The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition

The Professional Chef,
Seventh Edition

NOTE: Check out the Eighth Edition of The Professional Chef

By The Culinary Institute of America

The Professional Chef, 7th Edition
Look at the resumes of America's top chefs, and you'll see that many share the same alma mater: The Culinary Institute of America. Time magazine has described it as "America's most influential training school." and now with the publication of The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition the CIA will be recognized as the author of the premier cookbook in America. The book demonstrates the essential techniques of professional cooking with lavish, four-color photography, more than 660 classic and contemporary recipes (plus approximately 200 variations), and clear, instructive text. These features combine to make the most user-friendly, universally appealing teaching book ever published. Cook your way through the book and learn the professional techniques and recipes that build a foundation for a lifetime of cooking.

The Professional Chef's opening chapters are designed to provide the fundamentals for any cook. Entitled "The Culinary Professional," this section addresses menus and the basics of nutrition, as well as food science and food and kitchen safety. A corresponding section, "Tools and Ingredients in the Professional Kitchen" discusses knives and standard machinery, and identifies all types of raw ingredients. The detail in this section is impressive, as the often-subtle differences in a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, fishes, and meats are delineated. For example, ten types of apples, more than thirty cuts of lamb, nine sizes of shrimp, and eight types of mushrooms are examined.

From there, the book moves into recipe chapters: "Stocks, Sauces, and Soups," "Meats, Poultry, Fish, and Shellfish," "Vegetables, Potatoes, Grains, and Legumes and Pasta and Dumplings," "Breakfast and Garde Manger," and "Baking and Pastry." Within most chapters, advice on the standard mise en place (prep work) for the genre is discussed, and photographs show how to clean, butcher, fillet, and truss various ingredients, walking the reader through every technique-just like a classroom demonstration.

Recipes run the gamut from traditional to state of the art. Classic favorites include Roast Leg of Lamb with Mint Sauce, Breast of Chicken with Duxelles Stuffing and Suprême Sauce, Braised Oxtails, Cassoulet, and Black Forest Cake.

Among the more contemporary creations are a world of internationally inspired recipes including Beef and Pork Tamales, Hot and Sour Fish, Fillet of Mahi Mahi with Pineapple Salsa, Chicken Burgers, and Taco Salad.

The Professional Chef functions as an invaluable ready-reference for home cooks and professionals. with information that ranges from how to sharpen knives to how to make Trout Mousseline and Diplomat Cream to primers on cooking techniques from braising to roasting to stewing to poaching, and everything in between, the book has unlimited utility.

Throughout the book, ingredients and equipment are illustrated with photographs and step-by-step sequences that make even the most seemingly complicated instructions easy to follow. The book is rounded out with complementary information such as measurement conversion charts, a butcher's yield test, USDA food guides, and a glossary.

Designed as a guide for the students of our best cooking school, The Professional Chef masterfully conveys the Culinary Institute of America's expertise and philosophies in a format that is appealing and accessible to home cooks, as well. with information and recipes that cover the full spectrum of equipment, techniques, and cultures, the book is the next best thing to actually matriculating at the CIA, and is a cornerstone reference that belongs in the kitchen of every serious cook.

About The Culinary Institute of America

Founded in 1946, The Culinary Institute of America is an independent, not-for-profit college offering bachelor's and associate degrees in culinary arts and baking and pastry art. Courses for foodservice professionals are offered at the college's main campus in Hyde Park, New York, and at its additional campus for continuing education, The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in St. Helena, California.

Buy the Book!

The Professional Chef, Seventh Edition
By The Culinary Institute of America
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., October 2001
Hardcover, $65.00
ISBN: 0-471-38257-4
Information provided by the publisher.