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Review: From The Cooking School at La Campagne
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From
The Cooking School at La Campagne
By John Byrne ISBN: 0966120035 Publisher: Small Potatoes Press Publication date: November 1999 Format: Paperback List price: $16.95 (Canada, UK) |
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| Type: Cuisine: French: Provençal | |||||
| Sample Recipe: Daube of Beef Provençal | |||||
| Ambitions | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| intended audience: | novice | advanced beginner | good home cook | gourmet | professional |
| apparent goal: | stocking stuffer | sampler | comprehensive | Biblical stature | coffee-table |
| competition: | outclassed | also-ran | midrange | strong challenger | leads the pack |
| Content | |||||
| # of recipes: | <50 | <100 | <200 | <300 | >300 |
| practical recipes: | <20% | <40% | <60% | <80% | >80% |
| # of ingredients: | <3 | <6 | <9 | <12 | >12 |
| ingredient hunt: | 7-11 | pantry | supermarket | online | airfare required |
| recipe complexity: | baby steps | simple | medium | intense | professional |
| instructions: | inadequate | bare bones | full figured | educational | verbose |
| time conscious: | outright lies | speed of light | fairly quick | takes time | takes all day |
| photos/drawings: | skimpy | adequate | generous | instructive | glorious |
| recipe results: | dog food | dorm food | casual food | family meals | fancy food |
| flavor quotient: | disappointing | fair | good | delicious | exceptional |
| Format | |||||
| layout: | ick | cluttered | clean | kind to cooks | work of art |
| legibility: | microscopic | challenging | adequate | clear | brilliant |
| production quality: | cheesy | questionable | years of service | gift-quality | stunning |
| value: | ouch! | a little pricey | on the money | excellent | worth splurging |
| Ease of Use | |||||
| page numbers: | invisible | hard to find | spotty | adequate | obvious |
| table of contents: | missing | frustrating | passable | useful | helpful |
| index quality: | none | tragic | adequate | good | excellent |
| page flipping: | infuriating | tedious | acceptable | rare | never |
| Author | |||||
| writer(s): | hack | cook turned writer | writer turned cook | comedian | auteur |
| cook(s): | self-taught | non-restaurant | chef | teacher | celebrity |
| Summary | |||||
| overall rating: | fair | good | very good | excellent | Ochef Top 100 |
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Comments: From the Cooking School at La Campagne is the collaborative effort of restaurant owner John Byrne and the chefs/teachers who work in the well-known New Jersey restaurant and have been teaching home cooks how to make Provençal cuisine for more than 10 years. Culled from a collection of more than 1,000 teaching recipes, the book offers a wonderful range of manageable, well-explained, delicious dishes, from appetizers through desserts. The book is also studded with many useful definitions, hints, and other tidbits of information. As with all French cooking, some recipes rely on base sauces and stocks, which requires a certain amount of advanced preparation or flipping to referenced recipes. The layout and design of the book is as clean as you will find in the cooking world, and is a pleasure to use. |
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