Sacre Cordon Bleu: What the French Know about Cooking by Michael Booth (2008-03-01) Paperback – 29 Feb. 2008

From the first page of this book I was hooked. Imagine giving up everything including your cookery book collection and taking your family to live in France whilst you learn to cook at the best cookery school in the world - Le Cordon Bleu. Michael Booth spoke very little French when he moved to Paris but he wanted to learn to cook from the best in the world. Read about his fellow students from all over the world, the eccentric chefs and the escaping lobsters. The sentence that sticks in my mind is a description of a lobster wriggling like 'a knight with ants in his armour'. If you're even vaguely interested in cooking or Paris - read this book. There are some recipes as well, but it's the tips you pick up which are useful - for example always let meat rest for half as long as you've cooked it for. If you love chocolate you'll drool over the short course he did in chocolate making. Brilliant

Michael Booth is an exceedingly humorous writer. The first book I read was Sushi and Beyond, which is one of my all-time favourites. This one was slightly less readable, but I readily attribute it to the fact that I am not all too interested in French cooking. Guess the lesson for me is that Booth is always readable, but he won't be able to make an uninteresting subject compelling.

Really enjoyed this book, funny and informative. Enjoyed the details about French cooking and how the school is run and all the triumphs and disasters in the kitchen.

For anybody that is interested in becoming a chef this is a must read. In the same vain as any of Anthony Bourdain's non-fiction books Sacre Cordon Bleu gives the reader a first hand insight into life in a profesional kitchen. I love cooking and, like Michael Booth once did(!), have a large collection of cookery books. Although I am not a profesional I feel I have reached the limit of working through recipes. I learnt more about food from this book than any of my cookery books. The only downside to this book is that it reconfirmed my experience and views of turning, for want of a better word, a hobby into a job. I would love to be a profesional chef but have yet to find a sain reason to give up my career to follow my passion. I feel like Booth has lived this for me. "Any chef who says he does it for the love is a liar" MPW

I did not enjoy this book very much. I disagreed with most of what the author had to say and at times felt quite irritated by it. But that's just my personal view, others may love it.

This is such a refreshing new take on the whole food genre, and the best book on food I've read since "Kitchen Confidential" - and far more entertaining at that. The writing is eloquent, captivating and so funny that I had to read parts of it in isolation (to provide my family with some peace and quiet).It's not the 'insider spilling the beans' kind of book, in the sense that Booth apparently only knows as much about cooking as the average Jamie Oliver viewer, when he sets out on his quest to become a French chef. And that's exactly what makes it so great. There are no (or not too much anyway) insiders jargon or presumptions about the readers cooking skills.In a way he has infiltrated the French kitchen and is now revealing a lot of the secrets like a rogue magician. You get the straight talk on all those basic techniques of french cooking (and cooking in general) that more or less makes this book "the missing manual" for the traditional cookbooks you have.Best of all you actually - like the author - end up feeling liberated from the tyranny of recepies, and feel like taking on your kitchen in whole new way.Very, very inspiring and highly recommendable for everyone with the slightest interest in cooking (or France, or preferably both).

It's not a bad read and he sums up his feeling about cooking in a professional kitchen very well, but I don't need a lesson in stock-making or the Maillard reaction from someone at a cookery school. The recipes are pretty useless. but that's not the reason to buy this book.The one reason you would not buy this book is that it has to be the most shoddily put together publication I have ever read. Doesn't anyone proof-read the book before it goes to press. There were times when I literally had to decipher what had been written. I'm sure that this isn't Michael Booth's fault, but someone at Jonathan Cape needs to learn their job.

As a former LCB student, this book made me laugh out lout. Do take the word "ordeal" with a pinch of salt.LCB was tough but I do not regret a single moment.Any keen cooks with an interest in classical French food will also enjoy the book.

Thoroughly enjoyed this read, as I have always dreamed of going to a big name cooking school, and I could do it vicariously through Michael's adventures as he Did the entire course of instruction at the Cordon Bleu de Paris!

L'histoire d'un anglais amoureux de la cuisine française qui décide de s'inscrire dans des cours dispensés par la fameuse école de cuisine, "Cordon Bleu" à Paris.Rien de remarquable, mais ce récit peut intéresser les gens qui, comme moi, aiment cuisiner et cherchent toujours à piquer des "petits trucs" des professionnels, qui font la différence dans une recette.Je n'ai pas encore fini le livre, mais j'ai appris une ou deux choses. En revanche, on parle peu de la pâtisserie (mon domaine fétiche !)Le but, c'est que l'auteur trouve, à l'issue de la formation, un emploi de cuisinier. Je n'ai toujours aucune idée s'il y arrivera ! Il y a donc un peu de suspense !

Kinda slow, but a good story. You will be hungry by the end of the book. Also, good ideas and some cool cooking ideas.