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Books : Alfred Portale's Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook |
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Books : 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 Manufacturer: Broadway Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: October 13, 1997 Publisher: Broadway Release Date: October 13, 1997 Sales Rank: 85263 Studio: Broadway Editorial Review: 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:  - Some recipes are daunting, but a few marvelous gems!Some of the recipes in here are beyond the scope of everyday cooking, to be sure, however, this has become my favorite cookbook for holidays and special company. The recipes will stretch your cooking skills, and be worth all the effort. There are two absolute gems: the seafood risotto and the chocolate bread pudding are to die for. Your guests will rave and rave and rave.
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