Le Bernardin Cookbook: Four-Star Simplicity

by Maguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert

Book Overview

Cusine from New York's four-star seafood restaurant, Le Bernardin, is made accessible to everyone in more than 100 meticulously formulated and carefully tested recipes for all courses, from appetizers through dessert, in this cookbook from Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert and owner Maguy Le Coze.

The food served in Le Bernardin's beautiful dining room is as subtle and refined as any in the world, and because fish and shellfish are often...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385488416
• ISBN13: 9780385488419
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter Publishers
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 8.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the Best Seafood Restaurant Books

`Le Bernardin Cookbook' by highly regarded seafood chef Eric Ripert and restaurateur Maguy Le Coze (cofounder of the restaurant with her brother Gilbert) is the first case where I wished I could give a half a star. In many ways, it is a classic restaurant cookbook which is better than average in many ways, but I usually need a little more than `better than average' to give five stars. In comparison to Rob Feenie's `Lumiere' cookbook I reviewed yesterday, `Le Bernardin' exceeds expectations in the following ways: It is almost entirely a cookbook for all sorts of fish, based primarily on classic French recipes. This means that if you had a shelf of 100 famous restaurant cookbooks and wanted a recipe for fish, you could immediately go to either this book or Bob Kinkead's recent restaurant book, depending on whether you wanted something from Brittany or Baltimore. Oddly, this book also shares with the Kinkead book the fact that at least one recipe author (Bob Kinkead and Gilbert Le Coze) for each book was entirely self-taught. The story behind this book is about as endearing and as interesting as they come. `Le Bernardin' was originally opened in Paris by brother and sister Le Coze in 1972, after the siblings spend their early life together helping their parents run a struggling little restaurant on the coast of Brittany. After an initial splash and failure based on no experience, they ultimately succeeded in Paris. They followed this with opening the Manhattan restaurant in 1986, just as culinary consciousness in New York made it worth their while to open a restaurant which specialized in fish. All of this would be very ordinary if it were not for the incredible affection brother and sister had for one another, ended with the death of Gilbert at the age of forty-eight in 1994, just a year or two after hiring classically trained Eric Rippert as executive chef at the Manhattan restaurant. The recipes, many the creation of unschooled Gilbert, tend to be much more original than what you may find in the standard fish cookbooks by Mark Bittman, James Beard, and Alan Davidson. None of the classic bistro recipes for mussels (which you will find in Tony Bourdain's `Les Halles' book) are here. While some tend to the involved, fish recipes tend to be involved primarily in the preparation of stocks, nages, butter sauces and court bouillons. If you get the techniques for doing these things well, many of the recipes devolve into very simple preparations, befitting the generally fast cooking times for fish. Each recipe has a separate headnote from each author, and the counterpoint between them is almost worth the price of the book in itself. It is not uncommon for Madame Le Coze to really hate a recipe that Monsieur Rippert has just praised up and down the avenue. She usually comes around in the end, but the honesty is so unexpected that you start looking forward to contretemps in the next recipe dialogue. The recipes are organized in a very satisfactory way

Four-Star Simplicity with Seafood

I'm really into seafood, and this is the cookbook for that genre. The sophistication of taste and presentation is the ultimate maxization of the fresh seafood.One is impressed instantly upon perviewing the recipes and trying them of the intense experience this chef has had with the ingredients and prep techniques.Four-star chefbooks are typically intimidating due to all the ingredients and steps, but here it's minimal, yet turns out utmost in culinary heights.Try these, they'll be knockout dishes! Pan-Roasted Grouper with Wild Mushrooms and Artichokes (served with unbelievable pork jus); Roast Monkfish on Savoy Cabbage and Bacon-Butter Sauce; Black Bass in Cabbage Packages with Purple Mustard Sauce; Yellowtail Snapper with Garden Vegetables. Accompaniments are worth paper as well, with monster dinner dessert of "Earl Grey Tea and Mint Soup with Assorted Fruit;Gruyere and Potato Cakes.Tough one to match in my extensive collection!

It made me a great chef!

Simply, the recipes all work. The first recipe I made was a relatively simple shrimp dish. My 13 year old (not a purveyor usually of haute cuisine) said "those are the best shrimp I ever had". It was true. Cooking lobster in cognac led to similar raves from the guests. I can't duplicate the room of my favorite NY restaurant, but I have yet to produce a dud from this book.

The fish master

I've eaten at Le Bernardin a couple of times and although I occasionally felt overwhelmed by the NYC high-powered patrons, I always left the table impressed and glad to pay the high pricetag. Meals there are tremendous. I was afraid I might be intimidated by this book but was pleasantly surprized. Not only was the book beautiful in presentation, layout and illustration, but the introductions, recipes and ingredients were very useable, easy to execute and a gastronomic success when I tried them. This is a book for every cookbook library.

Beautiful Book, Beautiful Fish

Unlike many chef and restaurant books, the recipes here are lucidly written and easy to follow. Although some demand considerable technique, the techniques are well-explained. The book is nicely illustrated, with nice first person anecdotes and recipe commentary. Anyone who has ever been to Le Bernadin will appreciate the book's elegant flavor and feel. Highly recommended.