"Cooking a gourmet dinner doesn’t have to be a frightening experience – Charlie Trotter’s Gourmet Cooking For Dummies will dispel all your fears and help you turn out wonderful dishes."
– Ferdinand E. Metz, President of the Culinary Institute of America

"Look to Charlie Trotter for great wine choices for gourmets – Dummies or not! Educational, instructive, and delicious."
– Robert Mondavi, Robert Mondavi Winery

"Charlie Trotter has become famous for his unique and detailed approach to food. This book is no different – and entertaining as a bonus."
– Keith Keogh, C.E.C., President, California Culinary Academy

If tuna casserole is the most exciting meal you’ve made lately, let Gourmet Cooking For Dummies™ come to your culinary rescue! In a matter of minutes, you can create mouth-watering dishes – from soups and sauces to zesty vegetarian delights and seafood masterpieces – that are guaranteed to impress your family and friends.

Inside, you’ll discover how to:

• Set up your gourmet kitchen with the right pots and pans, tools, and spices
• Prepare sauces, soups, vegetable dishes, seafood creations, desserts, and more with a minimum of ingredients
• Create complete menus for any occasion, from a meal with your boss to a summer picnic
• Bring the world into your kitchen with recipes for ethnically inspired dishes
• Use Charlie’s chef-tested cooking tips to make gourmet cooking fun and easy

Amazon.com Review
Gourmet Cooking for Dummies is perfect when you want to upgrade from making back-of-the box recipes to mastering the fine points of culinary technique. Charlie Trotter, known for the creative, sophisticated dishes he prepares at his Chicago restaurant, is one of America's über gourmet chefs. Trotter is famous for amazingly artistic presentations, as the chapter "Architectural Cuisine Made Easy" amply demonstrates. Gourmet Cooking for Dummies is a good guide when you want to ease into classic French culinary techniques such as deglazing and tempering, and learn how to apply them in contemporary ways. Along with recipes ranging from reasonably easy to recherché, Trotter crams in an encyclopedic amount of information, complemented by 16 pages of color photos and illustrations that are sprinkled throughout the text. He even includes advice on pairing foods with wine, lists other cookbooks he recommends, and tells where to send away for the best ingredients. When you want to stun friends with a Whole Roasted Tomato filled with Roasted Garlic Soup and Crispy Fried Leeks, or Chicken Roulade with Prosciutto and Artichoke-Spinach Purée, Gourmet Cooking for Dummies shows you how to go for it.