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Cooking Books -> Desserts
Charlie Trotter's Desserts
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by:
Trotter, Charlie
Charlie, Trotter
Gayer, Michelle
Elledge, Paul (Photographer)
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Publisher:
Ten Speed Press
Published: November 1998
ISBN: 089815815X
Format:Hardcover
Pages:239
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Book Description
Amazon.com
"I have always considered desserts to be of equal importance to the savory food," Charlie Trotter writes in the opening pages of his lavish Charlie Trotter's Desserts. "My approach to desserts celebrates a fruit-driven style, where flash and
visual pyrotechniques [sic] are shunned in favor of celebrating the glorious flavors of a perfectly ripe piece of fruit at the height of its season." The illustrations for this book (which won the James Beard award for Best Food Photography) don't quite
square up with that statement. It's hard to imagine more pyrotechnics and more visual flash. It's also a little hard to imagine how many hands went into the creation of any single dish. These are not simple desserts for the everyday cook. Rather, this is
a catalog of the kinds of desserts that can be created when fabulous food products and fantastic culinary talents all converge at a single kitchen. It's a coffee-table document of possibility.
Two Watermelon Soups with Frozen Yogurt Soufflé and
Chocolate Seeds is certainly a "doable" recipe for the home cook, and the assembly makes no big demands. The real trick with this dessert, as with most of the desserts in this book, is finding the "perfectly ripe piece of fruit at the height of its
season." If you are a cook with access to such fruit, have at it. If your grocery store or supermarket buys the usual picked green fruit found in the commercial fruit pipeline, then take a copy of this book to your produce manager and complain
loudly.
Charlie Trotter's Desserts is divided into Soups and Sorbets, Citrus Fruits, Berries, Tropical Fruits, Tree Fruits, Vegetables and Grains, Custards, Nuts, Spices, Chocolate, and Chateau d'Yquem. Combinations are stunning. Surprises are
endless. You'll discover such delights as Meyer Lemon Pudding Cakes with Persimmon and Tarragon Anglaise, Pineapple Tarte Tatin with Ginger-Hokkaido Squash Ice Cream, Rosewater Crème Caramel with Primrose Sauce and Black Pepper Tuiles, and Macadamia Nut
Chocolate Cakes with Coconut Emulsion and Sugarcane Ice Cream. After living with this book you'll never look at a dessert menu in quite the same way. --Schuyler Ingle
From Booklist
Of all Trotter's books, this newest volume in the series
produced out of Charlie Trotter's Chicago restaurant is the most attractive and accessible to the home cook. Despite the celebrated chef's continuing call for items such as satsuma oranges and Meyer lemons, unavailable to all but the most determined
shopper, plenty of these recipes make smashing ends to meals. Whole-wheat carrot cake can stand on its own without the lovely but nonessential additions of black walnut praline and carrot... read more
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