Made in America: our best chefs reinvent comfort food PDF
Preview Made in America: our best chefs reinvent comfort food
Best Che s OUf 1 V 1 1 Introduction by Joseph Bastianich • • a e l n m e r l c a Our Best Chefs Reinvent Com.fort Food Lucy Lean Introduction by Joseph Bastianich welcome BOOKS NEW YORK To Didier, Minty and Remy and the Plucky Housewives of2011, Who Master Their Work Instead of Allowing it to Master Them, This Book is Dedicated Published in 2011 by Welcome Books® An imprint of Welcome Enterprises, Inc. 6 West 18th Street, New York, NY, 10011 (212) 989-3200; fax (212) 989-3205 www.welcomebooks.com Publisher: Lena Tabori President: H. Clark Wakabayashi Editor: Katrina Fried Designer: Gregory Wakabayashi Editorial Assistant: Emily Green Design copyright © 2011 Welcome Enterprises, Inc. Text and photographs copyright © 2011 Lucy Lean LLC Introduction copyright © 2011 Joseph Bastianich For additional photography and recipe permissions, please see page 320. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-59962-101-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PRINTED IN CHINA For further information about this book please visit online: www.madeinamericacookbook.com Contents · 6 · Preface by Lucy Lean · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 ·· Introduction by Joseph Bastianich · · · · · · · · · · · ·· Breakfast & Brunch 10 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Sandwiches 44 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Soups & Stews 74 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Salads & Sides 116 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Small Plates & Snacks 142 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Pasta, Pizza & Grains 168 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Seafood 196 · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·· Poultry & Meat 218 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Desserts 262 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 314 · Index · · · · · · · · · · · · · 320 ·· Acknowledgments · "CAN YOU COOK?" HE ASKED. "N but I know you can," I replied. 0, These were the first words my father-in-law, Jean Jacques Rachou, and I ever exchanged when we met in Cannes, France, back in the summer of 1996. I had met his son, Didier, two nights earlier in a nightclub of all Preface places, and he invited me to dine with his father. Want ing to do a little background check about this famous Lucy Lean chef, I called our family friend Annabel, who lives in New York City, to ask about Rachou's restaurant, La Cote Basque. "I don't have anything fancy enough to wear to dine there," she said, in that self deprecating way English people living in America never lose. Three months later I packed up my life in London and moved to America and so began my love affair not only with my husband but also with the kitchen. There's nothing quite like the excitement of res taurant kitchens: so much activity, so many people fo cused on their piece of a well-oiled machine, so many delicious smells from steaming pots on stoves. The at mosphere is hot and highly charged; working the line is not for the faint-hearted. At the center of it all is "Chef'-checking plates, tasting sauces, giving orders, and running the show. I am lucky enough to call a lot of the top chefs in America my friends. They welcome me into their restaurants and when I'm really lucky I'm invited back to the kitchen. Many times I've eaten an exquisite restaurant dish and then tried to recreate it at home, with varying degrees of success. I've learned that the easiest way to get the best results is to simply ask the chef for the recipe. Chefs are incredibly generous, they love to share and inspire. To be a great chef perhaps you have to be generous. How else can they give of themselves day and night so the diners have the best possible experience? I love cooking from recipe books-it's like magic when you follow the instructions and everyone tucks into your creations with gusto. I am particularly fond oflooking back through history and exploring early re gional American recipe books. I love the short, direct instructions, Twitter's 140 characters would have been a piece of cake for these accom plished cooks. It's amaz ing that from these brief sentences, often without fixed 6 PREFACE quantities, anyone could have cooked anything consis writes pages and pages on utensils and the care of them tent, let alone edible. It's pure alchemy. How could they in her Boston Cook Book (1884). possibly work without a great deal of prior knowledge? The good news is that home cooks today have ac It seems like the cooks in the nineteenth century were cess to a far greater variety of produce than anyone much better home cooks than we are today and knew cooking in the nineteenth century. Mario Batali wisely how to fill in the gaps, the recipes being there just as a says to buy less but shop more often-there's nothing basic guide. like fresh, local ingredients to elevate any dish. At the I needed to learn how to be a better cook and who Santa Monica Farmers' Market chefs can be seen navi better to teach me than our country's best chefs? Asking gating the crowds with flats of peaches, pluots or pota today's chefs for their interpretations of these nineteenth toes. Here you can buy the exact same tomato or butter century recipes was not only a way of journeying back nut squash that a two-star Michelin chef is selecting for through time but also a fun way to explore the culinary his menu. Most of these chefs shop at their local farm landscape of America in the twenty-first century. ers' market because the food tastes better for it and in a Most American food originated somewhere else number of cases around the country they are cultivating the world, was brought here and then adapted the land themselves. III and adopted. America is, in the case of food, the true Throughout this delicious journey, I cooked ev melting pot of many cuisines and cultures. Whether ery dish in the book, and collaborated with the chefs it's spaghetti and meatballs from Italy, apple pie from to make sure their recipes work for the home cook, England, hamburgers and hot dogs from Germany, or in some cases I had to reduce the yield and in others I fried chicken from African-American slaves and Scot simply pared the recipe back so that it wasn't off put tish immigrants-all these dishes and more have come ting by its sheer complexity. I have tried to keep the to America and then been made into truly American more challenging aspects of the recipes as an optional food. As I traveled from New England to Hawaii and item-a fancy garnish or side-rather than the heart from Chicago to Miami, crisscrossing the country many of the dish. I hope that in some small way these reci times, it was refreshing to see how much Americans pes feel like you have invited America's chefs into your love their regionally specific cuisine. From truffles in kitchen to cook with you. Oregon to Gulf shrimp in Louisiana, the local produce I've included as many chefs tips as possible was celebrated and honored by the chefs, as they took things that they take for granted but will really help pride in the classic American dishes they were rein you to get the best results. My mantra was always, "If I venting and revisiting. can cook it, anyone can." The best part about learning I not only traveled great distances geographically from a professional is in the details of their technique, by plane, train, and automobile, but I also traveled which can make the difference between a good dish and back in time to those early colonial days as I tried to a great dish. Alain Ducasse was kind enough to share imagine what it was like to cook in America long be his tips for cutting onions with me, going straight to fore gas stoves, refrigerators and electric stand mixers. the underpinnings of most cooking-the knife. "The Early American cooks would have had an open fire fumes that cause your eyes to water are released when with a spit for roasting, later they would have had a the petals are crushed," says Ducasse, "a common issue wood fired range with no temperature gauge and very when slicing with a dull knife. Minimize the tears by limited refrigeration. Yet even with these limitations using a properly sharpened blade that will cut the veg they somehow managed to make ice cream. What etable cleanly." Valuable advice to follow when making they didn't have in electric gadgets they made up for his French onion soup and for any recipe that requires in utensils, there is a vast "List of Utensils, Needed in chopped onion-I think of Ducasse every time my eyes Every Well-to-do Family of Six Persons or More" in tear up in the kitchen. So sharpen your knives and let How We Cook in Los Angeles (1894) and Mrs. Lincoln the cooking begin. PREFACE 7
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