Mom's Secret Recipe File: More Than 125 Treasured Recipes from the Mothers of Our Great Chefs

by Christopher Styler

Overview

Who inspired Jamie Oliver to put a premium on fresh, 'naked' food? Who influenced Sylvia Woods' talent for titillating the sweet tooth? It just might have something to do with their mothers.

Now, in this one-of-a-kind cookbook, America's top celebrity chefs divulge the cooking secrets that started it all. Mom's Secret Recipe File features endearing stories, approachable recipes, family cooking lore, valuable tips, and timeless advice from each chef/mother pair. The duos are featured in 'mini chapters' that begin with short introductions written by the chefs-a favorite memory about how their moms' cooking styles inspired their own-followed by four recipes from their moms' secret files.

Mom's Secret Recipe File is not only a perfect Mother's Day gift, it's sure to become a cooking classic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781401307547
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	04/14/2004
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	7.25(w) x 9.12(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Christopher Styler has enormous culinary range. He is a chef, cookbook writer, editor, restaurant consultant, and culinary producer of some of PBS-TV’s most successful cooking series. He lives in New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

This Mother's Day book is a marketing coup: what chef doesn't have a mother or grandmother who inspired him or her as a child? And who wouldn't want to hear those stories? That said, this collection transcends its own gimmickry. The chefs' anecdotes are truly engaging, telling of wise and clever female relations ("mother" is loosely defined) who fling wide the doors of their kitchens for their charges like fairy godmothers. These are simple recipes, for the most part-true comfort foods, as remembered by a chef's inner child. (The one predictable exception is Jeremiah Tower, whose idea of a user-friendly recipe is idiosyncratic: "Put a whole small and trimmed codfish that has been boned through the back la Colbert into the pan.") Most of the recipes-especially Jasper White's Shrimp with Thyme Butter, Sylvia Woods's Biscuits, and Anthony Bourdain's Baked Macaroni-are can't-miss formulas. If there's a prevailing theme, it's belly-filling foods with big flavors, like Grandma Sarah's Lamb and Prune Stew from Rose Levy Beranbaum, or Rocco DiSpirito's Pasta for Breath Only a Mother Could Love. Styler presents the recipes one chef at a time, but a helpful index lists the recipes by course, which is more practical for a browsing cook. The best guarantee that this restaurateur's cookbook will actually be usable at home may be summed up in Joan Nathan's kind advice on making jelly roll cookies: "If you only have only 1 baking sheet, roll, fill, and bake the cookies in 2 batches." Agent, Kim Yorio. (Apr. 14) Forecast: With national publicity with some of the contributors, print ads, and online marketing and publicity on cooking Web sites, this book has a good shot at being one of this year's top Mother's Day sellers. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Like Michael Rosen's Cooking from the Heart, this book focuses on the connections between food and family but emphasizes the matriarchal side. (Rosen's book benefited Share Our Strength, the national antihunger agency, and Styler's will help the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.) A food writer who has worked as a chef and a caterer, Styler introduces the contributors, who include Jacques Pepin, Rocco DiSpirito, and Jamie Oliver (the "Naked Chef"), and then they provide reminiscences and reflections about the influence their mothers-grandmothers appear often as well-have had on their love of food and their chosen careers. The recipes themselves, from Shrimp with Thyme Butter (via Jasper White's mother) to Swedish Roast Chicken (Marcus Samuelsson's grandmother), make for an eclectic mix. For most collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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