PastryWiz Charlie Trotter's Desserts

 

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Charlie Trotter's Desserts
by: Charlie Trotter, Michelle Gayer

Price*$54.92
as of 02/09/2010 16:33 EDT

Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.86
EAN: 9780898158151
ISBN: 089815815X
Label: Ten Speed Press
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishUnknownEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Ten Speed Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: November 01, 1998
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Release Date: November 01, 1998
Studio: Ten Speed Press

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Cooks, book buyers and food lovers have come to expect the lavishly unexpected from chef Charlie Trotter, and his fourth large-format, gorgeously photographed cookbook, "Desserts", delivers the ultimate indulgence. Full color.

Amazon.com Review:
"I have always considered desserts to be of equal importance to the savory food," Charlie Trotter writes in the opening pages of his lavish Charlie Trotter's Desserts. "My approach to desserts celebrates a fruit-driven style, where flash and visual pyrotechniques [sic] are shunned in favor of celebrating the glorious flavors of a perfectly ripe piece of fruit at the height of its season." The illustrations for this book (which won the James Beard award for Best Food Photography) don't quite square up with that statement. It's hard to imagine more pyrotechnics and more visual flash. It's also a little hard to imagine how many hands went into the creation of any single dish. These are not simple desserts for the everyday cook. Rather, this is a catalog of the kinds of desserts that can be created when fabulous food products and fantastic culinary talents all converge at a single kitchen. It's a coffee-table document of possibility.

Two Watermelon Soups with Frozen Yogurt Soufflé and Chocolate Seeds is certainly a "doable" recipe for the home cook, and the assembly makes no big demands. The real trick with this dessert, as with most of the desserts in this book, is finding the "perfectly ripe piece of fruit at the height of its season." If you are a cook with access to such fruit, have at it. If your grocery store or supermarket buys the usual picked green fruit found in the commercial fruit pipeline, then take a copy of this book to your produce manager and complain loudly.

Charlie Trotter's Desserts is divided into Soups and Sorbets, Citrus Fruits, Berries, Tropical Fruits, Tree Fruits, Vegetables and Grains, Custards, Nuts, Spices, Chocolate, and Chateau d'Yquem. Combinations are stunning. Surprises are endless. You'll discover such delights as Meyer Lemon Pudding Cakes with Persimmon and Tarragon Anglaise, Pineapple Tarte Tatin with Ginger-Hokkaido Squash Ice Cream, Rosewater Crème Caramel with Primrose Sauce and Black Pepper Tuiles, and Macadamia Nut Chocolate Cakes with Coconut Emulsion and Sugarcane Ice Cream. After living with this book you'll never look at a dessert menu in quite the same way. --Schuyler Ingle


Related Items:
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:  out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Great Photo Essay...
But it ends there. Like the others before me, this book leaves a bit to be desired.

The recipes require a pastry certification just to attempt. I have one and I still wouldn't try most of these in my spare time. They require great skill and exotic ingredients in most cases. Nobody will find this book useful for casual dessert needs.

The photos, on the other hand are incredibly beautiful. This book *can* inspire. I do keep this book easily at hand for guests to drool over. I just prepare something uch more simplistic, yet delicious in it's own right.

If you like awe insipiring dessert pictures, this is your book. If you want awe insipiring desserts you can actually prepare, you are better served with something like "The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Dessert"



Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Great photos--flawed recipes
My husband is a chef, I cook and bake often, and was even a personal chef. We've tried two of these recipes so far and neither have worked! One of them was completely off in the dough and couldn't possibly have worked and the other we are still working on. It's for a portion of a recipe that has toffee. We have resorted to finding another toffee recipe online and will try to make that and incorporate it in the recipe. It is very disappointing! I've tried this portion 3 times now with no luck. Thats just not right. Buy this book only for the photos and try to make them by using other recipes that you know and trust or use a reputable site with user reviews. We've ate at Trotters and it was good, but we've both had better meals for less money.



Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - inspirational desserts
Some cookbooks are meant as much for inspiration as they are for actual cooking...moreover, some cookbooks aren't for the normal home cook. I was a pastry chef and made some of these recipes. In that context, it is an excellent book, and probably my favorite of the Trotter lineup. Really, these were his pastry chef's recipes, so perhaps that says something about my impressions of his food.

An experienced homecook could make these recipes as well, but please know going in, that if you are not somewhat skilled in the pastry arts, you might find the book frustrating (but beautiful).



Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Useful only for photos & inspiration
I can say that I am a reasonably competent home chef with an above-average knowledge of technique and most necessary equipment to get the job done. Having said that, I was impressed with the photos of nearly every featured recipe in this book and find the recipes to be admirably aggressive in their taste and texture contrasts. The recipes, however, are nearly all flawed in some significant manner in that following them verbatim will result in poor results. Even when this is not the case, I find these recipes to be "out of whack" from a taste perspective by any gastronome's standards and in need of serious tweaking. If you have good kitchen skills and seek to be inspired by the ideas in this book, then I would suggest it (USED!!) ... otherwise, there are much better cookbooks that will yield far superior results.

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Charlie Trotter's Desserts
Price*$54.92
as of 02/09/2010 16:33 EDT

 

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Product prices and availability updated on 02/09/2010 16:33 EDT.