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Alfred Portale's Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook |
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Alfred Portale's Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook |
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by: Alfred Portale
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5097471 EAN: 9780385482103 ISBN: 0385482108 Label: Broadway Languages: Manufacturer: Broadway Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: October 13, 1997 Publisher: Broadway Release Date: October 13, 1997 Studio: Broadway Editorial Review: Product Description: Home cooks rarely have the chance to learn about cooking firsthand from one of the nation's most revered chefs. But in this cookbook, the first of its kind, Chef Alfred Portale offers his readers the opportunity to do just that. The chef of the Gotham Bar and Grill offers not only recipes, but also a peek into the mind of a chef--sharing a host of suggestions, anecdotes, and advice designed to release the reader from recipe dependence and inspire him or her to think like a chef at home. With Portale at the helm, the Gotham has won praise from the critical world (four consecutive three-star reviews from the New York Times), the public (rated among New York's top five restaurants in the last six Zagat surveys), and the culinary community (Portale was named Best Chef in New York by the James Beard Foundation in 1993). In this book, Portale reveals the secrets that led to this success. More than a hundred dishes, comprised of over two hundred recipes, await the reader. But more than that, Portale has loaded these pages with notes on variations and flavor building that indicate how the recipes might be changed by a substitution of ingredients or enriched with additional elements. There are also ample "thinking ahead" tips, and bountiful advice about special ingredients and techniques. Portale also offers both restaurant and family-style presentation tips--magnificently brought to life by more than two hundred photographs--and explains the inspiration for many of his dishes, and how he turned that inspiration into culinary reality. As he says in his introduction, "My hope is for you to be able to master these recipes and confidently use them in a variety of dishes and contexts of your own design, perhaps creating your own signature dishes." After graduating first in his class from the Culinary Institute of America, Alfred Portale lived in France and worked in some of its most famous kitchens. Shortly after he returned to the United States, he took the reins of the Gotham Bar and Grill, where he promptly established himself as one of the most influential figures in New American Cuisine. He divides his time between New York City and East Hampton, Long Island. Amazon.com Review: Cookbooks by chefs tend to be challenging, obscure, even inappropriate for most home cooks. By contrast, Alfred Portale's Gotham Bar and Grill is articulate, revealing, vivid, and inviting. It is "the next best thing to a day in the kitchen" with Portale. This New York City chef is famous for his elaborate presentations and for creating complex dishes. For some of the recipes, progressive photos show how to duplicate the restaurant's spectacular plating of a dish. (Or you can follow the less ambitious "Everyday Presentation.") For others, you will have to go by the detailed text and a large color shot of the finished dish. This well-designed book uses colored boxes of text and easy-to-read type to help you follow the recipes, many of which are long. Cooks willing to spend money for quality ingredients and commit to serious time in the kitchen should enjoy rave results with dishes such as Squab Salad with Couscous, Currants, and Curry Vinaigrette; Salmon with Artichokes a la Grecque; and Warm Chocolate Cake with Toasted Almond Ice Cream. Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating: - One of the Best Restaurant CookbooksThe basic problem with most restaurant cookbooks is that they're all about impressing you with the simplicity and beauty of the stuff they serve. There are exceptions, of course, like The French Laundry Cookbook, which doesn't pull its punches and lets you know just how difficult and complicated everything is. But Portale is a much better teacher: he wants you to make the dishes, and cares a lot less that you present them his way. If you are comfortable in the kitchen with complex, multi-step cooking, the sort of thing where you make one thing one day and another the next early afternoon and then finish the dish a la minute, you will find everything here marvelously easy. If you want 30-minute cooking, you will still find gems here to savor. What stuns me about this cookbook, though, is that once you get the hang of what Portale has in mind for a given dish or approach, you can replicate it without a recipe. My favorite example here is a pasta dish made with pea shoots, prosciutto, garlic, butter, and cheese. Once you understand what he's doing --- making the sauce by using the heat of the pasta and a dab of the pasta-boiling water, thus emulsifying the butter, binding it with cheese, and simultaneously heating up all the chopped ingredients --- you can repeat the dish perfectly with whatever comes to hand that seems appropriate. Conversely, many of the truly difficult and finicky things here can be done almost entirely in advance. He's got the famous Gotham Chocolate Cake, which you make 100% in advance --- in fact, you should make it at least several days in advance, and let it sit in the freezer. To serve, you take out your main course from the oven, shut it off, and put the cake --- still wrapped in seran-wrap --- in the oven, perhaps with the door cracked. When you want dessert, peel and slice, and add a little ice cream. This is the fancy home-cook's dream dessert: insanely tasty, intricate and obviously hard work (which it is), but totally brainless and zero work on the day of the dinner party. To top it all off, Portale can write. I don't know if he had a cookbook writer assistant here --- I'm guessing he did --- but he's got a voice and a manner that is very much his own. You get a feel for him in a way you don't with most restaurant chefs writing cookbooks: he comes to life in the way Julia Child, Paul Prudhomme, Diana Kennedy, Jacques Pepin, or Marcella Hazan come to life. But his thing is he's a restaurant chef, and he wants you to calm down about that and just learn a little how to cook. Ultimately, I find that this is one of the small number of cookbooks that I reach for when lacking inspiration, when not sure how to go about something, or whatever. He doesn't give you everything from soup to nuts --- that's Child. He doesn't give you a specific regional cuisine --- that's Kennedy, Prudhomme, Hazan, etc. He doesn't give you 100% perfect technique all the time --- that's Pepin. He gives you a balanced approach that does a little of everything, very elegant, very modern, and entirely do-able for the serious home cook. Rating: - Truly an excellent cookbookThis cookbook is beautifully done. Steps include tips and photos. Complicated recipes are explained well. Great restaurant, great chef, great addition to my kitchen Rating: - Alfred Portale Shares His SecretsI am a current Culinary Arts Student, and recently just bought this. It is amazing. Nice pictures of the food and a real nice insight into what got Alfred into the business. I really loved how he showed "The Gotham Presenation", basically the exact way he serves his plates in his restaurant in NYC. The only real drawback of this book ( On a basis that I have a passion to cook) is that he doesnt go too in depth into fancy garnishes and how Gotham Bar and Grill continues to shine on a daily basis. Trade secret, probably. Anyways an excellent book, you can never have to many. I would also recommend, Thomas Keller's French Laundry, and Bo Friberg's book on Pastries, plus Sarah Labensky's Revised text "On Cooking"<<<<<< A must have for any1 who really wants to learn how to really cook. Thanks Rating: - A keeper with crucial techniques and insightPortale is not trying to train you to step up to the saucepan at Gotham and will not have you spending your Saturdays peeling grapes a la Thomas Keller's "French Laundry" cookbook. He's also not trying to give you a complete course in basic techniques a la Julia Child's "The Way to Cook". Instead, what you get is more of a philosophy and a sketchbook. The introductory essay, titled "Cooking Like a Chef at Home", is both insightful and inspiring. The recipes, which are presented in their basic form and presentation are sometimes followed with "flavor building" tips (usually additions, like roast shallots for lamb), "variations" (usually substitutions, say of sea bass for red snapper), and sometimes "Gotham Presentation". Given Portale's trademark towering presentations, it's disappointing that there's not more detail in the book (though he does let you in on how the seared tuna with papardelle and red wine sauce is put together in the restaurant, which is one of my all time favorite dishes). Judging from the end of the introductory essay, Portale's just tired of people focusing on presentation more than flavor. The terse writing and lack of meticulously detailed instructions is a huge contrast with my three other favorite cookbooks named after restaurants: Deborah Madison's "Greens", Alice Waters' "Chez Panisse", and Barbara Tropp's "China Moon". I typically consult all of these books and a few more when I cook something to triangulate both technique and proportions. For instance, consider Portale's recipe for mashed potatos (half of page 206). There are two fundamental clues in this recipe that have transformed my spuds. First, after boiling the potatos, Portale has you return them to the pan to evaporate extra moisture. The critical idea is that the potatos should be dry before you mash them. (Also important for making light gnocchi.) It's the idea and goal that are important -- other chefs get dry potatos differently, say by not peeling or quartering the potatos first. Second, use a potato ricer. The difference between that and blending or using a masher is amazing. You'll have to read other cookbooks to learn that you shouldn't overmash your potatos or they'll become sticky. Ironically, the potatos at the restaurant are not riced, at least with the lamb chops, although I imagine they might be with other dishes; the point is that once you know what's going to happen, you have control. Sadly, Portale doesn't provide photos or instructions on the Gotham presentation, which is in a large scoop set atop a carved-out baked potato with the trademark flying herbs. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I live a block and a half from Gotham Bar and Grill and it's one of my favorite restaurants in the world. If you go there, you can get a copy of this book signed along with a nice little ink illustration of a simmering dish by the chef.
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