I expect more from one of the world best chef
am kind of disappointed when I paid over 70 dollars to get A Return to Cooking. I should have ordered books written by some European Master chefs from oversea source. Eric Ripert is no doubt one of the best in business. If you have eaten in his restaurant, Le Bernadin, you will completely agree with me. I dined there several times. It is another blockbuster team up (Rhulman and Ripert). Lately, Rhulman's books completely failed my expectation. It become more marketing driven. And A Return to Cooking certainly is one of them. Big book, lots of pictures. But it is just background picture of their vacation or some cherry tomatoes or unneccessary pictures of Ruhlman in cool looking sun glasses or Eric Ripert on the beach. It reminds me of a cookbook written by Mr.Town ... Read More
Woody''s Books: Unreliable vendor
I ordered A Return to Cooking on Dec. 6th for a Christmas gift. Apparently the book was not in stock, they never told me that... only that I would be delivered within 2 weeks, then without any notice at all they changed the delivery date to Jan 6th, which I only found out by visiting amazon.com to find out where my book is.
The book eventually arrived, too late for Christmas. After giving me really bad service, with NO communication at all, woody's has now contacted me multiple times to get me to remove negative reviews. Forget it, Woody. You give bad, unreliable service you get bad reviews.
It's still a "chef's" book, but not inaccessibly so. Best for seafood.
This may be Ripert's return to the kitchen (ie., this is arguably not "restaurant" food), but it's still demanding of money, time, and skill (probably in that order). I say money and time first because he uses top-notch and/or esoteric ingredients, which will require some investment and shopping (eg: live pibales: I never heard of them anywhere else before or since. Even the book says they are very difficult to find: Ripert special orders them from a supplier for $65 a pound. No substitution is mentioned, and the description of them is too limited to make a guess at an acceptable sub. Perhaps there simply is none...). But that's to be expected from any top-tier chef's book, so it's certainly no reason to knock this down.
excellent coffee table book, yet practical
The book is beautiful: layout, photography, the food itself. As others have noted, the recipes are very good for a home cook: impressive, but not so complex as to deter a dedicated cook.
Why 4 and not 5 stars? Because I think Ruhlman is merely an average writer. He spends too much time cozying up to M. Ripert. In browsing the book, I found several grammar errors (minor irritance, but in a book of this quality, I find disappointing). Ruhlman is no Reichl or Grimes -- but I think he tries to be. I think Ruhlman picks fascinating topics (I enjoyed Soul of a Chef immensely); it's just that, for me, his writing is a distraction from the content.
Cooking and Cooksbooks as Art
what can I say, this is simply the most beautiful cookbook that I have ever come accross. What pictures and paintings.
A real work of art and love. Almost to beautiful to want to cook out of it and risk to splatter food on it.
Haven't tried any of the recipies yet, but can't wait and will update this review as soon as I have tried a few of them. But most of them look really surprisingly simple and soooo delicious and very often surprising!!!!
