The Professional Chef's Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Second Edition
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 List Price: $65.00 Sale Price: $8.94 Availability: unspecified 
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Product Description
Books on nutritious eating abound, but none seem as comprehensive as The Professional Chef's Techniques of Healthy Cooking. Prepared by the Culinary Institute of America, the book is addressed to chefs who may require grounding in nutritional principles as well as representative recipes to help them "cook healthy." It's hard to imagine anyone, however, who wouldn't benefit from--and enjoy perusing--this trove of sophisticated yet approachable material. With more than 400 of the Institute's recipes, 200 color photos, and a cornucopia of useful information, including charts ("Definitions of Nutrient Claims," for example, helps readers understand terms like lite or low fat), the book is a definitive, up-to-date food and nutrition guide.
The book's largest section contains the recipes--each with detailed nutritional analysis--for a wide selection of dishes. These range from chef's pantry items like pesto, duxelles, and yellow pepper oil and salads--Grilled Garlic Shrimp with Radish Salad is a tasty example--to breads, deserts, and beverages. Though uncomplicated, these large-scale, ingredients-specified-by-weight formulas will be most useful to professionals. Universally valuable, however, is the introductory material, which explores, among other topics, the language of nutrition, elements of flavor, cooking with less fat, and agricultural issues such as organic farming, free-range poultry, and plant biotechnology. "A Case Study in Flavor Deconstruction," which atomizes the appeal of a sample dish, is a fascinating reminder that the foundation of all good eating is sensual. Concluding with a cooking and nutritional glossary, the book is a welcome, obligatory addition to any home or professional kitchen library. --Arthur Boehm
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item received in a reasonable amount of time and was the correct item.
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I love this book. I am an vegetarian and looking for this type of book for a long time. I am studying to become a chef, but want to do healthy cooking. I want to study baking also, so I purchased the Study Guide for Baking and Advanced Baking by P. Leonardi, which has the type of questions that will help you especially since I am not the greatest baker. The Study Guide for the National Servsafe Exam: Key Review Questions and Answers with Explanations is also extremely helpful in and out of the kitchen.
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There are very healthy ideas in this cookbook. However, the recipes usually contained recipes that seemed to have an odd ingredient or two that I don’t keep on hand.
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This book contains an incredible amount of excellent information. It contains everything you need to know for an education in healthy cooking techniques. There are excellent photographs. The recipes are very well explained and each recipe contains a nutritional analysis. Although a basic knowledge of cooking would be helpful for alot of the recipes, a novice cook who is very focused should be able to get quite a bit out of the book.
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To put this review into perspective for you, it is written by a serious student of cooking that has been actively studying food on their own for 25 years. I have been focusing on Italian food for the last 10 years. My favorite cookbook is “The Professional Chef” by the Culinary Institute of America.
This book is laid out as follows:
Section One: Healthy Cooking
1. The language of nutrition
2. The pyramids
Section Two: The Principles of Healthy Cooking
3. The elements of flavor
4. Fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes
5. Cooking with less fat
6. Moderating Salt
7. Sweeteners
8. Beverages
9. The techniques of healthy cooking
10. Agricultural issues in ingredient selection
Section Three: Creating and Marketing Healthy Menus
11. Menu and recipe development
12. Analyzing the nutrient content of recipes
13. Nutrition Labeling in menus and advertisements
14. Staff training and customer satisfaction
Section Four: The recipes
The book is geared to the professional kitchen. However, there is much information in this book for the home cook beyond the recipes. Many of the same considerations that the restaurant must address should be part of the menu development in the home.
If you are looking for ways to improve the “health quotient” of the meals you prepare your family, you will enjoy this book. All the recipes in this book have complete nutrition stats including: calories, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugar, and protein.
The book does a nice job of explaining smoking and the flavors given to foods by various wood chips. Their recipe for oven-smoked tomatoes (without purchasing a separate smoker, I used a heavy lidded roaster) was extremely easy to follow and turned out wonderfully.
The recipe section is more than 2/3’s of the book. The recipes are developed for larger quantities than most home cooks will prepare. I have not had any difficulty reducing the size of the recipes to accomodate my family. The recipe for Risotto Cakes and Green Beans with Chanterelles was fabulous, as was the one for Chianti Granita. The recipe for pasta that uses only egg whites is also very nice, and versatile. Of the recipes that I have prepared so far, all of them have been very good.
I consider this book to be a valuable addition to my cookbook library. If you want to cook more healthfully, you will enjoy this book.
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Excellent pictures and recipes. I was disappointed that their were not more vegetarian and vegan recipes since this book is claimed to be healthy cooking. Do not buy this book unless you have lots of time to cook and you are a vegetarian and especially vegan. There are many more reasonally priced books on the market that are completely vegetarian or vegan.
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This is an excellent resource for over 400 easy and elegant recipes. Not only are the recipes delicious, the author teaches you how to incorporate more fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains into your diet. I have been searching for a cook book that provides delicious meals without sacrificing taste, and this fits the bill! If you are looking to monitor your weight, this book is an wonderful source of fabulous recipes. I definately recommend it!
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This book provides a number of helpful suggestions for the knowledgeable amateur who is interested in learning healthier techniques, (ie – poach carrots in orange juice and ginger). The “background” on nutrition, however, is rather elementary.
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The wealth of information contained in The Professional Chef’s Techniques of Healthy Cooking is “must have” for the dedicated healthy kitchen. Each topic is fully discussed, and a full set of appendices offers quick access to a variety of nutritional and food prep tables. Recipes included in the book prepare large volumes of food in most cases, but they provide good general guidelines, cooking techniques and ideas for the creative cook. First rate photography illustrates the versatility of a healthy diet and adds considerably to the volume’s visual appeal. The comprehensive information in this beautiful book is the perfect “go to” reference — I couldn’t recommend it more highly.