Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts: The Recipes of Del Posto's James Beard Award-Winning Pastry Chef

by Brooks Headley

Overview

One of The New Yorker's Fifteen Essential Cookbooks

"The most entertaining cookbook in memory…A game changer." —Anthony Bourdain

While other chefs paid dues on restaurant lines and at cooking schools, Brooks Headley was in the back of a tour van as a drummer in much-loved punk bands that never made a dime. Now executive pastry chef at New York's Del Posto restaurant, Headley creates unorthodox recipes that echo his unconventional background: fruit is king, vegetables are championed, acidity is key, and simplicity is the goal.

With 97 recipes and more than 100 photographs, Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts has six chapters: "Fruit," "Vegetables," "Grains and Flours," "Chocolate," "Seeds and Nuts," and "Dairy." Recipes range from verjus melon candy to tofu chocolate crème brûlée, fruit sorbet to eggplant and chocolate, showcasing Headley's unique perspective on ingredients and methodology. Guest contributors include essayist Sloane Crosley and award-winning chefs Gabrielle Hamilton and David Kinch. Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts is an essential, inventive addition to the shelf of both home cooks and professional chefs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242010
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/24/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Brooks Headley, chef-owner of Superiority Burger, was named best pastry chef in the country in 2013 by the James Beard Foundation. His cookbook, Brooks Headley's Fancy Desserts, won the Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks from Food52. He lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

"Fancy Desserts is not what you expect of a cookbook. Then again, Brooks is not what you expect of a pastry chef. His dessert is the stuff of legend. It is counterintuitive but beautiful; confounding but delicious. Relinquish control: read this and you will almost instantly understand. Fair warning: Paul Reubens is pictured in this cookbook."

Mario Batali

"Fancy Desserts is a visceral and attitudinal and gustatory joy-ride, an exhilarating few laps around a 4 star kitchen in a beat up obscure punk rocker’s tour van. And Brooks Headley is as devoted to the sweet joy as he is to the hard ride of excellence in the pastry kitchen."

Gabrielle Hamilton

"There’s a profound tenderness to both Headley’s writing and his cooking, an extravagant honesty about his relationship to eating, to working in kitchens, to recipe development, to the endless artistic challenge of wrestling down one’s cynicism and liking things just because they’re good.…Like the best zines, like the best liner notes of the best punk albums, this book isn’t just what it is but a manual for how things could be."

The New Yorker - Helen Rosner

"This is one you’ll want to read cover-to-cover."

Eater

"One part unconventional memoir to two parts nontraditional cookbook."

New York Magazine - Hugh Merwin

"A cupcake primer this is not. The punk rocker turned pastry chef at NYC’s Del Posto has delivered a hilarious page-turner."

Bon Appétit

"Brooks Headley has written the most entertaining cookbook in memory....It's a game changer."

Anthony Bourdain

"When was the last time a cake recipe made you weep with laughter? Exactly. Brooks Headley—punk dude, vegetarian sympathizer, stealth genius, hero to all in the New York pastry world— has created something entirely new. It’s a cookable memoir about his life in music and food (i.e., lots of time in basements), but not the kind they’ll make a cute movie out of. And the art direction by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin (of Eat Me: The Food & Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin notoriety) take the deadpan brilliance to another level."

Christine Muhlke

"It is humble. It is brave. It is extreme. It is wacky. It is by far and away the best anti-cookbook cookbook I have ever read. I will be reading it again and again. It is genius. Bravo, Brooks Headley!"

Food52 - Bill Buford