The La Varenne Cooking Course

Book excerpt: Abstract: A cookbook for beginners presents the philosophy of cooking as taught at the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris. The comprehensive course teaches first a mastery of the fundamentals, and then more complicated procedures which can be put together to produce the famous works of French classic and nouvelle cuisine. There are 35 lessons, each dealing with a food ingredient (eggs, cheese), a prepared food (soups, salads) or a technique (sauteing, boning). Each lesson has an introductory statement plus a discussion of utensils and ingredients needed, and preparation techniques, and possible variations. The 250 recipes included give both American and metric measurements and Farenheit and Centigrade temperatures. Color photographs illustrate techniques. (kbc).