Simple & Complex….

For a guy who loves restaurants and bars, it’s kind of ironic that the Insider has never given more than a cursory thumb through most cookbooks. While the pics often make me drool, I have never been tempted to buy one. Why? While I can grill a pretty mean rare steak and a not bad pork chop, I’m pretty useless in the kitchen.  Possessing neither the patience or the skills to pull off those fabulous recipes that shimmer and shimmy in front of you, my philosophy is why bother when you know a restaurant or bar can do it way better than you in the first place.  

But two cookbooks came across my desk recently, which are completely different, but oh so cool: Daniel – My French Cuisine and The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook. While I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery, it’s a kick to read what your fav blood and ink stained authors whip up for breaky, appies, soups and salads, entrees, side dishes, desserts and cocktails.  

The whole book is a treat in that you can learn about some crime novelists you might not know, tons of dark humor with basic recipes that look real tasty and simple enough that even I couldn’t screw up. A few recipes that I want to try: Kathy Reichs’ shrimp scampi, Mary Higgins Clark’s Giants Game Chili and Laura Joh Rowland’s crab cakes.  Interesting note on her crab cakes, she can’t do onions, so her cakes are onion free, which I couldn’t agree more with. As she notes most restaurant cakes are chock full of them and totally overwhelm the crab meat. But she’s served her cakes to many people who have never complained about the missing onions.  Crab shacks and restaurants, please take note. The MWA Cookbook is a fun, helpful cookbook for a mystery fan, less complicated recipes for someone who isn’t too ambitious in the kitchen. 

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But if you ARE ambitious or just love classic French cuisine, then you got to check out Daniel Boulud’s Daniel – My French Cuisine.  Boulud is a culinary legend, no resting on his laurels, still opening restaurants around  the world. But it’s his flagship Daniel in New York which carries the focus of his latest cookbook.  And what a focus. 

Boulud on bread. Yes! Oh why don’t more restaurants have that sour dough loaf with salt butter that Daniel features along with five or so other breads. 

Boulud on wine.  Oh, to be at one of Boulud’s and Robert Parker’s charity dinners, where Boulud cooked and Parker brought the wine, “often Rhones, dug out of his legendary cellar for the occasion.” 

Boulud on cooking it all. “ As you bite into a puffy langoustine tail, a pointy asparagus tip, or the perfect rectangle of sirloin, perhaps you wonder where the rest of the animal went. At a restaurant like Daniel, we actually crave the rest of them and we cook it all!” 

In a year where loutish behavior has come home to roost in many restaurants, it’s important to remember class acts like Daniel Boulud still exist. A few years ago I had the pleasure of conversing with Gavin Kaysen’s father at a San Diego Wine Festival luncheon when Kaysen was still Executive Chef at Café Boulud.  “I don’t have to pay when I visit so I make it up in tips.  Daniel treats his staff like gold.” Amen to that for 2018.