Practical Cookery ~ Victor Ceserani, Ronald Kinton and David Foskett

This book has had a home in my bookcase for many years and is indeed as practical as the title suggests. It was my bible while studying cookery way back in the mid 90's, the standard text which all aspiring chefs lugged around from class to class, and it served me well in the kitchens at East Sydney Tafe. Whilst I never went on to continue the professional journey as a cook, I have held onto this gem and courted its' pages periodically since then, with a fondness that comes from our shared passion for cookery.
Perhaps passion isn't the word that would automatically spring to mind when you start flicking through the 700 plus pages of recipes, indeed there are no seductive menu suggestions, no tantalising double page photographic spreads of delicious treats. What this book gives you instead are recipes for consommé, for Gnocchi romaine, for chicken vol-au-vent. "Passion my arse," I can hear you think. But passion is what this book is all about. It is about helping those with a love of cooking develop their skills, learn the very fundamentals of the craft, and begin at the beginning. It is about making accessible very simply the traditions of the profession. It is about food and about cookery and about the people who choose to make this their life's work, and it doesn't get much more passionate than that.

So with recipes so basic (so very fundamental), what practical purpose does a book like this hold for the more experienced cook? I'm glad you asked ~ it is a treasure trove, it holds little keys to the wider world of cookery, and while you may want to let your creativity flow and impress the world with your deft combination of flavours and textures, you cannot go past this book for the basic starting blocks. You can work with the basic bavarois and give it a little tweak, you can make your own puff pastry for creating something decadent, or you can simply make a fresh egg pasta dough to accompany with something fresh and delicious. More simply though, this book is a resource, it is comprehensive in covering the basics of cookery methods, it is well structured and simple to follow, and best of all has a fantastic index. It is not pretty, nor does it pretend to be, but it is practical and hidden within its' pages is passion.
Recommended for apprentice chefs and for those who studied cookery and look back at it fondly as one of their happiest times.

- Kath