Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking

Culinary bad boy Tony Bourdain and his Les Halles owner chefs have written a very, very good cookbook. If you have an ounce of interest in reading good cookbooks, stop reading this and go to the top of the page and order yourself a copy. If you are still here, I will tell you that this is an excellent cookbook: 1. Tony Bourdain is a very good writer. That means reading this book is very entertaining and worth the price even if you make none of the recipes. There are hundreds of good cookbooks, but Bourdain joins the very select rank, along with Alton Brown and Wayne Harley Brachman of culinary writers who can have you laughing out loud. It also means that he knows how to put things so you understand them and remember them. 2. The book is all about demystifying classic Bistro cooking and in convincing you that with the right attitude and the right directions, you can do as well or better than any newbie professional cook entering Tony's kitchen to work for the first time. Bourdain lays out the reality of this cuisine in a way I have never seen before. If you ever had any reservations about whether you wanted to cook or had the aptitude to cook, this is the book for you. 3. The book presents excellent directions for doing most of the basic preparations for bistro dishes, with special emphasis on preparing stocks. I even think Tony sells himself short when he says that if a chef used his directions at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants, he would be fired on the spot. I personally find Bourdain's stockmaking recipes as good or better than any I have seen short of the CIA textbook. All the right steps are there and all the right culinary reasons for doing them are there. 4. The book explains some kitchen techniques and ways of thinking that I have simply never seen anywhere else explained so well. Recipes for dishes such as bouillabaisse and cassoulet which in most other books seem to be daunting projects are broken down into realistic steps which make them entirely manageable. This is the only place I have seen the very logical distinction between `deep prep' and `prep'. Deep prep is the type of work Beetle Bailey does when he is on KP duty. It is distinctly unskilled labor. Prep work requires culinary training and involves making stocks, glazes, compotes, and the like, and work that requires trained knife skills. 5. The book gives us excellent recipes for all and only classic bistro cooking with wonderfully informative comments and instructions. (I am especially grateful that Bourdain gives both English and Metric measurements for all ingredients. The French, after all, cook entirely in metric.) There is no filler here. There are no recipes which would be more at home in a book by Mario Batali or Ming Tsai. It also means that if you have two or three good French books on `cuisine bourgeois', you will probably already have recipes for many of the dishes presented in this book. But, this book is so entertaining and the recipes are so well written I would not let this give you any pause. Buy it anyway. 6. The book does not make itself out as the wisdom of a single mind. Culinary skill is highly social, done in a world full of influences and people to influence. Bourdain is generous with his being clear about the people and institutions to whom he owes his culinary skill, with special mention being given to Jacques Pepin. Yet, Bourdain has absolutely nothing about which to be modest. He has given us a major addition to useful culinary literature. Aside from excellent chapters on general principles and glossaries, the chapters are almost all the same you will find in any good English language book of French recipes. These are: Soups, including excellent comments on which preparations improve with age and which DO NOT! Salads, including a surprising method for preparing lardons. Boiled, not fried. Appetizers, especially gratins, snails, and mussels. Fish and shellfish: Lobster and dry scallops and pike, oh my! Beef, of course. Note the very important notes on how the French cut up the cow different from us Yanks. Veal and Lamb. The lamb stew recipe is especially good. Baaaaaa. Pig, from nose to tail. Bourdain is a great fan of Fergus Henderson and of using everything but the oink. Poultry and Game, roasted, braised, and rolled chicken, duck, and pheasant. The big Classics. You know the ones. Blood and Guts. Recipes for `the fifth quarter' of organ meats. Potatoes. I love a book that puts potato recipes in a special chapter. Way to go Tony. Desserts. Everything you expect. Crème Brule, poached pears in wine, and clafoutis. Even the trivial stuff is done right. The recipe titles are BIG. The recipe text is done in a very easily readable font. The binding is especially well made to take a lot of standing open while you prepare dishes from the recipes. The book is so well put together, I am surprised it was not published by Knopf , Scribners, or Harper Collins. The closest recent book to this volume is from the chefs at Balthazar, also in New York City. This book beats out that effort by a mile. My only complaint that this book shares with the Balthazar book is that some recipes are in French and some in English. Why not consistently give both? This book is not a classic like Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' or James Peterson's `Sauces', but, I have read several of Bourdain's references by Robuchon and Bocuse on French cuisine and I would recommend Bourdain over these luminaries for the clarity and fun in his writing. Very highly recommended for both clear recipes of popular dishes and the great support he gives to the confidence of the amateur cook.

Fantastic recipes

Having read all of Bourdain's non-fiction books (Cook's Tour, Kitchen Confidential, Nasty Bits and Medium Raw), he wrote this book in a narrative form. He conveys the recipes as if he is in the kitchen with you, holding a cold beer, and giving you advice with a few expletives to get the point across your thick skull, you knuckle head! It is kind of like an older sibling or a good friend taking you under their wing and lovingly, affectionately, but firmly, with a little bit of smart-ass attitude and a literary smack up-side your head, guiding you how to do the right thing in the kitchen. He talks about knives, mis-en-place and how to get your "crap" together. Honestly, there are some recipes that I may not try because they just do not appeal to me. However, i have tried quite a few, learning some new techniques, and having other techniques reinforced, that i learned form watching Jacques Pepin and Julia Child. I would recommend this book very highly, as an historical time capsule for (a) preserving Anthony's legacy, (b) preserving the lost art of French Bistro cuisine (c) conveying the importance of a chef's or home cooks organization and (d) how to write a cookbook in a language that is alive and speaks, actually communicates, to the reader as if they are in the same room. I have the similar feeling about the writings of Mark Twain. I believe Anthony Bourdain is the reincarnation of Mark Twain, but with better cooking skills and slightly similar penchants for addiction (Mark Twain for Cigars, Tony for the hard stuff). Some people have a Bible in their home and never crack it open. At least buy this book; you may not crack it open, but at least you know that it is there and more useful in everyday life; it is there for inspiration and it has great recipes for pork "rillettes," rabbit, mussels, mushroom soup. "cassoulet," "gigot de sept heures" and how to roast an F-N chicken! As he states on page 181, ". . . if you can't properly roast a damn chicken then you are one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron. Take that apron off. You do not deserve to wear the proud garment of generations of hardworking, dedicated cooks. Turn in those clogs, too."

I bought this as a gift for my husband, he likes to cook and both my husband and I like this chef. We both like the book great pictures lots of recipes.

Received quick and easy and book is proving to be alot of fun

An excellent book with all the classic French recipes. Wonderful and funny anecdotes from Anthony Bourdain for each. I got it for my foodie son for his birthday. He loves cooking as much as I do. The only negative thing I can say is that the cover for the the book is rather unappealing. It's nice to display these expensive hardcover but not so much with this one.

Made his Beouf Bourgogne for a group of Paris friands who loved It. The recipes are clear, methods easy to follow and the commentary throughout the book is "Tony." Thanks Tony! I love you and your book!

The best food book I have ever bought! What a gem! I learnt more by reading the first 20 pages about making great food than by reading dozens of other books. Highly recommended!

Cuarta vez que compro este libro y la primera que es para mí :) Está más que descatalogadísimo en español, pero afortunadamente había un ejemplar de segunda mano (en un estado extraordinario. Libro obligatorio en una cocina