Tyler's Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Any Time by Tyler Florence Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tyler's Ultimate: Brilliant Simple Food to Make Any Time
Book Review: The "Southern Gentleman" Never Disappoints
Summary: 5 Stars
We had the pleasure of spending two days with Tyler working on the premier season of his "Tyler's Ultimate" series. It's hard to believe that at that time he was celebrating two things: the upcoming publication of his first cookbook and the installation of his new plasma TV. With the publication of his third book, Tyler continues to bring his simple techniques to the kitchens of the average at-home cook. No, it's not strictly based on the Series, but Tyler's Ultimate carries through on the show's theme with Tyler's unique twists on popular dishes. All of the recipes work great and are easy to follow. It's obvious that everything here has been painstakingly tested, as Tyler says "to the last grain of salt."Book Review: Another Great Cookbook from Tyler Florence
Summary: 5 Stars
This new cookbook is chock full of wonderful comfort foods. Each recipe is accompanied by a gorgeous photo. Tyler's new television show of the same name is a great cooking show with Tyler alone in the kitchen doing what he does best. He takes an ordinary dish and makes it a little something extra special with his own Tyler twist and that goes for all the recipes in the new cookbook. It is billed as being a companion to the TV show. I have made many of Tyler's recipes over the past few years and they always come out a little cut above any one else's recipe in my opinion. If you liked Tyler's first 2 cookbooks then you will love this one.Book Review: How Disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
I have watched all the Tyler shows and was extremely impressed with the new "Tyler's Ultimate" In fact have made almost every recipe on the show. Unfortunately this book was showcased on the the Food Network as a companion to the show. Not so, just a few of the recipes from the show are in the book. Book is nice, but not what I expected.Book Review: Tyler's 3rd on Tasty Ideas. Buy it if you liked earlier books.
Summary: 5 Stars
`Tyler's Ultimate' is Food Network B-list celebrity, Tyler Florence's third book based loosely on the latest season of his second (or third, depending on how you are counting) Food Network TV show. I'm really very happy to be reviewing one of Tyler's books, as I almost think of him as an `old friend', as his earlier `Food 911' show was one of my favorites, after `Molto Mario' and Alton Brown's `Good Eats'. The format and Tyler's `sang froid' brought just a bit more interest to the proceedings than the Giada De Laurentiis / Paula Deen / Ina Garten routine of cooking patter and heavy use of swap-outs. I especially recall my anticipation when the promos for `Tyler's Ultimate' started showing up a few years ago, as I expected the good old Food Network was planning on taking a page from `Cooks Illustrated' show, `America's Test Kitchen' on PBS and analyze all the different variations on how to make a classic dish. As it turned out, it was simply `Food 911' turned on its head, where Tyler becomes the student at the feed of some near-famous experts, many in Europe, on some classic dishes. Now, this turned out to be a pretty good thing anyway, since it became my first exposure to a lot of important dishes such as Tarte Tatin, `Tortilla espagnole', and the Neapolitan Ricotta cheesecake. The show always ended with our boy Tyler giving his synthesis of the two exemplars, supposedly giving us the `ultimate' version of the dish. What we really got was generally a pretty good recipe we could do at home without any exotic ingredients or equipment.
And, this book also follows the tradition of the show, and also the trend of Tyler's two earlier books, `Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen' and `Eat This Book' where all the recipes are interesting and relatively easy to prepare versions of some classic dishes. My favorite from his first book is his take on the Philadelphia cheese steak. I've made the dish several times and it has become one of my favorites (and it usually takes no more than a single recipe to endear a cookbook to my tummy), but it is NOT a PHILADELPHIA CHEESE STEAK. It has a loose family resemblance to the South Philly classic, but you will never see Tyler's take being done on South Broad Street.
A similar example from `Tyler's Ultimate' is his take on crab cakes. As in many of his recipes, he usually combines a specification for especially good ingredients with one or two tips you may not find everywhere else (in this case, it's the suggestion to use bread crumbs made from fresh bread, so they don't soak up all the egg and milk). The problem is that none of the crab cake suggestions are especially original with Maestro Florence. A quick check of Tom Douglas' book `I Love Crab Cakes' with 50 different crab cake recipes reveals that the sage of French cooking education, Jacques Pepin recommends exactly the same thing, and even uses cilantro, which is not your usual Chesapeake Bay crabcake ingredient. To Tyler's credit, he is not bragging that his recipes are especially original. In fact, the premise of his show relies on his copying ideas from other people. It's just that in the book, there is little attribution of credit to his peers, unless you count his stint in a Mafioso favorite restaurant, about which our boy Tyler says little.
Some may be surprised at the appearance of such simple, standard recipes as whipped potatoes and steak `au pauvre', but each recipe exhibits an important hallmark of the book. In the case of the mashed spuds, Tyler recommends that the mashing be done by putting the cooked potato pieces through a food mill or a ricer. I guarantee that once you start making your whipped potatoes this way, you will always have one or the other utensil handy in your kitchen, as the old fashioned masher simply cannot do as good a job. In the case of the steak recipe, that little something extra is in the creamed and brandied mushrooms, which are not (according to Tony Bourdain's `Les Halles' cookbook') part of the standard brasserie dish.
One thing I especially like about this book is that Tyler feels no need to give us yet another primer on what to have in your pantry or how to do basic cooking techniques. We get nothing but recipes here, and not too much banter in the headnotes. And, if you are especially fond of this, there are excellent photographs accompanying each and every recipe. The downside is that for a top of the line list price of $35, we are getting fewer than average recipes for the money. And, while there are many sound dishes and techniques in play here, the selection is not really as interesting as the James Beard nominated `Recipes' from Susan Spungen. But then, this actually tends to make this book better for the amateur who likes to cook now and then and has some skills, but doesn't get wrapped up in the subtleties of technique.
My favorite example of this point is Tyler's macaroni and cheese recipe, as he demonstrated it on the Today Show. From start to finish, it is made in exactly the same way as hundreds of cookbook writers have been writing for decades. But then, our may Tyler lays on a topping of saut?ed bacon with peas. This is the kind of variation it is very likely a good amateur cook will hit upon themselves, but then, this book is not for the cooking hobbyist, it's for the occasional cook who wants some good ideas now and then. But then, every few pages, we encounter a really novel idea such as Tyler's rolled tuna roast. All is redeemed. All is bliss.