Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication 
asked by john316 on October 31, 2006 4:56 PM
What happens when a world-class chef--Jean Georges Vongerichten, to be exact--writes a cookbook with a culinary minimalist, the New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman? The answer is Simple to Spectacular, a book that presents more than 250 recipes in a unique way. Here's the drill: a few-ingredient "core" recipe is offered, followed by formulas for four increasingly sophisticated (though not necessarily more taxing) variations. Chicken Breasts in Foil with Rosemary and Olive Oil, for example, yields to recipes for the breasts with tomatoes, olives, and Parmesan; with mushrooms, shallots, and sherry; Thai style; and, finally, with foie gras and porcini mushroom. In hands other than the authors', the dishes could be banal or overwrought. Vongerichten and Bittman triumph, however, presenting richly imagined yet straightforward fare whose preparation almost all cooks can manage.
Dish categories range from soups, salads, and entrees to seasonings, sauces, and desserts. In a number of cases, a particular ingredient, such as pasta, or a technique, such as vegetable roasting, is explored (the authors offer recipes for making plain pasta flavored with curry, for example). The sauce section is particularly useful and provides interesting theme-and-variation recipes for vinaigrettes and mayonnaises. Desserts, including Roasted Almond Ice Cream, Butter-Poached Pears with Praline, and Chocolate Tart in a Chocolate Crust, should please all sweet lovers. With 80 color photos, useful tips, and notes on food and equipment, Simple to Spectacular offers an original premise that will stimulate thought as well as great cooking. --Arthur Boehm
Reviews
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Buy this book. I try to cook at least one item a week out of it, and sometimes several. Tonight I had the basic roasted chicken and the mustard and shallot potatoes with a side of lemon-garlic satueed spinach.
The recipes are relatively easy, quick considering the end result,help sharpen your technical skills as well as build your creativity.
I would also recommend Michael Robert's Secret Ingredients. These two books will make people rave about your food.
Bon Appetit!
The recipes are relatively easy, quick considering the end result,help sharpen your technical skills as well as build your creativity.
I would also recommend Michael Robert's Secret Ingredients. These two books will make people rave about your food.
Bon Appetit!
reviewed by shagdag on November 20, 2006 3:59 PM
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Great book
The recipe's are extremely well written for a cookbook and the technical abilities of the chef are well represented.
if you are looking for a picture book though this is not for you as there are none.
this book leaves it all to you to decide how it is presented.
The recipe's are extremely well written for a cookbook and the technical abilities of the chef are well represented.
if you are looking for a picture book though this is not for you as there are none.
this book leaves it all to you to decide how it is presented.
reviewed by savvy on November 24, 2006 8:34 AM
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I loved this book, its "going from simple to sophisticated in one same recipe" format is amazing, really enabling you to practise with different levels of difficulty. It also gives room for improvisation and uses ingredients readily available in any supermarket. It is worth it alone just for Jean George's technique for cooking eggs, a total revelation!!! Don't miss it! The recipe on the cover is his most famous in his restaurant in New York. So if you don't have a trip planned soon, DO TRY IT AT HOME, it is amazingly simple and renders spectacular results. Your guests will be amazed. The only downside is, you will never want to eat eggs the old way again!!
reviewed by geo on November 29, 2006 3:27 AM
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`Simple to Spectacular' is the second of two collaborations by the dynamic duo of chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and New York Times columnist and cookbook writer, Mark Bittman. The first, `Cooking at Home with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten' is very good. This book is even better. To my seven (7) categories of modern cookbooks, I would add an eighth category for this and a select few other books such as Tom Colicchio's `How to Think Like a Chef', Paul Bertolli's `Cooking by Hand', and `Jeremiah Tower Cooks'. These are all `master class' texts on cooking techniques. If cooking is not your hobby or you are not a professional cook, your money would probably be much better spend on one of the `big' cookbooks such as the `Joy of Cooking' or on books by one of the fast cooking gurus such as Rachael Ray.
I have often thought that learning cooking is a lot like learning chess. There are lots of general strategies and tips, but you really cannot master the game until you actually play lots of games and see how the strategies play out in many different situations. One of the cleverest techniques for teaching chess is the method of playing through successively more difficult games in which the same rule(s) are applied with increasing sophistication. This book promises to do exactly the same thing with cooking, per its subtitle, `How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication'.
One of the very few disappointments in this book is that it doesn't really follow this agenda. For each recipe title, it certainly begins with a very simple example and at least one of the later recipes certainly is more complicated with more expensive ingredients, but in practically no cases is there a clearly defined progression where the later recipe simply adds either ingredients or techniques to the earlier, simpler recipe. But this is simply not a big thing, as recipes, like chess game paradigms, simply do not evolve linearly. Another inconsequential deviation from the advertised plan is that there are often more than four variations on the same recipe and sometimes as many as six.
One of the unadvertised virtues of this book is that many of the most basic preparations are amazingly simple, and this is from a very important French influenced chef. Two of my favorite examples are the recipes for quick chicken stock and the `Best scrambled eggs' recipe.
I concede that many expert chefs, including those who teach other chefs recommend very long simmer times for their chicken stocks. In this book, Vongerichten and Bittman are recommending a single hour's cooking, using easily acquired chicken legs and just a few common vegetables, with practically no knife work. I am certain that a stock simmered for 12 hours may have some virtues that a one hour stock does not have, especially in the amount of gelatin picked up from the connective tissues, but you got to love this express recipe.
Similarly, some people such as James Beard have given us recipes for scrambled eggs done in double boilers which, according to our authors, can take up to 40 minutes to complete. Now, having done Beard's recipe myself, I know his method is less prone to error and is probably great if you are cooking for a dozen people, but the Vongerichten/Bittman recipe will have your pillowy soft scrambled eggs on the table in 10 minutes flat. If you never quite understood the difference between scrambled eggs and omelets, this book is worth its price for these recipes alone. After the plain eggs comes a recipe for eggs with tomato and basil, eggs with cream cheese, smoked salmon and sorrel, eggs with crispy potatoes and prosciutto, and eggs with caviar.
In addition to the section on `Eggs, Crepes, and Savory Tarts', there is are chapters on:
Soups, with variations on squash soup and gazpacho.
Salads, with variations on Frisee and Mesclun salads.
Pasta, Noodles, and Rice with variations on fresh pasta, cannelloni, sauces, spaetzle and sticky rice.
Vegetables, with variations on stuffed tomatoes, mashed potatoes, sautýed veggies, and tomato confit.
Seafood, with halibut, slow cooked salmon, red snapper, beurre noisette, raw tuna, shrimp, and poached lobster.
Poultry, with roast chicken and sautýed chicken.
Meat, with steak dishes, braised ribs, veal stew, roasted pork, venison and rabbit
Seasonings and sauces, which is simply the typical chapter on pantry preparations.
Desserts, with sorbet, ice cream, crýme brulee, poached pears, and tarts.
Except for the recipes of rabbit and venison and the occasional caviar and foie gras, virtually all of these recipes are for dishes which are popular today and which the casual Food Network / Public Television / Today Show TV chef audience would be more than happy to try and wish to learn how to do better and with more variations. Some may argue that spaetzle is just a little obscure, but it happens to be very similar to gnocchi, and even easier to make, as long as you have the right kind of collander or spaetzle maker.
I have heard Ina Garten and some others say that all you really need are to know about a dozen recipes well. I disagree with this number. If I repeat any dish more than once a month or even repeat an ingredient (other than for breakfast) more than once a week, I get complaints. The only dinner exceptions to this rule are for corn and tomatoes when they are in season locally. Therefore, this book is a really great source of recipes that are easy, popular, and highly adaptable.
While I am not a professional dietitian or nutritionist, my sense is that the recipes are also extraordinarily healthy. A perfect example is the egg, smoked salmon, and cream cheese recipe used to replace the high carb, high calorie bagel, lox, and cream cheese.
This book is easily among my top five favorite cookbooks for foodies.
I have often thought that learning cooking is a lot like learning chess. There are lots of general strategies and tips, but you really cannot master the game until you actually play lots of games and see how the strategies play out in many different situations. One of the cleverest techniques for teaching chess is the method of playing through successively more difficult games in which the same rule(s) are applied with increasing sophistication. This book promises to do exactly the same thing with cooking, per its subtitle, `How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication'.
One of the very few disappointments in this book is that it doesn't really follow this agenda. For each recipe title, it certainly begins with a very simple example and at least one of the later recipes certainly is more complicated with more expensive ingredients, but in practically no cases is there a clearly defined progression where the later recipe simply adds either ingredients or techniques to the earlier, simpler recipe. But this is simply not a big thing, as recipes, like chess game paradigms, simply do not evolve linearly. Another inconsequential deviation from the advertised plan is that there are often more than four variations on the same recipe and sometimes as many as six.
One of the unadvertised virtues of this book is that many of the most basic preparations are amazingly simple, and this is from a very important French influenced chef. Two of my favorite examples are the recipes for quick chicken stock and the `Best scrambled eggs' recipe.
I concede that many expert chefs, including those who teach other chefs recommend very long simmer times for their chicken stocks. In this book, Vongerichten and Bittman are recommending a single hour's cooking, using easily acquired chicken legs and just a few common vegetables, with practically no knife work. I am certain that a stock simmered for 12 hours may have some virtues that a one hour stock does not have, especially in the amount of gelatin picked up from the connective tissues, but you got to love this express recipe.
Similarly, some people such as James Beard have given us recipes for scrambled eggs done in double boilers which, according to our authors, can take up to 40 minutes to complete. Now, having done Beard's recipe myself, I know his method is less prone to error and is probably great if you are cooking for a dozen people, but the Vongerichten/Bittman recipe will have your pillowy soft scrambled eggs on the table in 10 minutes flat. If you never quite understood the difference between scrambled eggs and omelets, this book is worth its price for these recipes alone. After the plain eggs comes a recipe for eggs with tomato and basil, eggs with cream cheese, smoked salmon and sorrel, eggs with crispy potatoes and prosciutto, and eggs with caviar.
In addition to the section on `Eggs, Crepes, and Savory Tarts', there is are chapters on:
Soups, with variations on squash soup and gazpacho.
Salads, with variations on Frisee and Mesclun salads.
Pasta, Noodles, and Rice with variations on fresh pasta, cannelloni, sauces, spaetzle and sticky rice.
Vegetables, with variations on stuffed tomatoes, mashed potatoes, sautýed veggies, and tomato confit.
Seafood, with halibut, slow cooked salmon, red snapper, beurre noisette, raw tuna, shrimp, and poached lobster.
Poultry, with roast chicken and sautýed chicken.
Meat, with steak dishes, braised ribs, veal stew, roasted pork, venison and rabbit
Seasonings and sauces, which is simply the typical chapter on pantry preparations.
Desserts, with sorbet, ice cream, crýme brulee, poached pears, and tarts.
Except for the recipes of rabbit and venison and the occasional caviar and foie gras, virtually all of these recipes are for dishes which are popular today and which the casual Food Network / Public Television / Today Show TV chef audience would be more than happy to try and wish to learn how to do better and with more variations. Some may argue that spaetzle is just a little obscure, but it happens to be very similar to gnocchi, and even easier to make, as long as you have the right kind of collander or spaetzle maker.
I have heard Ina Garten and some others say that all you really need are to know about a dozen recipes well. I disagree with this number. If I repeat any dish more than once a month or even repeat an ingredient (other than for breakfast) more than once a week, I get complaints. The only dinner exceptions to this rule are for corn and tomatoes when they are in season locally. Therefore, this book is a really great source of recipes that are easy, popular, and highly adaptable.
While I am not a professional dietitian or nutritionist, my sense is that the recipes are also extraordinarily healthy. A perfect example is the egg, smoked salmon, and cream cheese recipe used to replace the high carb, high calorie bagel, lox, and cream cheese.
This book is easily among my top five favorite cookbooks for foodies.
reviewed by 90210 on November 29, 2006 3:41 PM
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I cook a fair bit (many different cuisines). I am on the lookout for simple, tasty recipes ---I have two kids 2 and 5, so I no longer have time to try the fancier recipes of this book.
However, the simpler recipes alone are worth the price of the book. They give some insight into how a famous chef might cook for himself when pressed for time. For example, I've baked salmon hundreds of times over the years but the recipe in this book (the one with crushed capers) has enough minor twists I would never dream of myself---cooking at 350 degrees, with the skin side up, for example--- that lead to much better flavor.
The chicken with sherry vinegar is another example---credited to famous chef Paul Bocuse, but requires only half an hour, and uses no fancy ingredients. Several subtle touches lift it from the ordinary and show that chicken can sometimes be the best of all meats. All my family members, including the 2 year old, wiped their plates clean by soaking up the juices with bread!
The frenchtoast with bananas is another good and quick recipe.
To sum up, this is not an encyclopedic cookbook. It shows you how to do a few things well. It was a useful addition to my kitchen shelf. It might also be a good first cookbook for the starter cook who desires a few top-class results with minimal effort.
reviewed by vcedwards on November 29, 2006 6:17 PM