Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World's Best Soups

by James Peterson

Overview

Praise for the fully revised and updatedSplendid Soups

"Jim Peterson's Splendid Soups is a comprehensive and mouthwatering atlas of the world of soup. It not only covers soups of all nationalities and every garnish, but provides a handy list of sources for every hard-to-find ingredient and kitchen tool, too. More importantly though, through his gargantuan world tour Jim empowers home cooks to strike out on their own and invent new soups. It just makes me want to get into the kitchen and start cooking!"
—SARA MOULTON, Host, The Food Network's Cooking Live; Executive Chef, Gourmet magazine; Food Editor, Good Morning America

"We love James Peterson. Splendid Soups is a bountiful source of enticing ideas!"
—the moosewood collective Authors of the Moosewood Restaurant Cookbooks

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780471391364
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	09/28/2000
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	656
Product dimensions:	8.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 2.02(d)

About the Author

JAMES PETERSON is a James Beard Award–winning food writer who has authored more than 15 books, including Glorious French Food, Cooking, Baking, and Vegetables. Trained as a chef in France, he has taught professional and home cooks at The French Culinary Institute and The Institute of Culinary Education. He lives in Brooklyn.

Table of Contents

Partial Table of Contents:

BROTHS, CONSOMM?S, AND SIMPLE BROTH-BASED SOUPS.

Clear Broths.

Consomm?.

Combining Broth with Eggs, Cheese, and Herbs.

VEGETABLE SOUPS.

Single-Vegetable Soups.

Beans, Lentils, and Dried Peas.

Mixed Vegetable Soups.

RICE SOUPS.

FISH SOUPS.

BIVALVE SHELLFISH SOUPS.

CRUSTACEAN SOUPS.

MEATS SOUPS.

New England Boiled Dinner, Pot-au-Feu, Bollito Misto.

Asian Tabletop Meat Soups.

Hearthy Peasant Soups.

Borscht.

Chicken.

Duck.

Pork.

Lamb.

Beef.

Veal.

Tripe.

A Few Less Common Ingredients.

BREAD SOUPS.

YOGURT, CHEESE, AND BUTTERMILK SOUPS.

FRUIT SOUPS AND DESSERT SOUPS.

BASIC PREPARATION.

Patterns for Improvising Soups.

Metric Conversion Chart.

Sources.

Index.

Editorial Reviews

Tremendously informative and stubbornly opinionated, master chef Peterson updates his classic soup tome by stirring new recipes and more international ingredients into the pot. Before getting to the recipes, readers are treated to a detailed remedial education in ingredients, featuring Peterson's humorously fussy explanations of dried and fresh herbs. The tried-and-true leek stands alongside the trendy galangal root as a soup essential, as Peterson enlarges the intermediate cook's familiarity with international cuisines. Peterson also seeks to re-educate readers on the proper methods for composing bouquet garni, making a roux and improving the flavor of the commercial broths they will insist on buying. He wisely intersperses his suggestions for technique alongside relevant recipes, making valuable information accessible for the busy cook. The recipes are roughly organized by ingredient and include the vast range of vegetable soups in some unusual combinations (Water Chestnuts with Watercress and Sweet Potato with Chili and Lime). Other noteworthy concoctions include Spicy Brazilian Fish Soup with Coconut Milk; Shabu-Shabu; and Duck and Sherry Soup. Most of Peterson's recipes are not for the fat-phobic; whether he's extolling the virtues of heavy cream over milk and yogurt or encouraging readers to add a few pats of butter to any bowl of soup they order in a restaurant, Peterson throws caution to the wind.

--Publishers Weekly
September 18, 2000

From the Publisher

Our Review
Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World's Best Soups by the award-winning cookbook author James Peterson has just been re-released in time for the fall harvest. This is the most thorough, complete, and technically correct book on soup making that any cook would ever need. Although it teaches you how to cook as well as how to improvise soups, the recipes are so clear and concise that you can open to almost any page and find something easy to make without having to read pages and pages. This book would be as welcome to a professional chef as to a home cook. I can't imagine my kitchen without a copy. --Judith Choate

bn.com

A 650-page dissertation on everything from chicken soup to squid broth. Peterson is a great teacher, explaining along the way why goose fat or duck fat is better than chicken fat for matzo ball soup, how to clarify broths. Nearly every soup (there are hundreds) in this well-organized book comes with a Peterson introduction-- and often a bit of wit.
—:( Authors Holiday Gift Guide)

The Denver Post Books

Tremendously informative and stubbornly opinionated, master chef Peterson updates his classic soup tome by stirring new recipes and more international ingredients into the pot. Before getting to the recipes, readers are treated to a detailed remedial education in ingredients, featuring Peterson's humorously fussy explanations of dried and fresh herbs. The tried-and-true leek stands alongside the trendy galangal root as a soup essential, as Peterson enlarges the intermediate cook's familiarity with international cuisines. Peterson also seeks to re-educate readers on the proper methods for composing bouquet garni, making a roux and improving the flavor of the commercial broths they will insist on buying. He wisely intersperses his suggestions for technique alongside relevant recipes, making valuable information accessible for the busy cook. The recipes are roughly organized by ingredient and include the vast range of vegetable soups in some unusual combinations (Water Chestnuts with Watercress, and Sweet Potato with Chili and Lime). Other noteworthy concoctions include Spicy Brazilian Fish Soup with Coconut Milk; Shabu-Shabu; and Duck and Sherry Soup. Most of Peterson's recipes are not for the fat-phobic; whether he's extolling the virtues of heavy cream over milk and yogurt or encouraging readers to add a few pats of butter to any bowl of soup they order in a restaurant, Peterson throws caution to the wind. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Peterson is the author of the recent Essentials of Cooking and of several big, single-subject cookbooks that have become classics in the field, including the excellent Fish and Shellfish. Originally published in 1993, Splendid Soups is another of these, with hundreds of recipes from around the world and a huge amount of useful information. Although this new edition has not been heavily revised, it includes 50 new recipes and, unlike the earlier one, color photographs; most collections will want to add it. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Splendid Soups is a very impressive, 630-page compendium of recipes for soups of all kinds and categories. These outstanding recipes include broths and consommes, vegetable soups, rice soups, fish soups, bivalve shellfish soups, crustacean soups, meat soups, bread soups, yogurt, cheese and buttermilk soups, fruit soups and dessert soups. Splendid Soups is enhanced for the kitchen chef with sections on basic preparation, patterns for improvising soups, a metric conversion chart, sources, and a "user friendly" index. Splendid Soups is a very highly recommended addition to any personal, professional, and community library cookbook collection.