Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
The ground-breaking under-pressure method, usually called sous vide, involves submerging food for minutes or even days in sealed, airless bags at precisely the temperature required to produce perfect doneness. Flavors and textures unattainable by other cooking methods can also be achieved.
The technique has been in the pipeline for awhile--one forerunner is the boil-in bag mom used to put veggies on the table--but has only recently attracted top chefs. One is Thomas Keller, famed chef-proprietor of The French Laundry and Per Se. His mightily sized, gorgeously produced Under Pressure explores every inch of sous vide, including the ramifications of using this precision-cooking technique (once time and temperature are established, best results follow automatically) on the craft of cooking, which has always meant a potentially rewarding engagement with the possibility of failure.
The book makes no bones about being addressed to professionals. Typical recipes, like Marinated Toy Box Tomatoes with Compressed Cucumber-Red Onion Relish, Toasted Brioche, and Diane St. Claire Butter, involve multiple preparations and dernier cri ingredients, and thus resist home duplication. There’s also the matter of the pricey equipment required--chamber vacuum packers and temperature-maintaining immersion circulators--not to mention the precautions required to ensure that foods, usually cooked at low temps, are safe to eat.
What the book does offer the home cook is, however, thrilling. It introduces something new under the sun--an exciting, transformative technique of great potential. Anyone interested in food and cooking--not to mention lovers of extraordinarily well produced books--will want to explore Under Pressure. --Arthur Boehm
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Good book
Customer Rating:
This is a good book by Thomas Keller. As a professional chef, you can see he tries to make every effort to make his career to the top.
Its a "Must Buy" Cookbook
Customer Rating:
Truly a well crafted cookbook helpful for anyone wanting to expand their knowledge of "Sous Vide" cooking. I have been preparing food in our home kitchen for over 2 years with this method and am excited about the recipes in this book as well as explanations on cooking times and methods. If you are either an advanced home kitchen gourmet or a food service professional this is a "Must Have" publication. K.Miller - Stonington, CT
Recommended with Some Reservations
Customer Rating:
Thomas Keller is one of the great American chefs. His restaurants French Laundry and per se are two of the finest restaurants in the United States. So when Thomas Keller comes out with a new cook book, chefs and foodies take note. Addressing the new hot topic of Sous Vide preparation makes it an even more compelling.
"Under Pressure" is two books in one. First and foremost it is a compilaton of Keller's Sous Vide recipes. Second, it is a "How To Manual" for all those interested in learning more about the Sous Vide technique for preparing food. This book's real strength is as a recipe book. Keller is an extraordinarily creative chef and his recipes are fascinating to dissect. However, to execute these recipes one needs to have access to a vacuum sealer and a hot water recirculating machine. The expense of this equipment places these recipes beyond the means of most people. Only a privleged few will ever be able to recreate the recipes laid out in this book.
My reservations are with the "How To" aspect of this book. Thomas Keller is a great chef but his knowledge of the basic food science of Sous Vide cooking is seriously lacking. Botulism is a real issue when preparing food in an anaerobic environment. Understanding the time and temperature continuum is essential to producing safe food. The single greatest weakness of this book is that he does not adequately address this issue. For anyone who really wants to understand the basic food science of Sous Vide cooking, check out Sue Ghazala's text book on Sous Vide production.
Finally, the following are quibbles but nevertheless are illustrative of the books' weakenesses. Sous Vide means cooking under vacuum and not under pressure. Canning is an example of cooking under pressure. Bruno Goussault may have invented the term Sous Vide but the American meat industry has been producing vacuum packed meat cooked in hot water baths for many decades. Most of the cooked deli meat you can purchase at a supermarket is prepared in what is essentially a Sous Vide production. What is new is that bench top hot water reciruclation machines have recently become available to chefs. It is important to remember the term Sous Vide is a term coined by Bruno Goussault and popularized by Cuisine Solutions the company he works for. It is a new name for a very old process. Finally, this is not the first book written in English about Sous Vide. Sue Ghazala and Joan Roca's book proceed this book by a number of years. Putting these quibbles aside, "Under Pressure" is the best book available in English on this topic.
Under Pressure - Outperforms Expectations!
Customer Rating:
I am a businessman recently entered into the restaurant business with no formal training in cooking and I was completely "wowed" by this book.
First of all it is a beautiful object, the imagery, pages, pictures, design are fantastic. But more importantly, Thomas Keller sets out to share the principals and formulas that have been the basis of his award winning food. He sites procedures, suppliers, recipes with a candor and generosity of spirit which i have never seen in the restaurant business or by any world renowned chef.
Anyone looking to understand the ways in which food preparation has evolved over the past 20 years needs to read this book.
Nature abhors a vacuum
Customer Rating:
"Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide" is Thomas Keller's latest coffee table book/cookbook. While "French Laundry" showed innovative takes on classic dishes and "Bouchon" offers everyday French bistro fare,"Under Pressure" takes cooking in another direction. It's a technique known as "bain marie" among the French. It's a more sophisticated version of the "boil in the bag" technique.
"Under Pressure" is fascinating when Keller discusses the science behind it. One can have superb vegetables and meat... in a matter of hours. The method itself isn't glamorous,but the science is interesting. The final recipes-the chosen few that are actually depicted--look beautiful.
"Under Pressure" is more useful to the restaurateur than the home cook. After all,does one really have thousands of dollars to blow on vacuum equipment? At least "Bouchon" had doable recipes for someone wanting to recreate the flavors of a Parisian bistro.
As food science,"Under Pressure" works. Not so much so as a cookbook--nor it is as visually beautiful as Keller's previous works.
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