Tru

September 27, 2004
This collection is full of the kind of over-the-top recipes that give chef cookbooks a bad name. Tramonto's frou-frou constructions, like Rabbit Roulade with a Salad of Frisée, French Beans and Radish, and Arctic Char Poached in Duck Fat with Spinach-Almond Puree, sound delicious, but with their numerous subrecipes (Roasted Beef Tenderloin, Truffled Potato Puree and Bone Marrow Foam with Red Wine Sauce requires extracting chlorophyll from spinach and parsley, as well as pouring a marrow mixture into a canister powered by N2O chargers) and long ingredient lists, they also sound about as accessible for the home cook as the summit of Mount Everest is for someone who takes occasional strolls in the woods. These rarefied creations do offer a pleasurable peek into the mindset of a creative chef: there's an entire chapter on foie gras, for example. Pastry chef Gand's desserts are equally complex and include small treats the restaurant offers, like Honey-and-Lemon Tea Lollipops, which are "surprisingly easy to make," as long as readers have sucker collars on hand and don't mind pouring 305-degree syrup. Recipe headers are lengthy and sometimes repetitive, adding to the feeling of dizzying information overload this book provides. Photos. (On sale Nov. 2)

FYI:
Tramonto and Gand have won awards for their earlier books, and Gand hosts a Food Network show.

November 15, 2004
Tramonto's last book, Amuse-Bouche, featured the dazzling hors d'oeuvres he serves at his acclaimed Chicago restaurant, while Butter Sugar Flour Eggs and Gale Gand's Just a Bite provided the dessert recipes that pastry chef and partner Gand creates there. Here is the rest of their menu, from Roasted Sweetbread Salad with Walnut Vinaigrette and Beet Paint to Malaysian-Crusted Rack of Lamb with Truffled Bread-and-Butter Pudding (along with a few more desserts for good measure). These are chef's recipes indeed, with multiple components and many exotic ingredients. Tramonto is certainly talented, but home cooks are more likely to enjoy browsing through the book, which is illustrated with full-page color photographs. For area libraries and other collections catering to foodies.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.