Cookbooks we like.
One of my jobs is to keep our menus fresh and exciting. Cookbooks and food magazines are a constant source of inspiration. Having done what I do for as long as I've done it, I can usually "taste" a dish by reading the recipe. I can also make a judgement as to whether we can practically make the dish work for 250 guests.
Not too many weeks go by without a stroll through my local Borders or an order on Amazon for a book he read something about in the Wednesday New York Times Food Section. An amazing thing about food is the near infinite variety of startlingly wonderful ingredient and flavor combinations that are possible when tempered by a keen culinary judgment.
Look here for notes regarding cookbooks we like.
A trio of new cookbooks from California
Like really great wines, really great restaurants are the result of strong foundations tempered by age. The best cookbooks often come out of these restaurants. The chef’s from whom the restaurants derive their energy and creative spirit author these cookbooks. Here are three great new cookbooks from women who have worked long and hard in their California restaurants.
First, a word of caution: Great restaurant-based cooking - even sandwiches - is not for 10-minute gourmets. These are challenging books and each very different in spirit. They share a commitment to great and interesting ingredients imaginatively combined.
Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book
"the best sandwiches ever - from Thursday nights at campanile"
Nancy Silverton with Teri Gelber
Knopf
The last ten years have brought to the Philadelphia region an abundance of artisanal bread bakeries and shops producing a variety of meaty, crunchy breads. These include Metropolitan Bakery and Le Bus. Le Bus is one of our bread suppliers. Here is a sandwich book worthy of these great breads.
Silverton is first and foremost identified as a gifted baker. With her chef-husband Mark Peel, the two are responsible for the success of their Los Angeles Campanile Restaurant and La Brea Bakery. On the surface this is the lightest of the three books. It deals with sandwiches. But, this is no Betty Crocker white bread sandwich book! As Silverton says in her introduction, "Don't look at them as complicated sandwiches, but as satisfying entrees on bread." Sections of the book include open-faced, Closed-faced, Sort-of-sandwiches, Tea sandwiches, Sandwich cakes and cookies, Bar snacks, and Spreads and Condiments. There is also a small section of bread baking.
Some highlights include a spectacular Cremini Mushroom Toasts, which alone would justify your purchase of a George Forman Lean Mean Fat-free Grilling Machine. How about a Peppered Beef, Sautéed Bitter Greens and Caper Onion Mayonnaise? For it, you sear a small filet of beef, chill it, and slice it thin and then pound the slices until there are an eighth of an inch thick.
The book fully transforms your notion of a sandwich. Imagine bacon breadcrumbs, charred rapini and soft scrambled eggs with long-cooked broccoli and feta cheese. A Chocolate Brioche Club Sandwich. Someone should take this book and open a "sandwich shop" - breakfast, lunch and dinner. It would be our region's next great place to dine.
 Mustards Grill
A Napa Valley Cookbook
Cindy Pawlcyn with Brigid Callinan
Ten Speed Press
This book is a winner of the James Beard Foundation Book Award. Mustards Grill opened in 1983. (That was ten years after I opened Frog.) The recipes have all passed the day to day test of hungry and discerning diners. The restaurant is not a fancy urban grill, but a "truck stop deluxe." Remember, however, though, this is Napa and the guy driving the truck may be the winemaker from Mondavi up the road.
As one would expect from a book from wine country, fresh ingredients are at the core. When Pawlcyn calls for tomatoes in her recipes, she clearly means fresh, ripe off the vine tomatoes. There is no "or a can of Italian plum tomatoes." The recipes are long, complex and delicious. Nothing here is technically difficult - just a lot of ingredients, which are frequently Asian and Latin accented. The long instructions are detailed and easy to follow. The dishes are often built on recipes that include other recipes from the book. This can make an already daunting dish even more daunting. But, here's the thing. The effort offers great rewards.
I have always loved liver. A childhood flavor is my mother's beef liver with bacon. Training at La Panetiere in the early 1970's I cooked thin-sliced calf's liver with shallots, white wine, mustard and parsley. It was on Frog's original menu in 1973. (A recipe for this is in our Frog Commissary Cookbook.) Pawlcyn's version is Liver Diablo with Applewood-Smoked Bacon and Polenta. The diablo sauce is a combination of her tomato and apricot chutney plus brown sugar, ketchup (Heinz or homemade), red wine vinegar and Worcestershire. The liver can be grilled or sautéed. Add lots of caramelized onions and thick-sliced bacon on top and float it all on soft polenta made with Stilton! The result is a wonderful mix of flavors and textures.
More startling for its originality is the Wild Mushroom "Burgers" with Apple Jicima Slaw. The "burgers" are made with lots of fresh darkly sautéed mushrooms, chopped and sliced, bound with a little cream cheese, mustard, breadcrumbs, grated Asiago, roasted garlic and parsley. Yes, to complete the dish you also need to make Roasted Garlic Aioli, Basil Pesto or Mint Tarragon Pesto and Turmeric Pickles. But, imagine how great this burger is going to taste when you are all done. And as Pawlcyn frequently reminds you in the margin notes, many items can be prepared days in advance.
The book is lush with photographs that look so delicious they help you to overcome your reticence to make such an effort. Go for it.
 The Zuni Café Cookbook
A Compendium of recipes and cooking lessons from San Francisco's beloved restaurant
Judy Rodgers
Norton
The Zuni Café is a San Francisco institution in the best sense of that word. At some point in its long history it was probably trendy. Today, it's just great. The book begins with Rodgers recounting her personal journey from a sixteen-year old from St Louis spending a year with the Troisgros family in Roanne, France to her long experience as chef at the Zuni Café. (The Troisgros are proprietors of one of the world's great restaurants.)
What makes this cookbook the most challenging and rewarding of the three are Rodgers "Cooking Lessons." These are long sections on technique that are among the most refined, well-explained, and sophisticated I have ever read. In addition, while the little introductions to recipes in most cookbooks are usually vaguely anecdotal or offer little tips or lore pertaining to the recipes, Rodgers recipe introductions are loaded with information that will make you a smarter, more informed and better cook. Guaranteed.
After thirty plus years at this, reading a really great cookbook is still a humbling experience. I can stand in Borders and know in about ten seconds if a cookbook is worth the investment. Once purchased, I can usually go through a normally interesting cookbook and get its essentials in about an hour. In an hour I've got it. I may want to go back and take a closer look at things, but an hour is usually the time I spend. With Rodgers I spent three hours before I reached a recipe. There are five pages on The Practice of Salting Early. For the serious cook, this a book for the nightstand. I would love to take a month off from work and work my way through this book.
I don't mean to say that the book isn't also filled with wonderful recipes. It is a treasure trove. Sometimes you see a recipe for something that seems at once unexpected and unusual yet it is something that you think should have always been a part of your cooking repertoire. It seems so good and basic. That is how I felt when I came across Red Onion Pickles. I am sure that if I went back and looked I could find recipes for pickled red onions - surely in Scandinavian cookbooks. My father was a pickle packer when I was a child, but these are not my father's pickles. There is nothing especially fancy here; just clear and concise instructions for an item that will soon become a sweet and spicy topping for some Frog Commissary buttered hors d'oeuvres.
While there are more immediate pleasures (and maybe more immediate additions to our catering menus) to be found in Silverton's Sandwiches and Pawlcyn's Mustard's, if I had to be stranded on an island with one cookbook, it would be Rodgers…as long as the island had a great market.
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