At her cooking schools in Paris and Provence, Patricia Wells’s students leave with more confidence in the kitchen than they ever experienced before. Now, home cooks can learn from the master, known for her collections of delectable, precise, and well-tested, recipes.
Here Patricia Wells codifies the skills she imparts in her classes in this inviting instruction manual and cookbook. Each of the recipes teaches particular techniques—blanching, searing, simmering, sweating, steaming, braising, deep-frying—with additional recipes that take your skills in directions both savory and sweet, simple and profound—giving you the knowledge and assurance to expand your cooking even further.
For each master recipe, Patricia provides creative sub recipes, such as:
Patricia also provides a list of pantry essentials, necessary equipment, sources for finding the best ingredients—such as oils, fish and shellfish—a dependable list of preferred wine importers, and advice on when to make easy ingredient substitutions and when to stick to the original recipe.
Patricia Wells is a journalist, author, and teacher who runs the popular cooking school At Home with Patricia Wells in Paris and Provence. She has won four James Beard Awards and the French government has honored her as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, recognizing her contribution to French culture. A former New York Times reporter, she is the only foreigner and the only woman to serve as restaurant critic for a major French publication, L'Express. She served as the global restaurant critic for the International Herald Tribune for more than twenty-five years. She lives in Paris and Provence with her husband, Walter Wells.