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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General AAS
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Great concept 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 25 people found this review helpful.
What a great time to be buying cookbooks! While we have for a long while had access to recipe collections and representations of the cuisine of various nationalities and popular restaurants, recently there has been a growing library of culinary tomes that give us the skills for producing creations of our own minds. Titles such as Sauces by James Peterson, the 1-2-3 series by Roxanne Gold, Culinary Artistry, Great Wine Made Simple, and now this book provide us with the information about tastes and combinations of flavors and textures to deconstruct, reconstruct, and just plain construct familiar and novel dishes.Are You Hungry Tonight provides a brief introduction to the celebrity subject's theory of flavor. Editor Butler broadly groups flavors into four categories based on the purpose they serve in a dish. Thus, Tastes That Push represent the well-known seasonings that we use to balance sauces, for example: Salty, Sweet, and Picante. Tastes That Pull represent those taste elements that highlight underlying flavors. The authors include here Tangy, Vinted, Floral/Herbal, Spiced Aromatic, Funky (pungents or musky flavors), and Bulby (what have commonly been called Aromatics such as onions and garlic). Taste Platforms represent the textures upon which dishes are built. These include Garden Platforms, Starchy ones, Oceanic ones, and Meaty ones (what the Japanese call umami). Finally, the fourth category is Tastes That Punctuate, basically bitters that stop tastes and cleanse the palate.
This model is very useful one. Ms. Butler seems not to have done her research in examining precursors to this model, and makes little reference to other cuisines than the one Elvis constructed during his lifetime. She neglects to include several important items, especially in the Platforms section (breads, pastries, soy products, seitan, and mushrooms as a basis for other flavors, for example). There are similar, usually less complex models, already in the literature. Butler and Presley's model is more extensive than most, however. Surprisingly, there is little space given in the book to theory. The majority of pages is devoted to recipes that demonstrate their combining philosophy. Butler does not describe how Presley took the elements of taste and mixed them to concoct these dishes. (A reader must refer to Culinary Artistry for such guidelines.) She does, however, provide tasting notes after each recipe that dissect the elements used in the dish.
The recipes are very complex, involving multiple steps and sub-recipes. Even a cook enjoying kitchen challenges would be hard pressed to prepare a full meal using this book alone-- one would run out of burners and pans before the dishes were complete. For example, the Honey Glazed Celeriac involves making the glaze, which is a reduction of wine and acids with sauteed aromatics sieved and kept warm, plus Celeriac slices baked and then broiled, plus a garnish of sauteed zucchini with chives, plus Ginger Curry Sauce, a mayonnaise of reduced wine and aromatics whisked with other ingredients.
The writing is an interesting, not entirely successful juxtaposition of aw-shucks, down-home attitude, sophisticated epicurean philosophy, and fancy foods. The recipes are heavy on the Meaty and Oceanic food platforms, making this definitely a carnivore's cookbook. Produce usually stands as garnish and accompaniment to the flesh. In the end, the most special part of the book represent a few precious pages and is underdeveloped. Perhaps a follow-up volume will expound on this interesting culinary model.
Editorial Review:
Mamma's mashed potatoes and lemon meringue pie, Priscilla's extravagant wedding cake--the King is gone but his favorite meals live on in this cookbook, packed with enough photographs of the singer to delight any Elvis aficionado.
