Nightly Specials: 125 Recipes for Spontaneous, Creative Cooking at Home Review

Posted by Juanita Avenue on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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(More customer reviews)`Nightly Specials' is written by Michael Lomonaco with an assist by ace New York City celebrity chef co-writer Andrew Friedman and with photographs by the Rothstein husband and wife team who also did Eric Ripert's `Return to Cooking' opus. Michael Lomonaco was the head chef at the Windows on the World recipe on September 9, 2001. By pure chance, he was not in the World Trade Center when the terrorist attacks occurred.

The premise of this book is clear made clear in the title, as it focuses on the restaurant chef's practice of constructing daily specials from either what is especially good in the market today or ingredients which may be left over from a dish yesterday which did not move as well as expected. While this is a great lesson for home cooks, Lomonaco cannot take a lot of credit for revealing and elaborating on this practice, as Tom Colicchio did it brilliantly in his first book, `How to Think Like a Chef'. Colicchio's book did not impress me greatly when I first read it, but constant repetition of this principle by countless other chefs have revealed exactly how important this technique is to the professional chef. And, as my skill in cooking grows, I find myself going more and more to this way of thinking in deciding what to make for dinner today.

Almost all celebrity chef books strive to either present the very best techniques from their fine dining restaurant or make a genuine attempt to adapt their favorite home and restaurant recipes to the skills and budget of a home kitchen. The very best of the first type are, for example, `The French Laundry Cookbook' by Keller and Ruhlman and `Tru' by Rick Tramonto. These books make no pretense that you will be able to duplicate their dishes. The purpose of these books is to show you how it is done in first class restaurants and possibly give you some ideas in general for improving home cooking. This is not to say that none of these recipes are possible at home, it is just that the author does nothing to simplify them, and makes no apologies for that fact. The very best of the second type of book are, for example, `Wolfgang Puck Makes it Easy' and `Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home'.

Lomonaco's book is much closer to the second type than to the first, as he is teaching a common professional practice to the amateur cook with recipes they should have no difficulty in doing in the home kitchen. Lomonaco adds to the utility of the book to the home chef by providing several recipes for `Snacks, Sandwiches, and Pizzas'. This seems to be a trend, as Wolfgang's new book does exactly the same thing.

When I was an information systems professional and just as much an inveterate book buyer as I am now, I would consider a $50 book on a programming language, database system, or design technique worth the cost if it had but a single technique capable of improving what I did in some systematic way. My attitude towards cookbooks is very similar in that all it takes to turn my opinion from `ho hum' to `oh boy' is one unfamiliar and interesting recipe which is easy to make, yet can make a big impression on fellow diners. Recipes for risotto or polenta or spaghetti or ceviche or braises or chowders or roast chicken or gratins or pizzas or paellas or even sandwiches really don't make a big impression, as I have whole books devoted to each of these subjects. In some cases, I have a whole shelf of books which covers the subject. So, what can chef Michael tell me which is new under my personal sun. As I am a sucker for both new cookware and for squid recipes, the thing which caught my eye was a squid casserole in a Spanish cazuela, a low porcelain dish with a strong family resemblance to a Tart Tatin pan, except that it's sides seem to be a bit lower.

So what about this book will turn on those of you who do not have 300 cookbooks? First, the chapters cover the full range of dishes from salads, soups, and sandwiches to shellfish, fin fish, birds, and beasts and berry desserts. So, this book touches all the bases, with lots of stops at traditional stations with recipes for all those risottos, polentas, and pastas I cited above. Then, there are the variations Lomonaco gives to each of his 125 recipes, so that, in practice, the author is really giving suggestions for up to three times this many dishes. So, if you find one you like, you get two or three ways of changing it around to fit the market or your pantry on any particular day.

My hunch is that this aspect of the book will be more valuable to a home cook who cooks often, at least three times a week, but who still does not have an extensive cookbook library. I cite experienced cooks because the `Nightly Special' variations given by chef Lomonaco do not say a lot about how much of the substitute ingredient to use, so there is some danger of overdoing it. And, as Mario Batali reminded me last night on his Christmas special, it's all about the balance of ingredients.

Another aspect of the book's offering is that it offers substitutions for ingredients that may not appeal to everyone. If, by chance, you happen to dislike scallops, yet you like shrimp, the book will tell you how to make the dish with both. This is how the book will be valuable to the occasional cook. While I have not read Pam Anderson's book, I suggest Lomonaco's volume would be a great companion to `How to Cook Without a Book'.

Recommended professional recipes and a big lesson in the use of the pantry for the home cook.

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