Dana Stewart loves Charlie Palmer's Practical Guide to the New American Kitchen
By Dana Stewart
Published: January 31st, 2008 | 12:00am
Charlie Palmer is a super-famous American chef, most notably for his restaurants Aureole and Métrazur in New York City. His cookbook is short, concise, and extremely smart. There's an excellent introduction broken into three sections: essential equipment, pantry items, and techniques (i.e. fat rendering, thickening sauces, etc). One especially endearing bit is Palmer's timeline on page 10 that outlines his résumé, using an especially important dish to define each era of his culinary life.
The recipes are equally concise, usually using fewer than 10 ingredients and with total emphasis on flavor over frills. They're separated into totally logical sections, like "Cathartic Cooking" (pot roast, Guinness short ribs), "The Lazy Gourmand" (cooking for one), "Home Dates," "Breakfast for Dinner," and my personal favorite, "Desserts" (croissant french toast with whiskey and vanilla-maple apples? Ummm ... yes, please.)
The best part about this whole book? It's waterproof. For real. The pages are made out of some crazy space-age material that is not paper nor plastic but totally stain-proof (it's called a Durabook). Why no one has thought of a waterproof cookbook until now, I don't know.
Dana Stewart is Venus Zine's sassy editorial intern.
Issue #35
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