The first canning manual and cookbook authored by a Michelin-starred chef and restaurant owner, The Preservation Kitchen reveals a world of endless flavor combinations using revolutionary ideas that bring homemade preserves deliciously to life. Pairing science with art, Paul Virant presents expert preserving techniques, sophisticated recipes, and seasonal menus inspired by the award-winning fare at his restaurant, Vie, in Western Springs, Illinois.
Imaginative tangy jams, brandied fruits
$ 18.78
Phenomenal,
I have dived into the world of fermentation and preservation for a while now. Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, and Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz have been great starting points for me. But, The Preservation Kitchen is taking preservation foods to a whole new level of expertise, culinary breadth and creativity. It covers everything one could want; direct recipes for canning and fermenting and then chapters of magnificent seasonal recipes to use your jarred items in. The canning recipes are very straightforward, divided into volume, ounces, grams and percent measurements. Everyone did their homework in this book and we readers will surely benefit. And, while not for the faint of heart or novice perhaps, this will surely be a well used book in my kitchen. Congratulations on a significant contribution to this emerging culinary field!
Was this review helpful to you?
|Finally! A preserving book that’s more than pickles!,
The dishes in this book are so creative, it’s really energized me to get back to the jars. Beer jam? eggplant preserves? I’m in!
The pictures are beautiful and the writing is top-notch, too. It’s a good read and one of those books you’ll definitely want to own.
Some of the recipes are time-consuming but preserving was never about saving time, but about saving food. If you’re looking for 5-minute jam them buy some smuckers. If you’re looking for recipes you can’t buy, this is your book.
Was this review helpful to you?
|potentially great with a few shortcomings.,
I picked up this book because I developed a hobby of canning and preserving this past Spring and Summer. I really enjoyed the pictures and found the recipes to be very inventive and different from other recipes I was finding in other books or online. I mean, I’m giving this book 4 stars, but I do have a couple critiques/warnings for those looking into this book.
1). Over half of the books recipes are how to use the preserves/pickles/jams/aigre-doux from the first part of the book. At first I thought this would be equally as inspiring, sadly, I follow a vegan diet, and most of the recipes are heavy on the meats and cheeses. I would almost rather just have a cook book about canning/preserving with maybe a few recommendations about how to use them, rather than over half of the book being taken up by these other recipes.
2). More concerning than the first critique is the fact that what I have found with these recipes is that you often end up not having enough liquid to fill the jars when canning. Putting you in the strange spot of either having to make more liquid on the fly, or not having the right yield. Also, not all the steps are clearly laid out in the directions. An example, the cippolini aigre-doux, in the box with volume/weight/etc (this graph I found totally helpful!) it says to blanch and peel the onions, but it never outlines how. Now I work in the culinary field and was able to figure this part out because of my experience, but if I didn’t work in that field, not sure I would have figured it out. Also, the tomato jam, which was awesome, says to cook it down for 45 minutes to an hour, we let it go for almost 4, because in the time listed it never reached that jam like consistency. I feel as though most of the recipes are written straight from the authors restaurants recipe book, and don’t necessarily take the home cook into consideration.
Was this review helpful to you?
|