Yum!
Tasty Recipes from Culinary Greats
by Jeffrey Spear and Dara Bunjon
Cumberland House Publishing, 2007
$28.95, cloth
279 pages
This assemblage of recipes is a fundraiser for the National Kidney Foundation, sponsored by Microplane and the choices are like a slightly jumbled, but endlessly interesting buffet table. Some things you'll skip right over, others will be your favorites, and still others you'll want to try.
The chefs come from all over the country and naturally, the recipes are all over the map. Kat Fukushima who cooks with Jose Andres in Washington, D.C. offers the sophisticatedly simple Bread with Chocolate, a Spanish inspired snack the requires the best bread, chocolate, olive oil you can find, sparked with designer salt and tart orange juice.
Andres himself shares one of his deconstructed dishes, an Organized Caesar Salad, a clever composition of stuffed and rolled jicama slices, topped with a quail egg and meant for more patient cooks than me.
But other simpler dishes have equal sophistication, like Jody Adams' Grated Noodles in Tomato Broth with a Poached Egg, Basil, and Parmesan Cheese. If your pantry is like mine, this homey but deeply flavored soup can be the work of minutes, making a quick dinner or fine Sunday supper. The vegetables simmer into a broth sparked with white wine, pancetta, and red pepper flakes, the simple dough flakes into freeform noodles that plump into tender pillows in the soup. A gently poached egg adds body to the broth and makes a satisfying meal.
The always reliable Sara Moulton offers Asian Turkey Burgers with Wasabi Mayonnaise. Flavored with minced bell pepper, napa cabbage, scallions, soy sauce, and fresh ginger, these burgers sing with flavor and no one will complain about bland turkey.
The sheer density of recipes virtually guarantees that you'll find a dish suitable for every palate and occasion. Buckwheat Pasta with Potatoes and Greens is home cooking from Riccardo Bosio, owner of Baltimore's Sotto Sopra Restaurant. I used whole wheat pasta in place of the fresh buckwheat pasta her recommends, but the hearty sauce of soft, diced potatoes, shredded swiss chard, and fontina cheese are all bound by a sage infused brown butter sauce, flavors and textures blend.
Desserts have a similar range. Jacques Torres, chocolatier and pastry chef who can make flights of sugar fantasy offers simple biscotti. And choices continue with apples crostata, chocolate lemon tart, ginger citrus pumpkin pie, and delicate sandwiched linzer cookies. Each one with a twist that makes it special.
Olive Oil Cake from celebrity chef Jamie Owen is unbelievably easy to make, no creaming the butter and adding eggs one at a time. The wet ingredients, which include orange liqueur, olive oil, and orange juice are stirred together in one bowl, the dry ingredients, which include finely ground almonds in another. The resulting cake is perfumed, not too sweet, with a distinct and unique taste lent by the olive oil.
If you're looking for a bit of this and a bite of that, this broad and stylish sampling will serve you well.
© 2007 Claudia Kousoulas
