| When a chef cooks at home |
REVIEWS BY SYBIL PRATT
Many of the super-successful genre of super-chef cookbooks are so awesome and haute that we mere mortals are better off as admiring, arm-chair browsers rather than wannabe emulators. But there is a growing sub-genre of chef-cooks-at-home books that are less formal and more accessible for all of us who scramble through time-challenged, over-scheduled workweeks.
A Four-Star Chef Cooks for Family and Friends By Charlie Palmer William Morrow, $30 ISBN 0688178731
The secrets of success
The recipes run the gamut from salads and soups to seafood, meat of all kinds, breads and desserts. Each has prep and cook times, full nutritional info and down-to-earth practicality that has made the pros at Better Homes and Gardens the pals of home cooks for generations.
Meredith, $29.95 ISBN 0696207524
Sybil Pratt has been cooking up this column for more than five years. |
Charlie Palmer's Casual Cooking: A Four-Star Chef Cooks for Family and Friends is a fine new example of this sensible category. Palmer, a well-known, award-winning chef and restaurateur, had to rethink his elegant, upscale style when he began cooking at home for his wife and four hungry little boys. What's the essence of home cooking? To Palmer, and many others, home cooking means comfort food. And what does a tony trendsetter do when comfort food is the craving du jour? Well, this one adjusts his culinary verve, putting his own stamp on old favorites and creating new dishes with ingredients that go together in a "comfortable way." Some of the recipes are quick and easy; others, well-suited for small dinner parties, take more time and effort, but all of them honor freshness, taste and texture. His "Cheez Sammiches" transport the good old American grilled variety to new heights; the Salmon Cakes are a long way from Mom's croquettes; richly intense Carrots in Guinness take this ordinary root up a few notches; his Perfect Roast Chicken is truly perfect; and the Lemon Meringue Pie, a Palmer family favorite, is lingeringly luscious. Chatty headnotes for each of the 125 recipes offer ingredient alternatives and great ideas that give leftovers superb second lives. Thanks Charlie, your homemade meals will become part of our homemade memories.
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We're used to the solid, satisfying, well-tested recipes in cookbooks that come from Better Homes and Gardens. But their latest, Simple Secrets to Better Everyday Cooking has a big plus -- or, maybe I should say pluses. Each of the more than 150 recipes gathered here is garnished with an appropriate simple secret, a tip on technique, a time-saving strategy or straightforward info on ingredients. The recipe for a foolproof French omelet has a sidebar on "Demystifying the Omelet" and, for the cholesterol-conscious, one on egg substitutes, too. The panels next to enticingly exotic Lemongrass Chicken & Rice Noodles let you in on how to work with fresh ginger and how to use the highly aromatic lemongrass that flavors so many Asian dishes and is now available in many supermarkets. A fiery but friendly Caribbean Salsa that can be used to add a spark to fish, chicken or pork has both an explanation of how to select and store chiles and a full page of photos that make eight different kinds of chiles readily recognizable.