Spoon Cook Book  
By Alain Ducasse

All the pleasure, half the price. Serious amateurs and confident cooks will be thrilled to be able to pick up super star chef, Alain Ducasse’s soft cover edition of Spoon Cook Book.

 Spoon Cook Book is designed for “experimental epicures or anyone who wants to discover new culinary tradition inspired by desire and spontaneity” says Ducasse. “We wanted to create, innovate, change.”

 Working with five key chefs, Ducasse says the book is all about freedom, modernity and openness to the world. And that’s what you’ll find between the covers of this brilliantly illustrated book, culinary philosophy with pictures.

 The book is intended to take food from chefs’ kitchens out into the world while maintaining respect for ingredients and their cultural identities. As such, the recipes know no bounds: flavours and an endless variety ingredients and combinations come together to create an amazing array of dishes.

 In combining any of the 75 ‘condiments’ such as lemon essence, tomato syrup, citrus, vinaigrettes, dried fruits, and meat jus to name a few, with any of the 90 main dishes – salads, sandwiches, ‘spoons’, fish, etc. – the results are endlessly delicious and cohesive.

 The recipes are clear and wonderfully inspiring to work with and feature sidebars with presentation tips and evocative, stimulating photography. I found that in reading the recipes and cooking, my mind was spinning ahead with ideas and ways to incorporate various elements, flavours and textures into spin-offs of my own. For me, this is the success of Spoon Cook Book.

 Reviewed by Judith Lane, wine and food writer

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