Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking

by Anthony Bourdain, Philippe Lajaunie (With), Jose de Meirelles (With), Robert DiScalfani (Photographer)

Overview

Bestselling author, TV host, and chef Anthony Bourdain reveals the hearty, delicious recipes of Les Halles, the classic New York City French bistro where he got his start.

Before stunning the world with his bestselling Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain, host of the celebrated TV shows Parts Unknown and No Reservations, spent years serving some of the best French brasserie food in New York. With its no-nonsense, down-to-earth atmosphere, Les Halles matched Bourdain's style perfectly: a restaurant where you can dress down, talk loudly, drink a little too much wine, and have a good time with friends. Now, Bourdain brings you his Les Halles Cookbook, a cookbook like no other: candid, funny, audacious, full of his signature charm and bravado.

Bourdain teaches you everything you need to know to prepare classic French bistro fare. While you're being guided, in simple steps, through recipes like roasted veal short ribs and steak frites, escargots aux noix and foie gras au pruneaux, you'll feel like he's in the kitchen beside you-reeling off a few insults when you've scorched the sauce, and then patting you on the back for finally getting the steak tartare right.

As practical as it is entertaining, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook is a can't-miss treat for cookbook lovers, aspiring chefs, and Bourdain fans everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582341804
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/15/2004
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	27,260
Product dimensions:	7.21(w) x 9.45(h) x 1.42(d)

About the Author

Chef and author Anthony Bourdain wrote the New York Times bestselling memoirs Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw, and A Cook's Tour; the collection The Nasty Bits; the novels Bone in the Throat, The Bobby Gold Stories, and Gone Bamboo; the biography Typhoid Mary; and the cookbooks Appetites and Les Halles Cookbook.

Bourdain was the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning docuseries Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown on CNN, and prior to that hosted the Emmy Award–winning No Reservations and The Layover on the Travel Channel and The Taste on ABC.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

June 25, 1956

Date of Death:

June 8, 2018

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

Kaysersberg-Vignoble, Haut-Rhin, France

Education:

High school diploma, Dwight Englewood School, 1973; A.O.S. degree, The Culinary Institute of America, 1978

Website:

http://www.anthonybourdain.com/

Table of Contents

	Introduction	10
	Les Halles: What the Hell Is It?	18
	General Principles	22
	Scoring the Good Stuff	27
	The Knife	34
	Stock: The Source	36
	Soups	41
	Salads	56
	Appetizers	66
	Fish & Shellfish	99
	Beef	117
	Veal & Lamb	138
	Pig	164
	Poultry & Game	176
	The Big Classics	200
	Blood & Guts	221
	Potatoes	234
	Miscellaneous Meez & Other Useful Recipes	246
	Desserts	266
	Glossary	282
	Suppliers	288
	Further Reading	290
	Acknowledgments	291
	Index	292

What People are Saying About This

Mario Batali

"Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook joins the classic French cookbooks on my shelf, and shames every would-be 'bistro bible'. Nobody else writes with such respect for real food." (Mario Batali)

Jim Harrison

"Anyone serious about their cooking will want to own Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It has an enormous amount of vital information presented in Bourdain's pungent, abrasive, and memorable writing style." (Jim Harrison)

Eric Ripert

"This is a great cookbook! Anthony Bourdain directs you brilliantly through delicious recipes, with explanations that are crystal clear." (Eric Ripert)

Jacques Pepin

"Don't be misled by Anthony Bourdain's witty, irreverent style. His Les Halles Cookbook is solid, smart, and informative, and his recipes are bona fide bistro fare. An instant classic." (Jacques Pepin)

Editorial Reviews

Don't be misled by Anthony Bourdain's witty, irreverent style. His Les Halles Cookbook is solid, smart, and informative, and his recipes are bona fide bistro fare. From the onion soup to the veal kidney to the gratin dauphinois, this is the honest, unpretentious, comforting, and abundant food I loved as a youth in France and am always ready to enjoy with my family and friends. Anthony has given us an instant classic.” —Jacques Pepin, author of The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen and Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques

“Anyone serious about their cooking will want to own Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It has an enormous amount of vital information presented in Bourdain's pungent, abrasive, and memorable writing style. This is a cookbook you'll keep handy in the kitchen.” —Jim Harrison, author of The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

“This is a great cookbook! Anthony Bourdain directs you brilliantly through delicious recipes, with explanations that are crystal clear.” —Eric Ripert, author of Le Bernardin Cookbook

“Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook joins the classic French cookbooks on my shelf, and shames every would-be 'bistro bible'. Bourdain is in top form. Nobody else writes with such respect for real food, and his irreverence toward the pompous trappings of cooking is hilarious. An expert attack plan for producing delicious fare, this field guide and cookbook is part Kerouac, part Liebling, and a lot of Escoffier all rolled into one.” —Mario Batali, author of The Babbo Cookbook

From the Publisher

"This is a great cookbook! Anthony Bourdain directs you brilliantly through delicious recipes, with explanations that are crystal clear."

Eric Ripert

"Anyone serious about their cooking will want to own Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It has an enormous amount of vital information presented in Bourdain's pungent, abrasive, and memorable writing style."

Jim Harrison

"Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook joins the classic French cookbooks on my shelf, and shames every would-be 'bistro bible'. Nobody else writes with such respect for real food."

Mario Batali

"Bourdain shows himself to be one of the country's best food writers. His opinions are as strong as his language, and his tastes as infectious as his joy."

New York Times Book Review

"Don't be misled by Anthony Bourdain's witty, irreverent style. His Les Halles Cookbook is solid, smart, and informative, and his recipes are bona fide bistro fare…An instant classic."

Jacques Pépin

"Don't be misled by Anthony Bourdain's witty, irreverent style. His Les Halles Cookbook is solid, smart, and informative, and his recipes are bona fide bistro fare…An instant classic.

Jacques Pepin

"Don't be misled by Anthony Bourdain's witty, irreverent style. His Les Halles Cookbook is solid, smart, and informative, and his recipes are bona fide bistro fare. An instant classic."

Jacques Ppin

Long before Anthony Bourdain became a "tell-all" bestselling author, he was a standout chef. For years, the author of Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour has sharpened his skills as the executive chef of Brasserie Les Halles, one of Manhattan's most prestigious and down-to-earth restaurants. In Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, he reveals the cooking secrets that enabled him to create bistro fare that makes Parisians envious. Exquisite food; great kitchen tips.

A celebrity with a high-profile position as executive chef at New York bistro Les Halles, and bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour, Bourdain doesn't intend to break new ground. The dishes do exactly as the subtitle notes and include such solid classic fare as Onion Soup Les Halles, Steak au Poivre, Boeuf Bourguignon, Coq au Vin and Chocolate Mousse. Nearly all recipes are within reach of competent home cooks, and those that are more complicated or time-consuming-Bouillabaisse, Cassoulet and Roulade of Wild Pheasant-are thoroughly spelled out to calm most jitters. Foie gras, duck fat and dark veal stock are frequent components, but a list of suppliers makes just about every ingredient available. Even though many of the dishes can be found in other cookbooks, what sets this one apart is Bourdain's signature wise-ass attitude that pervades nearly every recipe, explanatory note and chapter introduction. Profanity adds frequent color. If Aunt Doris would blanche at pearl onions being called "little fuckers," a cook who prefers boneless meat in Daube Proven al a "poor deluded bastard," or a person nervous about making these recipes a "dipshit," this book is not for her. Photos. (Oct.) Forecast: With raves by Jacques P pin, Mario Batali, Jim Harrison and Eric Ripert, Bourdain's handsomely designed book will be taken seriously even by those who aren't wowed by his self-conscious swagger. Viewers who have followed his culinary travels on the Food Network will also be attracted to the book. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Bourdain has been chef of New York City's Les Halles ("the best goddamn brasserie/bistro in the country") since 1998. With his best-selling Kitchen Confidential, he acquired a bad-boy reputation that he revels in to this day. Bourdain can be a smart, entertaining writer, but his smugness and reverse snobbery can be wearying-as can his indulgent use of profanity, not only in his boot camp-style introduction to the restaurant world but in the recipes themselves: Butter is "fucking soft," the "broiler sucks," the reader is a "dipshit." As for the recipes, they are straightforward versions of bistro classics from Frisee aux Lardons to Steak au Poivre. Expect demand. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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