VIENNESE CUISINE: The New Approach

by Peter & Andreas Kisler with Donald Flanell Friedman Grunauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 1987

New Approach"" is the tip-off: Viennese cooking through the glamorizing lens of two N.Y.-based chefs prepared to give American readers plenty of things they could find in any work of semi-nouvelle restaurant cuisine. No Jewish-style carp or plain Wiener Backhendl--but Grunauer and Kisler diligently provide New Zealand mussels and papaya dressed with Pommery mustard and boneless chicken breasts ""smoothed with a mushroom veloutÉ"" (i.e., covered with a thick paste) before being breaded and fried. And so forth through nearly every menu category--but not quite. The vegetable chapter contains a fair number of good down-to-earth things (creamed spinach, a raft of potato dishes led by potato strudel) that get you a few thousand miles closer to Austria. The dessert selection is even better, with such noble standbys as Salzburger Nockerln, sweet yeast-raised Buchteln in custard sauce (but who needs two quarts of sauce?), and various strudels. The directions are neatly enough written, but few pains are taken over the fight ingredients (McIntoshes are a terrible idea in apple strudel), and there is almost no attempt to clue in American readers to Viennese contexts. (Ernest Richter's color photographs, though handsome, are as bland as the text in this regard.) Surely two ""undisputed masters of an extraordinary culinary art""--as the publishers' blurb has it--could have done better by the city of ethereal Torten and lusty gebeckene Kuttleflecke (fried tripe).

Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION