The Olives Dessert Table: Spectacular Restaurant Desserts You Can Make at Home - Hardcover

English, Todd; Retus, Paige; Sampson, Sally

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684823357 ISBN 13: 9780684823355

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Synopsis

The celebrated Boston restaurant owner teams up with one of the city's great pastry chefs to offer these tasty recipes for mango tart tartin, butterscotch pudding in chocolate crumb crust, chocolate lace cigarettes, among other scrumptious desserts. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Be forewarned: Once you present a dessert from this book--say, Black-Bottomed Crème Brûlée with Chewy Chocolate-Chip Cookies and Chocolate Sauce or maybe Blueberry Lime Tart with Sweet Coconut Crumble and Blueberry Sorbet--you will earn a reputation as a fabulous dessert chef and will be required, for the rest of your life, to serve amazing after-dinner treats. Luckily, The Olives Dessert Cart has 140 more recipes from which to choose.

This is not a cookbook for those fearful of fat or short on time. It's for those who love the challenge and the sweet, rich reward of homemade butterscotch pudding or a double chocolate soufflé. A popular and respected restaurant originating in Boston, Olives has gained a well-deserved reputation across the country. Chef-owner Todd English and pastry chef Paige Retus have produced The Olives Dessert Cart with cowriter Sally Sampson to bring their incredible creations to the public (no reservations needed). The secret to their desserts, says English, is to "take very simple, often very common things and layer them together to compose a more complex dish." Apple-Topped Gingerbread with Hot Applesauce and Cinnamon Ice Cream is an example of a dessert that's homey, comforting, and yet fancy enough to serve at a dinner party.

These desserts, assembled from one anchoring item with several complementing layers, are striking both in their flavor combinations and in their presentations. Plenty of photos adorn the recipes so you can see what the finished product should look like. But don't worry: You can also make simple Old-Fashioned Sour Cream Chocolate Cake and skip the accompaniments. Throughout the book, several recipes are repeated so you don't have to flip back and forth searching for a crème anglaise recipe or how to make raspberry crush--an innovation other cookbooks should adopt. --Dana Van Nest

About the Author:

Sally Sampson is the author and coauthor of numerous cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-nominated The $50 Dinner Party, Throw Me a Bone (with Cooper Gillespie) and The Olives Table (with Todd English). She has contributed to Self, Bon AppÉtit, Food & Wine, The Boston Globe, Boston magazine and The Boston Phoenix. She lives with her family in Watertown, Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0684823357
• ISBN 13: 9780684823355
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288