Newsletter: 🍗 Our spotlight on chicken + Learn from the best with Le Cordon Bleu 👨‍🍳

🍗 Our spotlight on chicken + Learn from the best with Le Cordon Bleu 👨‍🍳

👨‍🍳Master techniques from Le Cordon Bleu & save 25% on ckbk subscriptions! 👩‍🍳

Food heroes: chicken

Chicken is universally popular, enjoyed within almost all global cuisines, and one of the most accessible and easy to prepare meats. It is likely to be something readily to hand, and frequently on the menu or supper table. Of course, each of us has our failsafe ways to cook it, our family’s favorite dishes. But we have a whole shelf of books just focused on Chicken, so for a little extra inspiration, or some new ideas with a familiar ingredient, look no further.

Published only last year, Marcus Bean’s The Good Chicken Cookbook, seeks to do full justice to the ingredient, with sustainable use of the whole bird—try Crispy Chicken Skins. The author also considers best practice in our farming and use of chickens. Recipes are well laid out, and reference many culinary traditions. Find Spiced Pumpkin and Chicken Pithivier, or fusion dish Yakitori Chicken with Apricot Bulgar Wheat.

Chef Grant MacPherson extends this appreciation in his book Egg & Chicken, a selection of inventive recipes in praise of these two central ingredients. Find his Fully Loaded Chicken Burger, and Seasonal Berries & Champagne Sabayon.

In Chicken and Other Birds: From the Perfect Roast Chicken to Asian-style Duck Breasts, eminent chef and cookbook author Paul Gayler, brings us 113 recipes for chicken, duck, squab, quail and more, ranging across techniques and cuisines. Find everything from Normandy Cider Braised Chicken to Quail Burgers with Pancetta, Chilli Jam and Herb Mascarpone.

Chicken, from the Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection, is a collection of recipes from the famed culinary school Le Cordon Bleu covering a range of culinary techniques, that make the most of the bird. It offers a wide variety of know how for chicken in all its possibilities – from fried to braised, marinated, stuffed, roasted or smoked.

Recipes include French classics such as a Coq au Vin, and this Chicken Liver Terrine.

Find all our chicken cookbooks

Pictured above: Maple & mustard-glazed poussins with spring onion & lemon couscous from The Good Chicken Cookbook by Marcus Bean

Technical mastery and peerless patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu

Founded in Paris in 1895, Le Cordon Bleu is now the largest network of culinary and hospitality schools in the world, comprising over 35 institutes in 20 countries, and training 20,000 students each year. All of which adds up to a culinary education par excellence. We are delighted to have a very well-stocked bookshelf of Le Cordon Bleu classics, and to tell you about two titles that have newly been added.

Cuisine Foundations is a definitive tome, tracing the history and fundamental techniques of French cuisine.

Its aim is to act ‘not only as a guide and reference, but as an inspiration.’ The approach is put clearly in the book’s introduction.

‘What we wanted to do was reset the counter and refresh everyone’s history and knowledge of these techniques before they are lost to us. For this reason, we chose to use the recipes that were created throughout the history of French cuisine that best exemplify the application of these techniques, and if you look at the integrity of each recipe, you will recognize the origins of these recipes on today’s menus–all around the globe.’ André J. Cointreau, President, Le Cordon Bleu International

The book is fascinating on the origins of key dishes, such as the Crème Brûlée. Find thorough, accurate explanations of foundational techniques, and detailed step-by-step photography.

From how to Julienne a Carrot, to Les Fonds (stocks), and on to Sauce Hollandaise, and Pâte Sablée (shortcrust pastry), Cuisine Foundations is an easily accessible and complete education in fine French culinary technique.

In Pâtisserie & Baking Foundations, the chefs of Le Cordon Bleu continue this approach with their guide to this most French of culinary obsessions. With a comprehensive list of recipes, find each fully photographed for technique, ingredients and end results. While all are grounded in the French technique that the book sets out to teach, the recipes allow for contemporary and international inspiration.

Find all 141 recipes from Pâtisserie & Baking Foundations

Congratulations to Anna Shephard at the Guild of Food Writers Awards

The Guild of Food Writers (GFW) award winners were announced on June 18, at a ceremony honoring the great and the good in the world of cookbooks, food writing, and culinary journalism. We are proud of have the work of many previous award winners on our site. This year Anna Shepherd, won the best Single Subject Cookery Book category for her new book Love Vegetables which you can access in full on ckbk.

We would also like to congratulate Eleanor Ford, who is nominated in the same category for her book A Whisper of Cardamom.

Ingredient focus: parsley

Parsley is a widely used herb across Europe to garnish, and add flavor and vibrance. It is also used abundantly in the Middle East, where the quantity in a dish can be large enough to constitute a vegetable. A relative of celery, the many cultivars divide into two main types, curly or flat-leaved. Flat-leaved parsley is generally considered to have superior taste, but this can depend on variety and growing conditions.

The herb can be added into dishes while cooking, or eaten raw. Its green earthy and mildly aromatic flavor also works well in salad dressings, herbal oils—try this Parsley Oil—pastes and rubs.

Try Roasted Tomato Soup with Walnut and Parsley Oil, this Clam and Chorizo Pasta with Parsley Gremolata, or any of the recipes in our collection of 12 Ways with Parsley.

6 of the best éclair recipes

Love chocolate éclairs? There’s a day for that. June 22 is National Chocolate Éclair Day. So here’s to éclairs, filled with fresh cream, pastry cream, or ganache, chocolate or otherwise. You know you want to.