WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 21New books by culinary professionals
translate restaurant tools and techniques
for the home cookBY LIZ SCHEIER
P
ity the home cook, scrambling to feed the family
or wow dinner guests, armed with only a handful
of wonky knives, a set of ancient pans, and a list
of various dietary restrictions. To the rescue: sage
wisdom from professional chefs and their forth-
coming cookbooks.
Don’t fear the cleaver
To optimize restaurant recipes for home cooks, chef-authors
scale down the quantities, simplify the language, and leave
readers plenty of room to experiment.
“My recipes all show a very simple technique—roasting a
carrot, boiling an egg—and how the reader can dress it up,”
says Ned Baldwin, chef-owner of Houseman in New York City,
of How to Dress an Egg (HMH, Apr.). PW’s review called the
book, coauthored by Baldwin and veteran food writer Peter
Kaminsky, a “chatty everyman’s guide.” Learning fundamental
recipes and adapting them to a variety of dishes, Baldwin says,
is key to successful home cooking. “The world has had enough
of cute books about cute chefs in cute restaurants. I wanted to
write a useful book that helps people cook.”
Though professional chefs exude kitchen confidence, many
still remember fumbling around, trying to tell a simmer from
a boil and a sweet potato from a yam. “I was the worst cook in
America when I started—I shopped via the pictures on the
frozen food boxes,” says Nashville restaurateur Mee
McCormick. “Cookbooks had lots of ingredients I’d never
heard of.” In My Pinewood Kitchen (HCI, Apr.), named for her
Pinewood Kitchen & Mercantile venture, she worked to make
the gluten-free Southern recipes from her restaurant’s kitchen
easy to replicate, focusing on familiar terminology and
ingredients.
Brendan Pang, a MasterChef
Australia competitor who in 2019
launched a mobile dumpling
kitchen, Bumpling, in Perth, got
his culinary start by watching his
grandmother make pork wontons
from scratch. In This Is a Book About
Dumplings (Page Street, May), he
uses a similar show-and-tell style,
with step-by-step photos to help
newbies master the different styles
of dumpling folds. “There is a
common misconception that it
requires years of experience to be
able to craft a dumpling from
scratch,” he writes, “but when
broken down into the basics, all
you need is flour, water and a tasty
filling.”
Cooking like the pros isn’t just
about what they do but about how
they do it. Professional chefs don’t,
for instance, desperately dash from
fridge to mixing bowl to oven;
their work surfaces are laid out as
carefully as an operating theater.
“Read the whole recipe before you
get started, and make sure you have
the tools and techniques prepared,”
says Cronut creator Dominique
Ansel, who owns eponymous bak-
eries in Hong Kong, L.A., London,
and New York. In Everyone Can
Bake (Simon & Schuster, Apr.), he
gives a master class in how he com-
mands the kitchen.
“These are largely ambitious
projects, requiring equipment
such as metal rings and acetate,”
PW’s starred review said of the
book’s professional, precise recipes.
“Pastry-chef-wannabes will thrill
to this challenge.”