Kitchen Conversations: Robust Recipes and Lessons in Flavor from One of America's Most Innovative Chefs - Hardcover

Goldstein, Joyce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688138667 ISBN 13: 9780688138660

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1997

Synopsis

Kitchen Conversations is a double portion of culinary wisdom from one of the great cooks and cooking teachers of our time. It is filled with fabulous Mediterranean meals, as Joyce takes you on a luscious tour of her favorite cuisines: 160 sparkling and satisfying recipes from Italy, North Africa, Spain, Greece, and Turkey.

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Goldstein started teaching more than two decades ago at her own California Street Cooking School and she continues to teach home and professional cooks in schools around the country.

Reviews

Reading this new volume from the author of Taverna (1996) and Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook (1994) is indeed like sitting at a kitchen table listening to an authoritative and articulate chef discuss her trade. Goldstein, who recently closed her San Francisco restaurant, Square One, aims to help the home cook become "a culinary juggler, playing with the balance of flavors." In an eloquent introduction as well as in the short "conversations" that accompany the recipes, she instructs on using the basic tastes of sweet, sour, salt and bitter to create boldly flavored Mediterranean dishes. She explains why adding anchovy and lemon zest brings out the sweetness in spinach and suggests that an oregano- and garlic-spiked Pork Souvlaki profits from the addition of allspice and honey for "a subtle play of sweet and sour." In chapters from Appetizers to Desserts, Goldstein encourages creative thinking in rearranging flavors: Greek-Inspired Ouzo, Fennel, and Orange-Marinated Fish is a harmonious balance of bitter and sweet; Ciceri e Tria, (fresh pasta with chick peas and arugula from Apulia) is given a kick with hot red peppers. Evan Goldstein, the author's son and the family wine consultant, provides a creative introduction that adds wine to his mother's discussion of basic tastes and offers wine suggestions for nearly every recipe. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For years Goldstein has held sway over San Francisco's food scene from the kitchen of her award-winning Square One Restaurant. An ability to match wines to her distinctive California "fresh food" approach to cooking has made her diner a haven for foodies in a town not lacking in haute cuisine. Goldstein's restaurant food is unpretentious--good news for the home cook who wants to reproduce her efforts. The only thing standing in the cook's way is access to the same quality ingredients that Goldstein receives from her purveyors. Goldstein's forte is her ability to adapt classic recipes, such as the famous French chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Goldstein's version updates fowl to halibut, but she doesn't kowtow to contemporary tastes by forgoing the dish's heavy cream sauce. This work will prove popular in California library collections and wherever patrons look for new, innovative cooking techniques. Mark Knoblauch

Until recently, Goldstein (The Mediterranean Kitchen, LJ 11/15/89) was chef/ owner of Square One, one of San Francisco's most popular restaurants. Her food is known for its vivid and intense flavors, and her new book is an exploration of flavor combinations and what makes them work in dishes from Tuna Carpaccio with Radishes, White Beans, and Mustard Vinaigrette to Roast Sea Bass with Radicchio, Olives, and Rosemary (her fish dishes are particularly delicious). Goldstein, who is also a cooking teacher, believes that "most palates are trainable" (not everyone would agree), and her enthusiasm for such training is evident in the headnotes and the "Kitchen Conversations" that accompany every recipe, explaining why the flavors work together, suggesting flavor experiments to try, and questioning the cook/reader ("Did you put in enough salt?"). Some cooks will be fascinated by the other possibilities she opens up; others will be content just to make her recipes as they are.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688138667
• ISBN 13: 9780688138660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 378