Think Like a Chef: A Cookbook

I bought this book a long time before Tom Colicchio ever got involved with Top Chef. It changed how I think about cooking. Now, I've been an enthusiastic and proficient home cook for years. I collect cookbooks, and I experiment with ideas I get from them. This book enhanced that tendency and made me even less likely to make a recipe the way it comes from a book, even the first time. Nevertheless, my cooking is even better than it was before I read this book.This book is not a cookbook. It's an extended meditation on how to think about food. If you read it, chew on it, let it become part of you, then it will change how you cook. If you already know what cooking terms mean (things like "braise", "blanch", "caramelize") then parts of the book will be a review. That's okay -- it's necessary that the reader understand these things before engaging the rest of the book.This is a book about how to cook without recipes, even though the recipes in the book are wonderful. Colicchio starts with ingredients and techniques, then weaves what are almost stories about how to use the techniques with the ingredients. He starts simple, with the techniques, then moves on to consider single ingredients. In a series of recipes focused on each ingredient, he shows you how to use the techniques to produce food that enhances the ingredients. This is all sort of like cheffing for beginners, but the chapters are also meditations on how approaching an ingredient with respect and love (as well as skill) can move you to create Really Good Food from it.After this basic training, he moves to trilogies -- what happens when a chef encounters seasonal ingredients and starts combining them? Again, there's a focus on the ingredients and on the thought processes involved (and yeh, some great recipes).Finally, there are some recipes I think he just put in there at the end because he liked them so much.You could use this book as a cookbook, and you'd make some darned good food doing that. But if you read the book as more than just a cookbook -- maybe more like a cooking philosophy book -- you stand to have your horizons expanded.I'm pretty sure that if you take this book and  Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication , you'd have a short course in how chefs approach food. Add a really good technique book, and your cooking will go to a whole new level.

This book was a quick read for me. I made it through, with kids around, in a few hours. Based on previous reviews I thought it was more of a book, with some cookbook type recipes thrown in. Now that I've been through it, it's a cookbook, organized to teach a lesson, but still a cookbook. Lot's of mouth watering pictures, plenty of recipes, and very short stories on how and why you are doing what you are doing. Each "lesson" is a quick read. The recipes look great, and help you to hone your skills and learn the craft.I think the author did a good job in bringing his technique to the masses, and I better understand now the magic that happens in a chef's brain that allows him/her to see a few ingredients and picture a complete meal. I also respect and agree with the premise of starting with the basics, braising, blanching, etc. As with most complex endeavors, a firm background in the basics makes all the difference.There is one complaint that I have with this book, and perhaps it will go away if I can COOK my way through the book rather than read my way through (the recipes are there for practice, not just to eat). Although I see how the professional chef combines ingredients and techniques and the end result just happens, and I understand that what is fresh at the market tells you what to make, when I get to the fresh market, I'm still overwhelmed with what to pick and what to do. Mustard greens, fresh tomatoes, turnips, carrots, lettuce, etc, etc. What goes better with pork? Can I put corn and turkey together? Apples and chicken? It's like I need a color matching wheel to match foods together and I didn't get that out of this book. I still cannot see the end of the road, the final product, and always end up with too many shelled peas and having to run back for mushrooms, which I didn't even think about. I know others who put together meals easily on the fly, so it may be some mental block in my head but I still find myself backing my way into a recipe by picking one main ingredient, then looking for something that includes it, then hunting all over for all the other ingredients.I did build a meal on the fly one time, as the author does and professes, and it was pure nirvana. The family loved it; the ingredients were all fresh from the garden and simply prepared, and spiced up with simple additions. But don't read this book thinking it'll have "the secret." Putting these combinations together requires knowledge and experience, neither of which is fully available from a book.

i use recipes for one reason only. To get an idea of what goes well with what, an idea of the proportions and then throw them away. Explains why I cannot bake a cookie! This book is exactly what I am looking for. Chef Colicchio explains the how and why of cooking techniques so you can create your own meals. I have been practicing on my neighbors and have made more progress in my cooking in the last 3 months than I have in 3 years. For those who need more direction, there are some great recipes in here, but I find this an invaluable resource in my kitchen. I also purchased the Top Chef book How to Cook Like a TopChef but find it disappointing.If you are interested in learning how to cook, not what to cook, this is the book for you. The book covers techniques, how to buy ingredients, encourages experimentation, and provides a foundation from which many delicious meals will sprout. Take the advice of the author and go to a local market and buy what looks good. I have been doing this without any idea of what I was going to end up with and have yet to be disappointed. You will learn how to roast, braise, and blanch. He covers the basics of making sauces, vinegarettes, stock, roasted tomatoes and so on. Once you study this book, you will no longer need another cookbook. All you will need is some idea of what ingredients you want to eat and will have the ability to create incredible meals with sound techniques.