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.
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