Creating Chefs: A Journey Through Culinary School with Recipes and Lessons

Go behind the kitchen doors of America's finest culinary institutes and learn how to prepare dishes like Pan-Seared Sea Bass Puttanesca and Roasted Banana Tiramisu from the instructors themselves--experts in teaching classical cuisine. The recipes are complete with notes from each chef emphasizing crucial points of preparation, and are paired with gorgeous black-and-white photographs and step-by-step illustrations on techniques like butterflying a tenderloin or plating the final dish. In addition to opening their kitchens, these chefs open their hearts, revealing how to create truly innovative food. The author, an accomplished writer and photographer as well as a passionate cook, embarked on this project while attending a grueling fifteen-month culinary program. With a camera and tape recorder in one hand and a saute pan in the other, the aspiring chef captured inspiration from twenty-eight chef instructors, ranging from an ex-record producer who cooked for Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston to the son of a Secret Service interpreter whose childhood was spent at Jacques Pepin's elbow in the White House kitchen. She takes us on the journey, offering an inside look at attending a culinary school. The recipes, the techniques, the lessons on food and life, and portraits of the chefs are all here, in a package that combines elegance and practicality.

Review :
"Legendary French chef Fernand Point attested that 'the duty of a good cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.' Through her photographs and words, Carol Maybach shows and tells how well some of America's passionate and hard-working culinary instructors are following Point's dictum for the sake of the next generation of American chefs and the future of American cuisine." --Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, James Beard Award-winning authors of Becoming a Chef, Culinary Artistry and The New American Chef "Professional chefs talk a lot about passion and how important it is in the world of cooking, but few are ever able to quite articulate what that word means. Creating Chefs comes about as close to defining that word as any book I know. Passion is everywhere in this book. Not only described by chef instructors featured here but by the camera and pen of Carol Maybach, herself, a talented writer and photographer and now, surely, cook." -- Michael Ruhlman, author of The Making of a Chef, co-author (with Thomas Keller) of The French Laundry Cookbook, and co-author (with Eric Ripert) of A Return to Cooking *** "CREATING CHEFS is an inspirational work of delicious American cuisine and ethnic influences assembled in a most felicitous mouth-watering production." --Rene Verdon, Maitre-cuisiner de France, Executive-Chef of the White House for Mrs. and President Kennedy "It is so refreshing to read a cookbook that is written without being driven by ego. The recipes in CREATING CHEFS are fueled by the passion of the culinary arts and by the instructors behind the scenes who guide tomorrow's chefs." --Robert McGrath, 2001 James Beard Foundation Best Chef in America: Southwest and Chef/Owner of the Roaring Fork Restaurant. "Creating Chefs feels compellingly different and delivers on its promise to teach readers how to 'appreciate the value of the culinary arts'"-- "ForeWord magazine