Secrets of French Home Cooking Cookbook

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Description: What is it that makes food taste French? Why is it that your elaborate attempts to re-create a traditional French dish often end up with more of the flat feeling of your usual food tricked up, while your Parisian friend can whisk up a little sauce in minutes that magically transforms a weekend roast into un plat authentique? 

Is it the ingredients,  the use of shallots rather than onions, of smashed garlic rather than chopped, the right blend of herbs? Or is it the techniques, the few spoons of water in the roasting pan or the use of the bain marie? It is all these ... and more! 

In The Secrets of French Home Cooking, Marie-Pierre Moine, a native French cook who has had to cook French food with non-French ingredients for many years, imparts a little of this essential je ne sail quoi. Using a series of master recipes, she sets out some of the classic tastes of France together with all the little tips and variations that turn that basic dish into something quite wonderfully different. 

In her uniquely confident and approachable style Marie-Pierre cleverly distils the essence of what exactly it is you need to turn those supermarket apples into a delicious Tarte Tatin, plain whisked egg whites into glorious caramelized Oeufs d la Neige, or that ordinary pot roast into meltingly tender Boeuf de la Mode. She demonstrates how simple it is to flavour a mayonnaise, and to turn cooking juices into Sauce au Vin Rouge or Sauce d la Moutarde. Her description of Hollandaise takes the terror out of French classic sauces and shows how easily it can be transformed into Biarnaise or Mousseline. 

Arranged by types of ingredients, there is a total of over 150 authentic French recipes, including such favourites as Gratin Dauphinois, Chou Farci and Profiteroles, and less familiar but equally intriguing dishes like Tourte aux Lardons et aux Pommel de Terre and Clafoutis. The master recipes are cleverly illustrated with useful sequences of step-by-step photographs and many of the dishes themselves are beautifully pictured in evocative colour photography by Peter Williams. 

This is no mere homage to haute cuisine or a quick survey of fashionable restaurant dishes but an invaluable and timeless treasury of all that is good in French home cooking. With Marie-Pierre's book by your side, you will soon be able to cook confidently any of the many mouth-watering recipes in the canon of classic French regional cooking.  

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Condition: Bookboards, interior pages and dust jacket are in nice condition. Bookboard's edge/spine has a few small scratch marks. The first couple of pages are slightly creased in the bottom corner tip.