bible is a well written and highly detailed book that leads the reader down a road to understanding flavor from somewhere between an artistic viewpoint and a magical experience.
  
  The authors spend an extensive amount of time developing the readers understanding of what flavor really is. Much less time is spent on the clinical side of "cooking something." The latter part of the book is an exhaustive listing of flavor combinations by food, spice/herb, cuisine and more. Not just a few here and there, but numerous listings from multiple cuisines and culinary practices. If you have an ingredient, look it up, you'll find a tremendous wealth of information on ways to bring out its best flavors. All-in-all, this book should be on the shelves of every foodie right next to your most inspired cookbooks.

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