The La Varenne Cooking Course (signed) [signed]

At La Varenne in Paris, beginners are as welcome at this famous school as more experienced cooks. This book is designed like the comprehensive basic course at the school, to take you from beginner's level to real proficiency. It is an enticing book. You can make something delicious simply by mastering any one of its basic lessons. Then different procedures, the building blocks of French cuisine, are put together. The challenge comes in combining more and more of them until you achieve elegant creations that may contain 4 or 5 subsidiary preparations. There are 35 lessons organized by subject, each with an introductory essay and discussions of utensils, ingredients, techniques, preparations, variations - everything that La Varenne's chefs would explain before you began to cook in their classes. Each recipe varies in complexity. You can choose them to suit your skills and the time you have to spare. THE LA VARENNE COOKING COURSE is intended to be a useful, detailed, and reassuring book for home cooks. But Anne Willian has not hesitated to make this basic course complete and to include the demanding procedures - from aspics to puff pastry to elaborate desserts - that are required for an understanding of fine French cooking. In fact, a cook who had thoroughly mastered all 35 lessons would qualify to begin the La Varenne 'grand diplome' course for future professionals. The 250 recipes have also been carefully selected to provide a varied repertory, and they have been adjusted wherever necessary for American ingredients. The measurements are American with metric equivalents. After the book was written, 150 technique photographs were taken, in color, to clarify points, and 28 large color photographs show just how some 70 of the dishes and pastries should look. Anne Willan founded the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne, the first completely bilingual cooking school in Paris, in 1975. In just a few years, the school acquired an international reputation and local prominence.