Patrick O'Connell's Refined American Cuisine : The Inn at Little Washington

Rating:
Summary: Long-awaited
Review: I had longed for a followup to "A Consuming Passion," and eagerly ordered this as soon as it became available. It was well worth the wait. The anecdotes and recipes make the book a double treasure. Unlike some cookbooks, these recipes are easy to follow. If there is a problem with the book, it is simply deciding with which recipe to begin. It brings back fond memories of when I was blessed to have dined there--an experience I hope to repeat many more times in the future. This book is for everyone from the casual to expeerienced cook, for the cookbook collector, and for all who love and appreciate good food and see food well prepared as an art form.

Rating:
Summary: Sumptuous Fine Tuned Cuisine
Review: One truly misses out if you don't read the intro material at the beginning of cookbooks. I've found this to become my favorite part, which truly then explains what one finds in the recipes which follow.

This one has great intro material. O'Connell was trained by reading cookbooks, and his cuisine can be defined by the answer he gives to a question most chefs must tire of hearing: What kind of food do you serve at your restaurant? His answer: refined American cuisine.

This combined with another theme in his intro is captivating and motivating: what is this dish trying to say? What his creations say is a sophisticated taste that knows how to highlight, embelish and create counterpoint tastes around, under which highlight and support the dominant taste or ingredient.

Refined cuisine taken to a high personal level describes this cookbook which is pointedly designed to the home gourmet.

Exceptional fare is to be found among such as: Grown-up Oatmeal Souflles; Jellied Melon Parfaits; Minature Ham Biscuits with Mascarpone Pepper Jelly; Chilled Plum Soup; Melange of Jumbo Lump Crab, Mango, and Avocado in a Tropical Fruit Puree; Shavings of Country Ham with Parmesan, Pears and Pine Nuts; Scallop, Ham and Pineapple Sandwiches; Eggplant Ravioli with Medallions of Maine Lobster and Tomato-Basil Butter; Pistachio-Crusted Lamb Chops on Rutabaga Rosti with Gingered Carrot Sauce; Scaloppine of Chicken with Grapefruit and Pink Peppercorns; Bay Scallops with Mushrooms, Peppers and Grilled Italian Sausage; Warm Plum Torte with Sweet Corn Ice Cream; Frozen Eggnog Souffle; A Pear Trio: Sorbet, Tart and Fallen Souffle.

Additionally there is nice Pantry section as well as brief history of this famous restaurant.

Will be one of "for sure" turn to cookbooks which is beautifully composed with large format like Trotter products, with same photographer providing full page wonderful shots as well as smaller formats as well.

To be treausred and used.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent on every reason for buying Restaurant Cookbook.
Review: Patrick O'Connell's second book, `Refined American Cuisine' does everything that a great restaurant cookbook should do, which are present really good recipes of dishes people like to eat. Chef O'Connell won my mind over early in the book when he writes that he was self-taught and that restaurant praxis has a lot to teach the home amateur cook. When I began my home schooling on cooking, this was one of the first principles I adapted and one reason I continue to buy and read cookbooks associated with good restaurants, even though some, like Emeril Lagasse's recent books, are advertisements for the restaurant(s).

Most cookbooks written by celebrity chefs generally include a sizable dollop of memoir or insights into culinary technique. As this Bulfinch Press book is both oversized and overpriced and has much the same appearance of Artisan publisher's books by Thomas Keller and Frank Stitt, I would expect one or the other or both, but this work rests its pricy quality squarely on the recipes, with just a few pages on the author's journey to cooking and the origins of his venue, The Inn at Little Washington in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 67 miles from `big Washington' on the Potomac.

The recipes can bear the weight. They are exactly what recipes from a highly acclaimed restaurant in a book for amateur cooks and foodies should be. Tasty, interesting, and relatively easy to make with few if any unusual ingredients. The crowning touch is a recipe for a potato, parsnip, and carrot gratin. How can I give anything less than five (5) stars to a book with a good recipe for a potato, parsnip, and carrot gratin made with butter?

I will even forgive the author for including several distinctively European classic dishes in a book about American cuisine. The appearance of most of these dishes shows how deeply American cooking is rooted in Western Europe. The very first recipe is for Rosti potatoes, which I understand is a traditionally Swiss dish. The headnotes quite honestly point this lineage out and proceed to give a recipe that would make the burgers of Geneva envious. The recipe is a combination of the crisp potato pancake, scrambled eggs, and smoked salmon. Yummy. Since the recipe calls for cooking the eggs very slowly in a double boiler, I wonder if the staff makes the eggs to order or cooks up a big bunch of scrambled eggs kept in holding on the steam table. This recipe appears in a very welcome chapter on breakfast dishes and is followed by a very original recipe for an oatmeal souffle. Chef O'Connell finally lands squarely in America with a cottage cheese and buttermilk pancake recipe which, along with the gratin, may be worth the price of the book. The waffles and grits in following brekkie recipes pale in comparison. I should note at this time that I am not a big fan of spending a lot of money for lots of pictures in cookbooks, but in this book, they work as well or better than I have seen elsewhere. As one major function of a good restaurant cookbook is to provide recipes for entertaining, the pictures do an especially good job here to show how to best present these dishes to guests.

The `Snacks and Canapes' chapter has the same mix of classic Americana such as miniature ham biscuits and Lilliputian bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with imported influences such as Green Bean tempura and wild mushroom pizza.

The `Soups' chapter is relatively short and is heavily influenced by French practice, as two recipes are for creamed and pureed soups while two others out of six (6) are cold soups. The `Cold First Courses' is also a melange of influences with carpaccios, Virginia ham with Italian Parmesan, Maine Lobster with Russian caviar, and tuna with daikon radish.

The much larger chapter `Hot First Courses' seems to have a distinctively American center of gravity with just two risottos among the eleven (11) American seafood classics and the archetypal macaroni and cheese with Virginia country ham.

The exceptional chapter on `Salads, Cheeses, And Intermezzos' is introduced by a delightful picture of mottled goats and very attractive goatherd. Something about the price of admission comes to mind.

The `Main Dishes' chapter rightfully has the largest number of recipes with a mix of French, Italian, and American techniques and ingredients which characterizes the whole book. Several of the dishes juxtapose traditional presentations with very untraditional ingredients as in the scaloppini of chicken with a grapefruit sauce. This recipe keeps company with traditional dishes for turkey, chicken and dumplings, lamb chops on rosti, beef tenderloin and braised duck legs.

The side dishes are pure gold. Here we have my lovely gratin with grits souffles, corn relish, peas and pearl onions, cranberry salsa, and cabbage braised in CHAMPAGNE!

The desserts cap a great collection of recipes with a table of sweets that may match Thomas Keller's famous cigarettes and coffee dish for whimsy. The featured joke here is `Human Dog Biscuits' made with shortbread. Other more serious desserts include a rhubarb sorbet, rosemary shortbread, eggnog souffle, sweet corn ice cream, and a classic brioche French Toast with strawberries.

The Pantry chapter has an excellent collection of all the usual stocks, doughs, vinaigrettes, syrups, and chipped veggies. Some classic southern preparations are here with red pepper coulis, pickled okra, and tomato vinaigrette. The recipes are all easier than you may expect.

O'Connell plays the local ingredients card, but trumps it on a regular basis with French, Italian, and Asian ingredients prominent in many dishes. Yet, he is true in spirit to this ideal by preferring Virginia ham to procuitto in lots of dishes.

I am really happy to have found this book and I recommend it strongly to everyone who likes such works.