HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Recipes for delicious grilled foods are the cornerstone of this cookbook. But to us, what are even more crucial and exciting than the recipes are the seemingly endless possibilities of feasts you can make when you pair and serve them together. These particular recipes represent a moment in time in our restaurant and our food. Menus change, and just as we like to leave ourselves flexibility to progress and play with the dishes we serve, we want our diners and the users of this book to feel the same. Consider this book a choose-your-own-adventure concept, rather than a rigid or dictatorial manual of what dishes to make and in what order to serve them. We want you to be involved the moment you flip to page one, and to create and master your own dining destiny.

Although the two of us have both worked in restaurants with traditional main- and side-dish approaches (protein, vegetable, starch, and sauce), nowadays it seems like people aren’t as drawn to that style of eating—they often prefer snacking their way to a full meal in order to try more things. That’s part of the reason why in the restaurant (and in this book), we don’t try to pair your mains and your sides for you. Instead, we encourage you to pick and choose what sounds complementary to you among the chapters. (Of course, we can’t help but offer suggestions for some of our favorite combinations.)

We have structured the chapters in a way that makes sense to us—by clustering dishes of similar styles together, be they chilled seafood dishes that have similar cooling elements, or meats from the grill, in hopes that you will be able to efficiently compare and contrast them when creating a meal plan.

The dishes in this book are meant to be friendly for groups and family-style dining. At the Argentinian table, grilled meals are rarely portioned out onto individual plates. Everyone is encouraged to help themselves off family-style platters, which means no two persons’ plates at the same table end up looking the same. Of course, you’ll be able to find appropriately sized dishes for more intimate affairs, like date nights, weeknight meals, or family suppers. In most cases, you can use your judgment on scaling recipes up and down as needed to suit the occasion.

We believe that simplicity and elevation can coexist. At the heart of most of these recipes is a basic, everyday ingredient cooked using classical kitchen or grill techniques. But to make them three-dimensional dishes, we’ve given some a longer list of ingredients or multiple steps. Feel free to break them down as needed, and you will find tips everywhere for prepping and storing elements in advance. Some of the components you create for one dish might be great on other dishes as well. We do our best to point out places where dressings, sauces, garnishes, and other elements have such flexibility and should be made in larger batches, but you may also dream up even more ways to use these subrecipes on your own. Wherever possible, we offer optional shortcuts, like using high-quality store-bought products in place of homemade ones, or substituting them for hard-to-find ingredients.

Living and cooking in Portland, it can be easy for us to take for granted that most restaurants and maybe even home cooks use seasonality as the starting point for the way they cook. We are constantly changing what’s on our menu at Ox and our table at home based on what’s available and which types of produce are at their peak. Ingredients taste the best that way, and cooking seasonally has a lower impact on the environment. It also keeps you on your toes, urging you to be creative in the kitchen.

Finally, we are huge fans of balance through contrast—using an array of textures, flavors, and temperatures. When you are mixing and matching dishes on your own, try to think in terms of complementary flavors (sweet with salty, spicy with cooling), contrasting textures (delicate with crunchy, silky with firm), and even temperatures. But most importantly, remember to have fun with the planning and just cook food that excites you. After all, by taking risks and putting your own spin on things is how you become a truly empowered cook.