One's first inclination is to weigh the book. It's a coffee-table book, contains 800 recipes, 600 color photographs. The author promises to tell and show you "everything she knows about the essentials of good cooking today."
The title of this 511-page book: "The Way to Cook." The author: Julia Child. The cost: $50 (Alfred A. Knopf). Is it worth it? For many, it will be a book they will use for years.This is Child's seventh book, designed, according to the author for the new generation of cooks who need a basic knowledge of good food; for those who would like to cook but who have "never dared even to string a fresh green bean;" and for experienced cooks who would like some new ideas and approaches.
The cookbook accomplishes these goals. It is organized by method, so that the novice and expert alike can select a master recipe and then move on to variations.
"The technique is what's important here," Child says in the introduction, "and when you realize that a stew is a stew is a stew, and a roast is a roast, whether it be beef, lamb, pork or chicken, cooking begins to make sense."
Child tells you how to clarify stock, knead dough, boil eggs, poach fish, shred cabbage, bake pastry - and more. The photographs show how to snap off the end of green beans, stuff zucchini blossoms, melt chocolate, stuff and truss a turkey.
Child emphasizes healthy cooking. Many of the master recipes are low in fat or fat-free. However, she does not give up "delicious indulgences" including sausages and pates, hollandaise and butter sauces.
While acknowledging today's fast pace, Child discourages take-out food and frozen dinners. Her advice: get the family to help with the beans and the salad greens; plan recipes in stages; make double batches of desserts that can go in the freezer.
"The Way to Cook" derives its title from six 1-hour videocassettes of the same name. The book incorporates recipes and techniques from the video series, as well as those from the "Dinner at Julia's" television series, Child's food articles and television appearances, and "other recipes and ideas that I have wanted to share," Child says.
-NEW FROM ANNE WILLAN
"LaVarenne Pratique" by Anne Willan (Crown Publishers, $60) includes 2,500 full-color photographs, 400 international recipes, and hundreds of cooking methods - from tying a rack of lamb to making spun sugar.
Willan is founder and president of Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris. Her 528-page, coffee-table book contains 22 chapters that illustrate ingredients, recipes and cooking techniques.
Learn how to scramble eggs, bake eggs, deep-fry eggs, pan-fry eggs, make folded, flat and and souffle omelets - all illustrated by color photographs. For the more experienced cook, Willan shows how to make pie pastry, pate brisee, pate sucree, tarts, choux pastry, puff pastry, bouchees, feuilletes - and more.
Willan also includes sections on preserving and freezing, microwave cooking and cooking equipment; weights and measures, herbs and spices, and cooking with wines and spirits.