Reviews and Press Coverage
The Times, August 02, 2003 |
| Reviews and Press Coverage >> Reviews |
‘Indispensable ... this thumping great reference work details the cooking style and skills taught at the famous Leiths School of Food and Wine since it opened in 1975. Sue Spaull and Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne both trained at Leiths, they teach there now, and have worked with Leiths MD Caroline Waldegrave to produce a book that builds from first principles to the heights of sophistication.
There are valuable, workmanlike sections on kitchen equipment, menu planning, food safety and storage, cookery terms, conversion tables and classic garnishes. Ingredients are discussed exhaustively, with advice on choosing the best, fresh produce, and on healthy, balanced eating. Whether you want to soft-boil a medium egg (you should just simmer it for four-and-a-half minutes, apparently), bake a spun-sugar cage, steam a treacle sponge or whip up a soufflé, you will be told how here. If your minestrone is muddy or your meringue collapses, you'll learn the error of your ways in this book.
If my mother had had this book, she would have known why the fruit in her cakes always sank to the bottom (the mixture was too thin). If the late Jessica Mitford had had a copy when she ordered 50 chickens from a Petaluma farmer for a fundraising dinner, she would have known better than to ask that they be delivered to her 'undressed', on the grounds that it sounded more oven-ready. She would have saved herself much eviscerating — and would have learnt how to halve, bone, spatchcock, pan-fry, deep-fry, stir-fry, grill, roast or poach the wretched birds, to make a ballotine, a galantine, and the best bread sauce.
This is a really, really useful book, then. Every home should have one’