Over the years, so many diners and friends have asked me how to re-create at home what I’ve served them at my restaurant. It’s easy for me to put together a dish, but it’s very difficult for me to explain the hows and whys of what I’ve cooked—at least on the spot.
So I dedicated myself to putting it down on paper. My goal, however, isn’t to simply give you a collection of recipes to follow to the letter. That is a great place to start, of course, but I want you to get so much more out of this book. I want you to see how I build and balance flavors—specifically acidic, sweet, salty, and spicy ones—to create dishes that are exciting from the first bite through the last. I also want you to come away with an understanding of texture: how a little bit of crunch can make a good dish great, or why I slow-roast a piece of fish instead of searing it in a pan.
Regardless of your competence in the kitchen, this book will teach you some new cooking techniques. You’ll learn the importance of using a wire rack when roasting vegetables, how to blend and emulsify sauces and dressings so they’re silky smooth, and how to get the most out of a hot grill. Some chefs like to flaunt their technique on the plate. In most cases I like to hide my technique, to make complicated dishes look simple and approachable.
Most of all, I want this cookbook to elevate your appreciation for high-quality ingredients and your dedication for sourcing them. So many of my recipes are inspired by the farmers market and the treasures I discover there. Every restaurant I’ve worked at during my career has been within a short stroll from the Union Square Greenmarket, and I spend every free moment I can spare there, talking with farmers and tasting everything they’ll let me sample. Like many chefs these days, I try to cook with the seasons, letting whatever looks best at the market lead the way. As such, I’ve ordered the recipes in each chapter according to the time of the year, working from early spring at the beginning of each section through the winter at the end. And while you can cook many of these recipes throughout the year, you’ll always get the most flavorful results if you use fresh products at their peak of the season. If you’ve ever needed a little push to do more shopping at local farmers markets and less shopping at the supermarket, let this cookbook be it. Any time you need some inspiration, visit your farmers market and see what vegetables, fruit, and proteins grab your attention, then come back here to decide what to cook with it.
With all of these goals in mind, I put a lot of thought into how to present the recipes in this cookbook. I believe that every recipe should leave you with something beyond a tasty dish, whether it’s a new technique, an underappreciated ingredient, a surprising flavor pairing, or a single element—such as a sauce, dressing, crunchy topping, or pickle—that becomes part of your cooking repertoire. I’ve tried to make these “takeaways” as obvious as possible by calling them just that: Every recipe in his book calls out a main takeaway, and most will leave you with more than one gift that you can apply to other recipes as well as your own creations.
Most of the recipes in this book are inspired by dishes that I’ve cooked at my current restaurant, Loring Place, or the restaurants I’ve worked at in the past, including Union Square Cafe, Tabla, Core Club, and ABC Kitchen. Whenever I create a new dish for a restaurant, I write a recipe intended for the kitchen staff. These recipes assume a lot of culinary—and some institutional—knowledge on their part. If I handed you one of these recipes, you’d probably be lost. So we’ve adapted the recipes for this cookbook—and for you, the home cook—not only by filling in the gaps with specific instructions on the techniques required to cook them, but we’ve also taken great pains (and I use the word “pain” intentionally) to simplify the recipes as much as possible while still retaining what makes them excellent.
When you look at most of the recipes in this book, you’ll see the various elements of the recipe broken out into separate ingredient lists and instructions, as well as a section for finishing and serving the dish. Although it appears slightly unconventional when compared to most cookbooks, this mimics how most restaurant kitchens work: Various parts of a dish are prepared individually—some hours or even days in advance—then assembled right before serving. Tom Colicchio calls this “component cooking,” and I think it’s a great method for you to follow at home as well. Many of my recipe components can be made in advance, which not only saves you time and lets you plan ahead, but also helps you identify the components—and the takeaways—that you can use more broadly in your cooking. I hope many of these fundamental sauces, dressings, pickles, crunchy toppings, stocks, and so on become your new pantry staples, and that you discover many new uses for them beyond what I suggest in the book.
Lastly, I know many cooks—myself included—prefer to use recipes as inspiration, rather than following them to the letter. I encourage you to do this with my cookbook. If a recipe calls for sugar snap peas and you want to use green beans instead, go for it. If you can’t pickle something in time for dinner, swap in another pickle or other acidic ingredient. Hate halibut? Use cod instead. As long as you’re striving for synergy in your cooking—a balance of sweet, sour, spicy, and bitter flavors, as well as contrasting textures—you’re going to love the results.