Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures - Hardcover

Bayless, Rick; Bayless, Lanie; Bayless, Deann Groen

4.05

87 ratings by Goodreads

9780810982581: Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810982587 ISBN 13: 9780810982581

Publisher: Abradale, 2006

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Renowned chef, author, and television personality Rick Bayless has prepared gourmet meals for his share of celebrities. But when asked about his most memorable cooking experiences, he immediately answers, "with my family and friends, at my home or theirs-whether around the block or around the globe." Lanie Bayless has grown up cooking and eating with her chef-dad in their restaurant, at their home, and in other people's homes from Oklahoma City to Tokyo-with stops in Mexico, Morocco, France, Thailand, and Peru along the way. But her perspective is different from his. He's the celebrated chef with decades of cooking and traveling experience, and she's a teenager with ideas of her own.

Rick & Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures is a lively, multigenerational dialogue between two not-always-like-minded cooks. Each brings a unique outlook to the wide variety of flavors, cooking techniques, ingredients, and travel experiences they shared during the four years they worked on this book.

For Rick, sharing a meal is one of the most powerful catalysts for common understanding between parents and kids, friends and families, and people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This unique cookbook of more than 100 international classics (as well as down-home American favorites) offers simple, step-by-step recipes that will draw everyone to the table. Here the wisdom and experience of a famous chef are transformed into the everyday advice of an at-home dad.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

How, you might ask, can there be any rationale for combining Mexican, Moroccan, French, Thai, and Oklahoma down-home recipes in one cookbook? The answer is family. The Rick Bayless family in this case, he of the PBS cookings, of Chicago's Frontera Grill fame, and author of the enlightening Authentic Mexican, Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen, and Mexico One Plate at a Time.

Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures is the combined kitchen and culinary wisdom of a father/chef and daughter/teenager who has grown up in restaurants (much as her dad grew up in a barbecue restaurant in Oklahoma) and has traveled with her parents throughout the world, meeting chefs, exploring markets, tasting exotic treats. Some of those treats were rejected in ways only children can reject foods. Others came home and were folded into the foods a family calls its own and serves again and again. So, the first thing to keep in mind about Rick and Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures is that it is family-tested as well as home kitchen tested.

There are two voices in this book: Rick's (a modulated voice of authority) and Lanie's (the teenage voice of reality). And there are five basic sections that reflect the travels and broad culinary interests of the Bayless Family: Mexico, France, Morocco, Thailand, and Oklahoma. You'll find Huevos Rancheros in Mexico and Dutch Babies in France; Chicken Pie in Oklahoma, and Beef or Lamb Kebabs in Morocco. The Red Curry with Duck (Pork or Chicken) brought home from Thailand looks like a winner. These are do-together recipes, as in work together in the kitchen. Bayless sets apart the do-ahead tasks, then presents the recipe instruction in simple blocks. This dance has been well-choreographed. And what's a dance without a little music. You'll find suggestions for playlists while cooking, as well as suggestions for special treats to find while you are shopping in ethnic markets, things you might otherwise overlook. And then there are the stories. You can taste this cooking experience, and you can read about the life experience, through both the father's and the daughter's lens, of traveling and cooking together. It's the together part that makes this cookbook so special and so encouraging. --Schuyler Ingle

About the Author:

Rick Bayless is the chef-proprietor of Chicago's hugely successful Frontera Grill and its elegant neighbor, Topolobampo. He has been named Chef of the Year by the prestigious IACP and the James Beard Foundation. He is the author of four best-selling cookbooks and has produced and starred in two public television series, the second of which is in its fourth season.

Lanie Bayless grew up in a restaurant-literally. She has a room just above the Frontera Grill's kitchen. Lanie learned a lot of what she knows about food and cooking from her parents.

CHRISTOPHER HIRSHEIMER is the photographer of Authentic Vietnamese Cooking, The New Irish Table, and Fried & True.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.