The Fourth Star, by Leslie Brenner. This book chronicles a year (2000) behind the scenes at Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s New York City restaurant. Brenner, a food writer, observes restaurant operations for endless hours as Boulud and his staff of 140 work for endless hours to create and sustain a successful French restaurant. Upon opening in 1999, the New York Times gave Daniel only 3 stars. Hurt and miffed, Boulud broods silently as all under his employ know that getting the deserved fourth star is what the year 2000 is going to be all about. Of course, they succeed. Two other restaurant books are reviewed on this page. The kitchen scenes at Daniel are at another, higher, level than those portrayed by Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, and Brenner’s narrative lays waste the dismal title of Patric Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Fine dining is alive and well. Still, the three books are of a piece. A dark side of Kitchen Confidential is here too, where cooks at Daniel, albeit in a prize kitchen, endure long hours, low pay, burn out and high turnover. Front of the house operations at Daniel are apace with those described historically by Kuh. Brenner documents the key requisites of success in today’s restaurant world: culinary flair, command leadership and marketing genius. Daniel Boulud has all three. If your interest in fine dining includes diners as well as restaurant operations, Brenner portrays them–the regulars and VIPS–as quirky yet lovingly catered to by Boulud who recognizes them as vital to the success of his restaurant. A lot of pointers are provided here for the eccentric diner.
Archive for February, 2010
The Fourth Star
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Last Days of Haute Cuisine
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, by Patric Kuh, traces the evolution of fine dining from the opening of Le Pavillon in 1941 to the present time. Kuh has written a nostalgic essay wrapped around Henri Soulé, the maître d’hôtel of Le Pavillon, portrayed to excess in mythic aura. The rise and fall of great restaurants across the land and the influences of iconic foodies—chefs and writers—are woven into this very readable narrative. This book is essential reading for high-end restaurant goers, studious foodies and ambitious chefs. It has been nominated for a 2001 James Beard Foundation book award. If you read Kitchen Confidential, cleanse your pallet with The Last Days of Haute Cuisine.
¡Ceviche!
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010¡Ceviche! The little woman loves ceviche. Our favorite Mexican restaurant is our most frequented restaurant because they make a great ceviche and have it on the menu most nights. It’s so good I consulted the chef there before preparing it for 200 as a demonstration dish at school.
Well, along comes a single subject cookbook on ceviche. Better still, the book has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation book award this year. “Got to buy this one,” says I. “ No need to look at it at the bookstore, just go Amazon.”
¡Ceviche! by chef Guillermo Pernot and Aliza Green, offers 48 ceviche recipes—and everything you need to know about this little side dish—along with chapters on salsas, salads and cocktails—all tied together with extraordinary full-page color photographs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that ingredients called for in most of the recipes are not readily available. To their credit, the authors have a chapter on special ingredients and sources, as well as a glossary of 54 entries pulled out of the recipes. Nonetheless, to make the dishes in this book requires a commitment to shop for and stock the pantry with niche spices, condiments, veggies, fruits and booze. The material on escabeches, salads, salsas, vinaigrettes, garnishes and cocktails is more user friendly, but even here the ingredient requirements are daunting.
The book is impressive from the culinary point of view. Pernot’s techniques are well grounded. The text is to the point and fun to read. His interest in Japanese fresh fish cuisine influences his ceviche creations in inventive and delightful ways. The food presentation, serving dishes and settings for the photos are terrific. In all, Pernot presents an in-depth look at ceviche.
No, there is more to this book. Upon reflection in the process of selecting some recipes that I might use in class, I now conclude (a week or so after writing the above) that Pernot takes civiche to new and creative heights. This book is “way out there,” in the manner of The French Laundry. It is full of ideas that experienced cooks will ponder and use. Which, come to think of it, is a desired outcome of reading any cookbook. Few chef/authors, however, reach this level of creative substance.
Baking by Flavor
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Baking by Flavor, by Lisa Yockelson. We spent a lot of time at school learning the correct techniques for baking the classic repertoire of cakes and tarts, along with icings and fillings; and an equal amount of time devoted to pastries—probably six weeks in all. I survived and even enjoyed it, my strong preference to savory cooking notwithstanding. Yockelson is well known to readers of the food section of the Washington Post. She has published extensively. Her signature is “flavor-accenting baked goods.” I remembered that getting my lemon-sugar cookie to where I liked it was all about enhancing flavors. So, maybe it was time to pick up a tome on baked desserts and see what a current master baker is up to.
To get a feel for the level of detail and soundness of techniques, I baked her lemon tart, which called for using cookie dough instead of pate sucrée to make the tart shell. Her instructions are clear and very detailed. Laborious in fact (she takes two paragraphs to tell the reader how to “blind bake” a tart shell without ever using the technical term). The ‘by flavor’ organization of the book is as inviting as it is innovative. An average of 22 pages is devoted to each of 13 flavors (chocolate gets 35). If, like the Little Woman, you don’t like almond, you can flip past it with the assurance that you will not see it again.
Yockelson knows her subject. She presents all the classics here, updated and inspired. If you do not have a confectionery baked goods cookbook, Baking by Flavor is well worth a look. For sure¸ this book will win an award next year.
What Einstein Told His Cook
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke. As one who has read and profiled quite a number of science and cooking books, I learned a few things from this one (the potential use of citric acid “sour salts,” for example). So up front, I will say that Wolke is worth the read. Not as thorough as McKee or as applicable as Corriher but Wolke’s article format and light style—he writes for the Washington Post—makes his stuff more fun to read and the book easy to set down and pick up again. All the usual subjects are covered here, fats, sugars, chemical reactions, calories, acids and the like, along with a recipe or two to make a point. His chapter on Tools and Technology is current and especially good regarding microwave ovens, irradiation and the worried illiterate.
Readers can expect writers of kitchen science books to delight in debunking old cooking fictions and deflating the exaggerations of both consumer and industry advocates. Wolke is no exception and the results are right up there with McKee and Corriher. Concerning what I consider the hallmarks of the food phobics and wellness hypochondriacs, he says, “I hate warnings without reasons . . . [and] anxiety without information.”
I found but one lapse. Regarding the thawing of frozen products, Wolke fails to mention thawing under potable running cold water, which is the only in-kitchen method approved by the FDA.
I’ve stated before and hold to it that Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise is the most useful of the “here’s why” books. What Einstein Told His Cook is also worth your time, in contrast to How to Read a French Fry, which is trashed in a profile on this page, below.
The Flavors of Olive Oil, A Tasting Guide and Cookbook
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
I just got a copy of The Flavors of Olive Oil, A Tasting Guide and Cookbook, by Deborah Krasner. Though it is an award-winning book (James Beard Foundation 2002 award for single subject), there is not much to it. A good 50 page tutorial on olive oil, followed by 17 pages of useful tasting notes and then 147 pages of recipes. Still, the tasting notes section is current, as is the resource section in back of the book, both with a lot of Web site addresses. These pages alone are worth your attention. Note the bottle in the photo. Krasner rates Costco’s Kirkland Signature Extra Virgin Tuscano as “one of the great bargains in olive oil.” I agree. I saw the stuff in the local Costco a couple of months ago and was impressed by the label and packaging. It is indeed good and at a very good price. I’m on my second bottle with two more bottles in the pantry.
Bundt Classics
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
There are few household kitchens in the US, inhabited by home cooks our age, that don’t have a Bundt Pan. They’ve been around for fifty years. It’s a heavy cast aluminum cake pan with a metal tube in the center, which promotes more even baking. Nordic Ware, the manufacturer of the Nordic Ware Bundt Pan (a registered name), admits that the idea originated in Europe where “bund cakes” have been baked for special occasions for generations. The classic round and rectangular pans have been joined, of late, by some really neat designs (see photo), the products, I’m sure, of computer design technology.
Along comes a little wire-binded book, Bundt Classics, by Dorothy Dalquist, published by the Nordic Ware people, that collects and updates all the cakes they have promoted over the years. Quite a few: 92 cakes and desserts, supported by 19 glazes, sauces and syrups. There are also 31 bread recipes and even a dozen savory dishes — all written to be prepared in a Bundt Pan of one shape or another. From Apple Streusel to Walnut-Bourbon Pound Cake, the list is a trip through days of yore. However, getting a cake out of a Bundt Pan, in one piece, is a challenge as old as the pans themselves. The secret is to meticulously coat the inside of the pan with unsalted butter and a dusting of flour. One cannot spend too much time in preparing a cake pan. “Prepare in haste, repent at leisure,” as our master pastry chef instructed.
Anyhow, the book is inviting and reasonable in price. The Little Woman is anxious to try some of the old recipes again “for the first time.”
Salt, A World History
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Got a surprise package from Amazon.com awhile back. A book on salt and a note from my illustrious nephew, and his wife, in Minneapolis.
“Dear Uncle Chic: We thought of you and your admonishment to not fear salt while cooking!
How thoughtful of them to send the geezer something foodie to read and write about. How nice they remembered the admonition.
In Salt, A World History, Mark Kurlansky takes us from one end of the globe to the other and from ancient times and cultures to the present telling us the same story. Salt’s influence on mankind is pervasive. And that, “Fixing the value of salt, one of earth’s most accessible commodities, has never been easy.” The harvesters of salt deposits founded villages, developed markets and trade routes. Governments taxed the stuff from earliest times to build cities and empires and to fund armies to trash other cities and empires. The salting of fish and meats, to prolong preservation, was a major contribution toward reliable food supplies in a starving world. The simple processes of adding salt to cod, herring, beef and pork, to preserve them, has endured but also evolved over the millennia into complex salt-curing regimens for fish, meats and cheeses that have created food products of great value (caviar and parma hams, for example). He notes, at the very end of the book that “Fashionable people are now divided into two camps. One is passionate about being healthy and eating less salt, the other is passionate about salt.” He votes (without passion) for moderation saying that the body needs salt, but that clinical evidence shows that people who consume large quantities of it are not as healthy as those who don’t.
And what of my admonition to the Minneapolis nephew? It’s been some time since they visited our kitchen but I’m sure that I expressed my firm conviction that salt is an essential ingredient to good cooking. Indeed, as an experienced culinary wag said many years ago, “Cooking is all about hard work and salt.”
If your doctor has told to you to severely reduce your salt intake, then do so. If not . . .
The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, Taste
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Awhile back, Paula Wolfert gave a demonstration at a culinary professional gathering in Washington DC and I volunteered as her assistant. Earlier, I had discovered couscous at L’ Acadamie and bought her Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, which she wrote in 1973. It’s a classic. Her latest book is up for top international cookbook awards at both Beard and the IACP and for good reason. Wolfert gathers together a wonderful array of authentic savory dishes prepared in heavy pots, tagines and on low temperature fires in homes and restaurants along the littoral of the Mediterranean. Lots of chicken and lamb dishes here. I marked a half a dozen of them (and five or so more throughout the book) as very attractive and worth doing because they called for ingredients that should go very well together and because they read well. That is, the recipe procedures are consistent with good cooking practices. I was a bit put off by Wolfert’s persistent nudges to buy expensive organic products (though it’s now a foodie icon and probably a requirement if you want to get published these days).
This is a very good cookbook. Its loaded with baked, braised and roasted dishes of ancient origins, all thoughtfully tailored by the author. Wolfert has spent a lot of time “in the Med.” She knows her subject. I bought the book. And a month later it won the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) award for best International cookbook for 2003.
Sweet, sour, bitter and salt are the tastes that have specially designed receptor cells in the human mouth. These tastes go from the palette to the brain without going through the olfactory sensors. There has been much talk of late of a fifth taste, as pure as the four. Unfortunately, there is no consensus among food writers on what exactly this fifth taste is or how it should be described. Since both the taste and description of sweet, sour, bitter and salt are straightforward to the point of being intuitive, I, for one, remain unconvinced that the fifth taste, be it called umami or savory, is in the same league with the canonical four.
Unfortunately, Sybil Kapoor, a respected British food writer, is as confused as many others. Here we have a book about taste that includes umami with a lengthy description. But the cover of her book includes lovely photos of sweet, sour, bitter, salt, chili and flavors. Where’s umami?
It is not until page 48 that we are told that umami is so often found in salty or cured foods, such as Parma ham, that Kapoor has elected to cover umami in the chapter on salt. So for Kapoor, umami is but fat and salt. Left less explained are the separate chapters on chili and flavors. I was also annoyed by the author’s call for free range organic chicken as the bird of choice for chicken stock. Come on, after two hours of simmering and after discarding the bird, who’s to know? A complete waste of money and a good bird. PC amuck in the UK.
This is a curious cookbook, albeit beautifully presented with great photos.
Madhur Jaffrey’s From Curries to Kebobs From The Indian Spice Trail
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010This book won the James Beard International Cookbook Award this year, beating out Wolfert’s The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, which won the IACP International Cookbook Award this year. Like Wolfert, Jaffrey has been around for a long time. I have been reading them for a long time, as well. These books represent their best work and each is the culmination of the author’s life time of food research and writing. That’s why I bought them.
The Little Woman treasures Jeffrey’s earlier work, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, which came out in 1973. She has prepared Jaffrey’s Pork Chops With Whole Spices and Tamarind Juice many times. That book and my Navy experience with curries got us started.
I like Indian food, or more precisely, I like Indian spices and condiments. How I use them to season Mediterranean, Mexican and American dishes (from lamb shanks tagine to pork barbecued ribs) probably gives my Indian readers the vapors (and there are quite a few regular readers from India–thank you very much). But this book may reform the Geezer since we are intrigued by many of the recipes, especially the curries and veggies, and are anxious to try them as written.
About half of the book is concerned with the history of Indian cooking, its influence worldwide and the regional origin of each dish presented. It’s all quite readable and thorough enough to serve as a valuable reference and recipe source for those who wish to explore Indian cuisine. Jaffrey, of course, encourages the reader to make her dishes from scratch, but she does write about the Japanese curry sauce mixes that are available worldwide. She describes these packaged mixes as curry roux and rightly states that “…they lie at the heart of the curry most Japanese eat.” Readers will remember that I use curry roux from my Curry in a Hurry.
With apologies to Jaffrey and with her book in hand and not much time to get a dinner together a couple Friday’s ago, I made Shrimp Curry. I selected the mild version of curry roux and “cherry picked” ingredients from Jaffrey’s Shrimp Curry with Roasted Spices recipe.
- The packaged curry roux calls for 2.5 cups of water. Following Jaffrey, substitute a 14 oz can of coconut milk for a like quantity of water and mix all well.
- Sauté about 20 large shrimp, in peanut or grapeseed oil, in a shallow pan and set them aside underdone.
- In a medium sized chef’s pan, sauté a couple sliced shallots to translucent and then toss in a stalk of fresh lemon grass ( I used 1 teaspoon of dried ground lemongrass).
- Then add the thoroughly mixed roux, water and coconut, bring to a boil, immediately reduce the heat to simmer.
Toss in the shrimp, simmer for a minute until they are pink and serve over basmati rice.