For anyone who aspires to restaurant-chef-type food but not the long ingredient lists and interminable cooking directions, here’s the perfect book. Melissa Clark retains the spark of genius in the chefs’ original time-consuming recipes, but pares them down (interrupts the chefs) to their most essential, simple elements, allowing any cook to create four-star cuisine at home without a staff of sous-chefs, an unlimited budget, and an entire weekend to fritter away. “Chef, Interrupted” is like taking a cooking class from not one or two but more than fifty world-renowned chefs across a broad spectrum of expertise, including seafood with Eric Ripert and dessert with Claudia Fleming, American standouts like Tom Colicchio and Wylie Dufresne, and the international flavors of Norman Van Aken, Bobby Flay, and Marcus Samuelsson. For the past decade, Melissa Clark has made a name for herself by doing one thing very adeptly: making chefs’ recipes accessible to home cooks, whether through coauthoring books with the likes of David Bouley and Daniel Boulud or writing “The Chef” columns and other articles in the “New York Times,” Melissa is a genius at discovering what’s really great about a chef’s recipe, then simplifying it–keeping the part where the recipe is inventive and delicious, and then interrupting the chef when it gets out of hand. The result–this book–is a remarkable combination of creative cuisine and real-life practicalities, and “Chef, Interrupted “offers a fantastic panoply of mouthwatering dishes. From salads like Suzanne Goin’s Arugula-Mint Salad with Apricots and Cumin to fish like Christian Delouvrier’s Roasted Cod with Brandade Potatoes, from Jonathan Waxman’s Pollo alForno with Panzanella to Tom Douglas’s Citrus-Braised Pork Shank with Bread-Crumb Gremolata, from Bill Telepan’s Heirloom Pea Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche to Claudia Fleming’s Goat Cheese Cake with Thyme-Macerated Raspberry Compote–this is restaurant food that you can really and truly make at home.
