Blanc Mange: The Mysteries of the Kitchen Revealed

Raymond Blanc, one of the masters of French cuisine, reveals the culinary secrets that can make you a successful home cook, by demonstrating how and why ingredients react in certain ways. Over 80 recipes reflect the techniques highlighted in the book and show the reader how satisfying good cooking can be when you know how and why. Blanc tempts the palette with such dishes as: marinated red mullet in tomato and basil dressing; asparagus with lemon sabayon; fillet of monkfish with herb crust and lemon butter; duck breasts with blackcurrants, apple, cherry and cinnamon sauce; roasted pheasant with bread sauce; and iced pineapple and kirsch biscuit with pineapple sunflowers and apple and calvados mousse. A range of sauces and stocks is included as a base to a variety of recipes which cover starters, main courses, breads, ice-cream and preserves. "Blanc Mange" also aims to be a practical reference book that offers sound advice and explanations for why some dishes can go wrong, and how they can be improved. Blanc guides the reader to a better understanding of ingredients and introduces basic food chemistry to clarify the processes at work. Many useful chemistry notes have been specially written by Professor Nicholas Kurti, a former professor of engineering science at Oxford University. Individual cooking techniques - such as roasting, poaching, and microwave cooking, as well as baking, mousse-making and souffle-making - are also explained; Blanc goes on to point out how the size and thickness of cooking utensils and the variety of ovens can affect cooking times and end results, suggesting how to overcome these variables.