Synopses & Reviews
What is the allure of restaurant dining? Is it all smoke and mirrors, or are there actual techniques found in restaurant kitchens that could improve home cooking? Our editors at
Cook's Illustrated set out to find the answers. They surveyed top food editors across the country in search of favorite restaurant dishes. Recipes in hand, the test cooks headed into the kitchen.
The result is 150 restaurant-inspired recipes carefully made-over to meet the practical realities of the home kitchen, all while preserving the magic of restaurant dining. Restaurant Favorites at Home contains recipes from big-city restaurants like New York's Le Bernardin, and hidden gems from rural American inns. Youll find recipes like tuna tartare with sweet potato chips, a hearty grilled filet mignon with Maytag blue cheesewhipped potatoes, and a luscious chocolate cake.
In the process of adapting these restaurant favorites for the home kitchen, the test kitchen learned valuable lessons on do-ahead techniques that will save time in the kitchen, convenient methods of keeping food warm, easy tricks for plating and garnishing that dont require fancy tools, and the most essential kitchen gadgets no chef (or home cook) should be without. Also covered are favorite restaurant ingredients, from premium butters and frozen puff pastry to inexpensive domestic cheeses and chocolates that can be used over pricier imports.
This beautiful 400-page cookbook includes 150 hand-drawn illustrations of cooking techniques; 16 pages of full color photographs; and dozens of Cook-to-Cook notes; where restaurant chefs share their secrets of the trade with our test cooks. All of the recipes in Restaurant Favorites at Home are new, having never before appeared in Cook's Illustrated magazine or cookbooks.