A Food Book for Thought

Are chefs’ cookbooks making a comeback? The surprise bestseller of last year was “The French Laundry Cookbook,” one of those full-color paeans to the art of fine cuisine that every wise head in the publishing world had informed us was “so two years ago.” So the first printing sold out before the book was officially released, it’s still hovering near the top of the Times cookbook bestseller list and it was named the best book of the year by the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals.

Now comes “L’Atelier of Alain Ducasse” (John Wiley & Sons, $60), a very different but similarly ambitious restaurant cookbook. The notion of an atelier, or intellectual school of art, has not been applied to cooking before, but it is worth investigating. In this book, Ducasse--the first modern chef to run two Michelin three-star restaurants at the same time--presents one of his recipes, then various well-known chefs who have worked for him give their interpretations.

And so the master’s Roast Asparagus Sprinkled with Parmesan Cheese with Savory Beef and Olive Jus and Bone Marrow becomes Jean-Louis Nomico’s Cooked and Raw Green Asparagus Tips with Warm Oysters and Winkles, Sylvain Portay’s Roast Asparagus Parmesan with Steamed Morels au Naturel and Poached Egg, Franck Cerutti’s Early Purple Asparagus, Spring Leeks and Late-Season Black Truffles and so on (and on--there aren’t many two- or three-word recipe titles here).

Of course, this is not the kind of book many home cooks will find much use for. Whether you will like it or not probably depends on whether your hunger is physical or intellectual.