The Confident Cook - 9781250146274

St Martin's Press

The Confident CookAuthor(s): Irena Chalmers\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: St Martin's Press, United States\nImprint: St Martin's Press\nISBN-13: 9781250146274, 978-1250146274\nSynopsis\nWith a new foreword by Anne Willan. Anyone who can understand the reasoning behind basic cooking techniques can become a creative, relaxed, and confident cook. Chalmers takes the would-be chef through how the addition or substitution of a few ingredients can transform a simple dish into a culinary masterpiece. The Confident Cook, invaluable to experienced cooks as well as to beginners, demonstrates that in fact there are only four or five basic methods of cooking food. Once mastered, these basic methods can be used with many different ingredients to create countless dishes. Chalmers shows how beef stew, braised veal, coq au vin, and a vegetable casserole, for example, are similar in their preparation; how a simple beef stew can become a hearty Mulligan, a Belgian carbonnade, a French boeuf bourguing.