Description:
When Reed Hearon, one of San Francisco's most popular chefs, opened an Italian restaurant with a wood-burning oven, he decided to focus on simple, carefully prepared, traditional dishes. His biggest coup was getting Rose Pistola to lend the restaurant her name, adding memories of the beloved North Beach saloon where this gritty, colorful woman, also known for her Old-country cooking, held court for decades. At Rose Pistola, Hearon focuses mostly on Ligurian cuisine, made using the best local ingredients. This book, written with native San Franciscan and knowledgeable Italian cook Peggy Knickerbocker, introduces you to more than 140 of these Northern Italian dishes, including Trofie, dumpling-like pasta, served with pungent basil pesto, and with Farinata, pizza-like chickpea crusts served topped with tuna and sun-dried tomatoes or fresh sage leaves, tiny olives, and onions slowly melted in olive oil until they caramelize. Hearon explains how home cooks should make his Roasted Fish with Potatoes and Artichokes, punctuated with tiny olives and a splash of white wine, and satisfying antipasti like Baked Ricotta, served with garlic-laden arugula purée and grilled or toasted country bread. Instructions for making ricotta cheese from milk, slowly oven-baking white beans, and preparing fresh, lemon-zested Basilade for finishing dishes, will enlarge any cook's repertoire. Hearon offers a bountiful Cioppino, the aromatic, brothy stew native to the Golden Gate city. Like most Italian and Californian cooks, Hearon relies heavily on the quality of what is local. He also makes a brilliant Braised Chicken with Turnips, Potatoes, and Carrots, easy for almost anyone, anywhere to reproduce. Desserts feature fresh berries and other fruit, but chocoholics will adore the Budino, an alluringly butter-rich baked chocolate pudding enrobed in creamy ganache and covered in a layer of cake. As Hearon suggests, though, you can be in heaven serving the pudding unadorned and cut into slices. Historic black-and-white photos and yummy-looking color photos of the food give this book a lively sense of history and make you yearn to eat at the trendy Rose Pistola, selected as Best New Restaurant in the United States in 1997 by the James Beard Foundation. --Dana Jacobi
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