L'Espalier is an elegant restaurant located in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, and I have owned it since 1988. Our food is inspired by the classic techniques of French cooking and the produce, meats, and artisanal cheeses of New England. We work with ingredients that are the freshest, in season, and abundant. We seek out the best-quality ingredients we can find, and when possible we purchase foods that are locally available and organic.
My philosophy about fresh ingredients dates back to my early childhood. I grew up with my grandparents on their farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We all helped harvest vegetables, collect eggs, and prepare meals with the bounty from our farm and nearby farms. I learned from my grandmother that fresh, local, seasonal ingredients are the best—and I have insisted upon using them as much as possible throughout my professional cooking career. I always advise home cooks to work with ingredients that are readily available—so please do not feel bound by every last ingredient in the recipes in this book. If a particular item isn't in season, of sufficient quality, or available in your local market, substitute something else. And as you cook, remember that the meal would not exist without the producer of the ingredients. Get to know, and support, your local farmers by visiting local vegetable stands and farmers' markets regularly. I guarantee that you will be glad you did, and your cooking will be better for it.
Though L'Espalier is known as a special-occasion restaurant—more marriage proposals take place in our dining room than in any other restaurant in Boston—we aim to be relaxed and friendly while providing exquisite service that makes our guests feel special. And we love to let our hair down and have fun. That's one of the reasons why in 2002 L'Espalier's wine director, Erik Johnson, and I started our Wine Mondays program, which is the inspiration for this book.
We host Wine Mondays every Monday night (unless it's a major holiday or the restaurant is closed for some reason), and it's a fun and relaxed way to start the week. Guests come in and enjoy open seating (so they can meet new people and perhaps make new friends) and a four-course meal with wines at each course, all centered around a theme (such as Burgundy, Italy, sparkling wine, and even occasions like Halloween). Erik Johnson is the most entertaining wine director in town, and he leads the educational component of the evening, talking briefly about each wine and how and why it pairs well with certain foods. So our guests learn something, and usually laugh quite a bit in the process. The food on Wine Mondays isn't quite as complicated as the food we serve on our regular menu (which changes nightly according to what's fresh)—and our guests always rave about it.
Wine Mondays has always been affordably priced—as of this writing it's just $60 for all four courses and their accompanying wines—and that's part of its raison d'être. We want this night to be as accessible as possible and to encourage people who haven't visited us to come on in and get to know us.
For this book, we selected 16 of our favorite Wine Mondays menus from recent years, four from each season, and we present them here along with information about the wines we paired with each of the courses. These are the actual wines we chose when we served these menus at L'Espalier, and some of the menus are from a year or two ago. This is why you'll notice a range of vintages, and some of the older bottles may no longer be available. Therefore, we always offer suggestions in the Wine Notes sections for finding other good wines to try with each dish. Of course, we love the winemakers we work with and encourage you to seek out their products (even if you buy a later vintage) so that you can try them and see what you think.
Because we hope you will use this book when entertaining friends and family, each menu and all the recipes are set up with a dinner party in mind: four (not-too-big) courses all serving six people. (Note: If you are hosting a dinner for six people, plan to have a bottle of wine for each course so that everyone gets a generous taste of each wine. Of course, it's never a bad idea to have extra wine on hand.)
You probably won't be throwing a dinner party every night, so please also use the recipes here for more casual entertaining or everyday cooking. If you want to choose just one or two menu items to serve as your meal, then you can plan on each recipe feeding two to four people nicely. Having four courses for six people is merely a guideline.
Which brings me to an important point: Don't feel compelled to do everything that I recommend in this book. I hope that you feel free to use your creativity in the kitchen. This book is meant to inspire and motivate you, not to make you feel stressed out about obtaining every single ingredient and cooking every single thing. If you don't have the time to make every single component of a dish, that's fine. You will see as you read through the recipes that many involve multiple elements, and in many cases just using one or two of the elements is perfectly sufficient. Of course, if you do have time to do it all, trust me, the results will be amazing.
Remember, this book is a tool, not a set of hard and fast rules. The recipes are easy to follow and understand, and explain clearly how to use many intriguing ingredients and techniques that I hope you'll want to try, even if you've never tried them before. I've spent decades in the kitchen, and I want you to have an increased appreciation and love of the art of cooking, so I am passing along my knowledge to you—do with it what you will. And have fun!