Big City Cooking, Cookbook of the Day

by Eric Diesel, Posted Oct 3rd 2008 @ 3:00PM

If you're prone to chef crushes, you could do a lot worse than Matthew Kenney -- and that's solely on the basis of his food. Though Kenney is now a primary practioner of the raw food movement, foodies who found themselves in SoHo during the late 1990s/early 2000s will remember him for Canteen, a restaurant that emphasized the fusion influences that pre-date his raw food conversion and are the highlight of Big City Cooking. But don't be intimidated: Kenney's magic is in revealing the essence of a flavor, an ingredient, or a technique, and thus, though it is essentially a restaurant cookbook, Big City Cooking is very easy to understand and use -- always with delicious results.

The thesis of the book is that the abundance of ingredients and mash of cultures in a city can be the inspiration for a cook's creativity. That's a great idea, and a true one, but I don't believe that fusion influences are specifically urban -- in this day of super supermarkets, including those online, one doesn't have to live in a big city to have za'aatar in one's spice cabinet or, accordingly, on one's flatbread. (In fact, most of those "urban" ingredients or techniques originated with indigenous cuisines.)

The strength of this cookbook is the dishes themselves, which are organized by technique and which highlight a diversity of ingredients. Thus there are sections on raw and steam cooking, sauteeing, grilling, roasting, and stewing. Within each are recipes from appetizers and salads straight through to desert, all of them accessible to the home cook.

There is a menu section, but as this book is meant to spark creativity, why not plan your own? As it's autumn, serve a dinner of maple-balsamic grilled pork chops with pecans and ginger (page 101) accompanied by a saute of mushrooms and farro (page 143) that even nonfungivores like myself will love. inaugurate the meal with the arugula and manchego salad with almonds and quince dressing (page 37) that I'm convinced played a role in placing manchego onto the American palate. As with most of the recipes in Big City Cooking, these are all very simple to prepare, so you'll have some time to indulge yourself with making and your family with serving a simple, perfect banana cake (page 130).

Big City Cooking crested the celebrity chef cookbook wave, and still outperforms it. Just as Kenney has turned to raw food cooking, so have we moved away from fusion cooking. But any book in which both zucchini and salmon are turned into carpaccio, or a lamb tagine is spiked with both pomegranates and oranges, suggest that we revisit fusion for its ability to whet our appetite, not to mention feed it. Big City Cooking does more than highlight a Chef's fluency while at the top of his game -- it inspires those of us who love to cook, to feed people, and to eat.

Filed Under: Cookbook Spotlight, Chefs & Restaurants, How To, Restaurants
Tags: asian, big city cooking, BigCityCooking, celebrity chef, cookbook of the day, CookbookOfTheDay, fall, fusion, Matthew Kenney, MatthewKenney, mediterranean