Gratins: Golden-Crusted Sweet and Savory Dishes

by Christophe Felder

With their crusty tops and tantalizingly soft interiors, gratins are the perfect comfort food and ideal one-dish meal for everyday. In this beautifully designed volume, the pastry chef at the Michelin-starred Les Ambassadeurs in Paris shares both sweet and savory recipes for this versatile dish. 78 recipes, 50 color photographs.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2002

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

One tends to think of a gratin as scalloped potatoes with cheddar cheese melted on top. Or perhaps, more expansively, as any savoury dish covered with bread crumbs and grated cheese browned under a broiler immediately before service. Christophe Felder, the chef patissier at Les Ambassadeurs restaurant in Paris, uses a bit wider definition. He divides 78 recipes equally between savoury and sweet gratins. The savoury recipes are all good but the sweet gratin recipes are all outstanding, suggesting combinations of ingredients and methods of preparation which are novel, at least to me. These recipes also bring to mind other combinations, not in the text, which can become the reader's own. The recipes are all business: simple, straight forward and detailed. What they don't say is that many of these dishes, especially the savoury gratins to be served as a side dish, may be held in the oven while more time-critical dishes are being finished. Although Felder is French, the recipes are not (at least not all of them). A brief introduction and some exposition of theory and practice would have enhanced the book. This would be an excellent addition to the library of the slightly more advanced cook.