I like cookbooks, both for reading and for use. I’m always on the lookout for something new, interesting, or that might fill in a gap. I was mostly curious about what the CIA thought about Pies and Tarts which are some of my favorite things. Possible challenge here is that I usually don’t go for super chef-y cookbooks both because of the degree of difficulty and time required to gather ingredients, prepare sub recipes, and assemble; and the format that often shows up in the baking, which is often multi-column, organized by component, and often scaled above the feasible space of a home kitchen. I was pleasantly surprised at how user-friendly and actually not too technical or preachy this book is.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of challenge here. The orange vanilla cream pie (first thing I tried) involves a crust that requires overnight chilling, an orange curd that needs to cool, and vanilla custard-type filling that has to go on top of that, chill, and then add the whipped cream topping (see 150 pages forward for how to do that). This pie did indeed take roughly 24 hours from starting the crust to finally cutting into it. I should also note that I have made curd and custard before, so I didn’t have to go as slowly as someone who had not through those parts. The processes are pretty similar but you do need to be careful to not mess something up. The only real complaint I have is that I now have a bunch of egg whites and nothing to do with them. It’s either not enough or too much for any of the meringues, and you don’t want those on a pie that needs to stay in the fridge anyways.
The tart section seems a little one note, in that everything is some combo of chocolate, nut, or caramel, until you get to the savory section. Problem is most of those end up looking like quiches (not my favorite, and again I’m back to the pies. The veggie pot pie, actually its own recipe here, and the bean-cheese empanadas actually look pretty tasty, although I’m definitely not using the book’s recommended crust on the pie. I have one from elsewhere that works much better than the one here did (same butter crust as for the vanilla orange pie) and it doesn’t need an overnight chill to work.
As far as the Culinary Institute of America part goes, there is a lot of the expected basic pie baking introductory stuff like the equipment section, and a lot of the ingredient sections, I was surprised how basic it all was. There are some useful charts though like roughly the diameter to aim for when rolling out a crust depending on the type/size pan you’ll be using, or the demo image showing the differences between soft, medium, and stiff peaks, or the charts comparing protein content of major flour brands, weight/size volume for various size eggs, or apples for baking (what to best use when, and when best to use what).
Most everything is real old fashioned bad for you, conventional baking. That plus how long most things take, I doubt I’ll have too much time to get through too much more before the book goes back to the library, so now I have to work through prioritizing.