Description:
Charlie Trotter's eponymous Chicago restaurant is one of America's finest. Awarded Outstanding Chef by the James Beard Foundation in 1999, Trotter has also published a number of cookbooks celebrating his unique cuisine. Charlie Trotter's Meat & Game, a welcome addition to his professional cooking series, follows the approach of the previous books: glamorously oversized and beautifully illustrated with color photos, it presents recipes--100 plus, in this case--that showcase Trotter's remarkable cooking. Most readers will want the book for armchair fantasizing rather than cooking from; the recipes almost uniformly require hard-to-find or costly ingredients (sometimes both) and painstaking preparations. But Meat & Game presents Trotter at his most imaginative; anyone interested in refined and magnificently conceived American cooking will treasure the book. In chapters devoted to game in all its manifestations--from antelope, boar, and grouse, to hare, partridge, and quail (and including also lamb, pig, rabbit, and duck, among others)--Trotter offers his glorious specialties. These include Sweet-and-Sour Braised Lettuce Soup with Foie Gras and Radishes; Steamed Pheasant Breast with Hen of the Woods Mushrooms, Black Trumpet Mushrooms, and Alba White Truffles; and Roasted Scottish Hare Loin with Green Garlic, Braised Tiny White Leeks, and Caper-Cornichon Egg White Vinaigrette. Trotter offers suggestions for substitutions (Venison with Mole and Cashew Vinaigrette can be made with beef, chicken, pork, or, interestingly, lobster) which, improved practicality aside, offer an expended sense of dish-creation Trotter-style. With wine notes, a section on "basic" preparations such as Shellfish Oil and Dried Pickle Chips, and a glossary, the book revels in a great chef's food dreams, which all can, in imagination at least, share. --Arthur Boehm
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