Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imag

Synopsis

Great cooking goes beyond following a recipe--it's knowing how to season ingredients to coax the greatest possible flavor from them. Drawing on dozens of leading chefs' combined experience in top restaurants across the country, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg present the definitive guide to creating "deliciousness" in any dish. Thousands of ingredient entries, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a treasure trove of spectacular flavor combinations. Readers will learn to work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients; experiment with temperature and texture; excite the nose and palate with herbs, spices, and other seasonings; and balance the sensual, emotional, and spiritual elements of an extraordinary meal.
Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from America's most imaginative chefs, THE FLAVOR BIBLEis an essential reference for every kitchen.

John Charles - Library Journal

Award-winning culinary writers Page and Dornenburg believe cooking has undergone a revolution from being based on geography (e.g., French, Japanese, etc.) to being based on flavor. After writing about classic flavor matchups in Culinary Artistry and about how to combine food with drink in What To Drink with What You Eat, the authors here return to their idea of creating dishes based on flavor and taste. The authors first discuss the four basic tastes and the roles played by weather, the season of the year, and other environmental factors in cooking. The rest of the book is an extensive alphabetic guide to different culinary ingredients. Each entry includes information on the ingredient's taste and the best cooking techniques as well as a list of other foods that work well with it. In addition, a range of award-winning American chefs contribute their valuable insights on using selected ingredients and ideas for different dishes. Rather than just another collection of recipes, this is a unique resource that both beginning cooks and serious chefs will find wonderfully inspiring and immensely useful. Highly recommended for all public library collections.

Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg are the authors of What to Drink with What You Eat, winner of the 2007 IACP "Cookbook of the Year" Award, the Georges Duboeuf "Wine Book of the Year Award," and the Gourmand World Cookbook Award.  Their previous books Becoming a Chef, Dining Out, and The New American Chef have all been winners of or finalists for James Beard and/or IACP book awards and cited as "the best place to experience the cult of the New American chef" (The New Yorker).  Paired personally as well as professionally, the couple lives in New York City.