The title of this important cookbook is most unfortunate. You might think that this book is only for seasoned, experienced professionals only. This is absolutely not the case. It is really just a continuation of Gisslen Professional Cooking 6th Edition w/CD-ROM + Professional Cooking 6th Edition Study Guide - SET>. If you have some cooking skill, then you will benefit from this book. I am very impressed with this cookbook and recommend it highly.
The recipes in this volume are closer to the retail recipes that you are likely to prepare either professionally or at home. In fact, each recipe has 2 different yields: 4 servings for home and 16 servings for restaurant service. The copyright is 1992 and some recipes are past tense e.g. flavored fresh pasta. But how about: soft-shell crab, flavored beurre blanc, foie gras, and fresh sausages? In fact, the selection of recipes reads very much like a current, best-selling cookbook.
If you are like me, you have any number of classic, French, haute cuisine cookbooks: Escoffier, and others. Even experienced professionals will often despair at the rather vague procedures for ballontines, galantines, wild poultry and game (duck, quail, squab?), and forcemeat stuffed fish. This volume will give complete, correct, professionally proven recipes for all these classic dishes. Never made pate en croute or a terrine before? Ever had to butcher an entire beef tenderloin or carve a saddle of lamb? What about kidney, sweetbreads, tripe, or brain? Confused by books that will throw around words like simmer, poele, braise, en cocotte, saute, pan fry, poach, and pot roast without explaining the difference? This book will explain all. Note that many of these recipes are long and involved (not really difficult, just time consuming requiring patience). Many need 2 or 3 pages of recipe steps, which are often casually tossed off in a couple of terse sentences in various, older Haute Cuisine cookbooks.
