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Learn to COOK - Tarts with Tops on: Or How to Make the Perfect Pie
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List Price: $14.62
Our Price: $14.62
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9780297843764
ISBN: 0297843761
Label: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: 2004-09-09
Publisher: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
Studio: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
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Editorial Reviews:
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Pies are the business. You can dress them up or dress them down. Make them classic or modern, savoury or sweet, shroud them in butter crisp pastry or top them with creamy potato. Eat them hot, warm or cold, with a scoop of cream, a slug of vanilla custard, a dollop of creme fraiche. You can fold the fruit in, tuck the crust under, build up the layers. No food comforts and nurtures like a proper home-made pie. Tamasin's selection includes classic savoury pies like Chicken Pie, Egg and Bacon Pie, the Cornish Pasty, an Italian Easter Pie with eggs and artichokes, la Torta di Zucchini, a Galician Pork and Sausage Pie, Koulibiac, the traditional Russian Salmon Pie, and a delicate Feta, Rice and Yoghurt Pie. Sweet pies include a section on apple pies, a Sugar-topped Cherry Pie, Raspberry Ripple Ice-cream Pie, Shaker Lemon Pie, Peach Pie, Southern Pecan Pie, Key Lime Pie, Mississippi Mud Pie and Blueberry Pie.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Divine cookbook
Comment: This is a wonderful straight forward cookbook with beautiful photos. I found recipies in this cookbook that I had considered to be "lost".
I should have known that if Tamasin Day-Lewis was the author that the book would be brilliant.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Some Really Unusual Tarts Here. Very Attractive Book!
Comment: `The Art of the Tart' and `Tarts With Tops On' by noted English culinary writer, Tamasin Day-Lewis both have the outward appearance of books on the express line to the discount table. And, while many good books have suffered that fate, that appearance should not be held against these two volumes. It is important to distinguish this book from the excellent volumes on general pastry making such as Rose Levy Beranbaum's `The Pie and Pastry Bible' or Nick Malgieri's `Perfect Pastry' or Flo Brakker's `The Simple Art of Perfect Baking, or Gayle Ortiz' `The Village Baker's Wife'. It is also playing in a different league than the excellent `Mes Tartes' by Christine Ferber. All of these spend many pages on the ins and outs of pastry technique. Ms. Ferber's volume is especially interesting if you are devoted to the French approach to pastry, which is just a bit different than what you will get from the American experts.
When I first browsed through Ms. Day-Lewis' books, the absence of the heavy concentration on technique and the many familiar names of classic tart and pie recipes had me discounting the books as not worth my attention. The opening tart with a top on was nothing more than a classic chicken potpie that I have made following better instructions from James Beard.
The first thing that began redeeming the books in my eyes was the quality of the writing. Ms. Day-Lewis has a way with phrases that seems to owe more than a little from the writing style of M.F.K. Fisher, although the writer to which she seems to pay the greatest homage is Jane Grigson. In spite of a few misstatements such as the notion that pastry making was a science, `but not an exact science', her general observations are quite a pleasure to read and make me want to read more of her books.
Both books include chapters on `other people's recipes', and some of the most interesting material is in these chapters. Some of the borrowing is from Nigel Slater who is a writer like Day-Lewis and unlike Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver, whose works have not made a very big impression on this side of the pond. Others are attributed to Claudia Roden, who has made a big splash over here. Many others are attributed to friends and relatives. Regardless of the source, all these recipes are pretty far removed from your garden-variety tomato tart. Some recipes such as Michel Roux's Tourte au Jambon et Tomme de Pyrenees require ingredients such as black truffles and hard Pyrenees sheep's milk cheese which are just a bit to dear or too much trouble to acquire. Others in this chapter are both very simple and very fetching. Two that caught my eye were Nigel Slater's Stilton, Onion, and Potato "Frying Pan" pie and Deborah's Luxury Meat Loaf Pie. Both recipes are small variations on very common dishes, but the small improvements are worth a bundle of raves at the dinner table.
The next chapter of recipes for pies covers eight variations on apple pie. Aside from the plain vanilla apple pie, all were pretty unusual, but certainly not difficult. I did miss a recipe for Tart Tatin, but I suspect I probably already have five or six recipes for this classic on my shelves already. Another reason the Tart Tatin does not appear with these apple pies is because the first book already includes nine recipes for lidless apple tarts, including the famous Tatin dessert. The first book also includes a perfect recipe for entertaining with an English theme, a treacle tart.
The next recipe chapter of pie recipes covers classic American pies. Among these eleven recipes are peach pie, pecan pie, blueberry pie, pumpkin pie, and key lime pie, but no Pennsylvania Dutch molasses cake, which of course is much more of a pie than a cake.
Among the recipes for sweet pies, there are a few with unusual ingredients such as gooseberries and a few which simply did not appeal to me such as the raspberry ice cream pie, which I considered a misnomer, as the filling was not a true churned ice cream but more like a simple frozen custard.
If your cookbook collecting leans toward those that look good and read well, then these books are for you. They are also very interesting if you have a special attraction to baking tarts and pies, and already have the basic techniques securely under your belt. If you are a novice with pastry, then I suggest you take a by on these and check out the four titles I cited at the beginning of the review.
I will note that for the very nice binding, photography, and the build-in page marking ribbon, these books are very reasonably priced, which make them even more attractive if you are fond of attractive culinary books.
If you are always on the lookout for unusual pie and tart recipes, don't give it another thought and put in your order for these lovelies.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous book, a great gift
Comment: Far more variety of recipes that the title might suggest. Not just desserts but entrees, too. A really beautiful book; would make a lovely gift for someone who likes to cook & is looking for something new.
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