The Master Cooking Course [antikvár]

Foreworc Over the many years that we have been professionally involved in food preparation—a total of between eighty and ninety years if you include Pierre's apprenticeship in France almost fifty years ago, and my classic training at a Swiss hotel school—we have known that the visual approach to cooking is of inestimable importance where the sharpening and perfecting of talent is concerned. Even the "natural born" talent may need a lesson on how to do the "basics," and being without these skills is a hindrance to releasing creativity in the kitchen. We have long realized that there are some techniques in cooking that cannot be described in mere words in the ultimate sense. Whether it is the making of puff pastry (which the French call mille-feuilles or thousand-leaf pastry), the proper boning of poultry or something as seemingly obvious as how to make a perfect vinaigrette—the stirring, when to add ingredients, and so on—only once the preparations and techniques have been mastered do the meals truly become triumphs. It is not an exaggeration to say that in our own minds even something as trivial as how to chop an onion or how to mince garlic gains new interest when it is presented in pictures: the physical view of these things in a physical framework is an enormous asset for anyone who wants to perfect his or her techniques to gain total mastery in the kitchen. The pictures thoroughly show—as words do only inadequately—how each procedure actually works. When we were approached some time ago to produce a book of menus that would detail in print plus photographs all the best and the most basic of techniques for getting from here to there in the kitchen, so to speak, the recipes provided and detailed in this book are what came to mind. We decided particularly to choose one example of a chicken dish made with many vegetables—chicken Portuguese—for this would give us a chance to show visually how to go about cutting a chicken properly if it is to be