The Cafe Cook Book: Italian Recipes from London's River Cafe - Hardcover

Rogers, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767902130 ISBN 13: 9780767902137

Publisher: Broadway Books, 1998

Synopsis

With their innovative interpretation of Italian country cooking, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers have made London's legendary River Cafe one of the most influential and popular restaurants in the world. Their first book, Rogers Gray Italian Country Cookbook, was an international bestseller. Now, in The Cafe Cook Book, they provide more than 200 sensational new recipes in the vibrant, accessible style that has become their trademark.

Gray and Rogers continue to provide fresh interpretations of Italian cuisine, and in this new book, their enthusiasm for roasting in a wood oven takes center stage. Home cooks can create the same results by roasting meats, fish, vegetables, or fruits at a high temperature on the lowest rack of the oven or by slow roasting over a longer period of time. With these techniques, flavors become more intense, concentrated, and delicious: Pumpkin wedges with thyme. Radicchio wrapped in pancetta. Turbot or monkfish with capers. Baked loin of tuna with coriander. Chicken pan-roasted with milk and marjoram. Crisp, thin-crusted pizza. Rustic, country-style bread. Apricot, nectarine, and plum bruschetta. Baked pears with valpolicella.

In addition, favorite recipes from the River Cafe include seasonal fruit drinks, antipasti, pastas, risotto, soups, ice creams, and desserts. The Cafe Cook Book is essential for everyone who loved the first book as well as for those who have yet to discover this irresistible style of cooking.

About this title

Review

At The River Café, chefs Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers serve dishes inspired by Italy's rustic regional cooking. In traditional Italian dishes, Prosciutto and Radicchio with Balsamic Vinegar and Wood-Roasted Asparagus, for example, they demonstrate the felicitous minimalism of fine Italian food. Lemon Risotto, livened with basil and mascarpone cheese, and Pigeons Braised in Red Wine, seasoned with chile, cumin, and Dijon mustard prove how these chefs are also creative. Most recipes in this book are short and simple; for Tagliatelle with Walnut Sauce, just pound the sauce ingredients together in a mortar and boil the pasta. However, dishes like Rise e Bisi, Risotto studded with green peas and seasoned with fresh mint, and most of the others in this book, require impeccable ingredients. If you go after them, you can turn out dishes as breathtakingly flavorful as those earning raves from London diners and restaurant critics; if you do not, the results will taste pleasing but not stunningly special. Martyn Thompson's many magnificent color photos of the food by Gray and Rogers are so precisely vivid and engaging that they recall work by Irving Penn. --Dana Jacobi

About the Author

Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers founded London's River Cafe in 1987. Their first book, Rogers Gray Italian Country Cookbook, was an instant bestseller and won both the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year and the BCA Illustrated Book of the Year awards.

Edition details

• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0767902130
• ISBN 13: 9780767902137
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352