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Learn to COOK - Cooking School Secrets For Real-World Cooks
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List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $22.95
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5
EAN: 9780811842433
ISBN: 0811842436
Label: Chronicle Books
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 392
Publication Date: 2005-05-19
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Studio: Chronicle Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable
Comment: I borrowed this book from the library and now I am considering buying my own copy. I would consider this more of a teaching/reference manual rather then an everyday cookbook. This book offers a huge amount of information from food science, cooking techniques, and of course many delicious recipes too. I Especially enjoyed the info on improving knife skills, understanding your palate (such as the role of acid and umami). This book is full of information on how to be a better cook, assuming you are not already a professional chef. There is no substitute for practice but if you can't go to cooking school this is also helpful. Overall I found this book easy to read, thoughtful, and an excellent reference I would refer to often.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Carucci's Secrets - a useful addition
Comment: I don't buy many cookbooks anymore as many sit on the shelf and never get used - except perhaps my 1950's version of the Joy of Cooking - but Carucci's Secrets is one of the few others I find a useful addition - not only for basic recipes but also for techniques and variations on a recipe - I most often use it as a quick reference for tips on how to make things even better - she often has a succinct tip on something simple but impactful that makes this book worth checking out before I try something new or sometimes if I want to find an improvement on an old recipe.
As an aside, I first met Linda at a friend's party, where she had brought a dish that was excellent, but seemed quite simple - many people were raving about it and later I saw her signing cookbooks and realized she was an expert in our midst - and reading her cookbook is like having a brief conversation with a down to earth friend or a next door neighbor - seems like casual advice - not overwhelming in details or overly technical - it's "just right."
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Comment: I love cookbooks. I have dozens and would have hundreds if I had more space. But there are only a few that I pull out when I need a really good recipe; the books that I trust to deliver a delicious result. "Cooking School Secrets", "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison and "The Joy of Cooking" by Irma S. Rombauer are the three that come out when I'm having people over and I'm not sure what to make. I pull this one off the shelf for other reasons too. For instance, I can finally hard boil and egg to perfection due to the insructions and explanations in this book. The introduction is full of information that has made me a better cook, just as the title suggests.
As for the recipes, I've made the "Chicken Soup with Glass Noodles", the "LInguine Aglio e Olio", and the "Fresh Fava Beans with Pecorino and Meyer Lemon Olive Oil", all good. But it was the Thanksgiving dinner that I made from the recipes in this book that really made me a convert. My husband, who complains loudly every Thanksgiving that he doesn't like turkey, ate seconds. My mother insisted it was the best Thanksgiving meal she'd ever had. I loved the fact that the recipes for roasting the turkey, making the stuffing and preparing the gravy were clear and presented in a step by step fashion. I can say with confidence that this book is filled with really well tested recipes that turn out deliciously every time.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not what I was expecting
Comment: The information is fairly helpful, but all spread out. You have to go through and look at every recipe to get the tips. I like the background of the recipes Linda gives, and the sources information in the back is pretty helpful. Might have been better if not written as a cookbook with extras.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great resource for cooks wanting to take their "game" to the next level
Comment: Permit me a brief digression that will later bear on the review. I once attended a massage therapy school in a city with three competing schools, and I was continually amazed at how limited the competing graduates from the other schools were in basic anatomy, assessment, and palpation skills compared to what I learned. On the other hand, those graduates were way ahead in actual "salon/day spa" cosmetic techniques, so they tended to land positions more easily. They couldn't find a trigger point, balance a meridian flow, or treat a muscle tear, but they could select the best aromatherapy oils for various emotional stresses. Which set of skills were more valid, or "better"? It all depends on what you think is important in massage therapy.
Any course of education and training from a particular institution will have its prejudices, limitations, and standards. Other, competing training schools (and schools of thought) may well differ from the curriculum taught here and may well criticize and castigate these shortcomings. The important thing, you need to understand the rules and conventions of a craft or an art before you can successfully experiment with them or break them for effect (something that people like Alton Brown, Mark Bittman, and Mario Batali do all the time). And Carucci's book does an amazingly thorough and accessible job setting forth those conventions, heuristics and "secrets" in one place, in an easily absorbed format. And she offers them AS conventions and secrets, which implies that other, alternate techniques may well exists. (I didn't even know that the ratios of the ingredients in "mire poix" were an issue, for instance). So to me, this book really is a cooking school between two covers, with all the advantages and limitations that would imply. Mastering the contents of this book will give the aspiring cook/chef a useful set of tools and protocols for "serious" cooking...but other cooks and chefs, trained in other ways of thought may well disagree with many of the "secrets" presented here. The important thing is to understand that the issues exists and that no "secret" is any better than the understanding and perception of the person trying to use it.
So to me, the most important (and useful) part of Carucci's book are the parts were she emphasizes the actual use of the senses and intuition as part of the cooking process. That takes this book to the next level as far as I am concerned and makes it a valuable resource in the education of would be cooks. I've learned a ton of stuff in the three short weeks that I've had it, and more important, I understand the extent and depth of my ignorance, in ways I never did before from working with these pages.
This is a great book to have. The only cookbooks in my collection that I like better are Alton Brown's (and I know that many people consider his recipes hit-or-miss See how personal perceptions enter into it, no matter what you do in subjects like cooking?) I'm delighted that I found this on the stands and decided to give it a chance.
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