Cooking from the Heart: 100 Great American Chefs Share Recipes They Cherish

Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: At first I thought, wow! a nice book, a good gift. The premise of 100 great American chefs sharing stories and recipes for a good cause. But both the tales and the recipes exceeded my expectations. A terrific addition to my extensive cookbook collection.

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars isn't enough when there are 100 stars chefs here!
Review: Since we've elevated chefs to "star status" these days, we want to know all about what appliances and ingredients they use, what they themselves eat, etc. So ONE of the great things about this collection is the inside look you get at each chef's personal history. Really touching stories like Marcel Desaulnier, while stationed in Viet Nam, sharing the homemade chocolates his mother had sent. All this besides the fact that the book itself is gorgeous and just reading the recipes is entertainment enough. And as if I needed another way to rationalize buying the book, the fact that a portion of the proceeds go to an organization committed to ending hunger (Share Our Strength) had me sold. Buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: Celebrities, sure, but something even bigger to celebrate
Review: Sure, pick up the book because it features new recipes from umpteen James Beard Award winners, from most of the affable chefs who have television shows, from these "chefs who are the new rock stars." Okay, that might be the way you find the book. But inside, it's all storytelling. Rosen, the book's writer, coaxed the most familiar and family-inspired stories from these celebrity chefs to accompany their recipes. (And the recipes themselves also have a very accessible, personable feel to them: nothing too fanciful or formidable.)
A review, which put me onto the book said, "you know feel-good movies...this is a feel-good cookbook." It's a book to read at the kitchen table while you have breakfast, dreaming up what to cook for dinner. Dreaming of those anecdotes you tell about your own family's favorite meals. It's a fireside book. An emotional book: it about WHY we want to go to the trouble of cooking wonderful things for people we love. It's THE ideal book to give as gift, full of heart.

Rating:
Summary: Celebrities, sure, but something even bigger to celebrate
Review: Sure, pick up the book because it features new recipes from umpteen James Beard Award winners, from most of the affable chefs who have television shows, from these "chefs who are the new rock stars." Okay, that might be the way you find the book. But inside, it's all storytelling. Rosen, the book's writer, coaxed the most familiar and family-inspired stories from these celebrity chefs to accompany their recipes. (And the recipes themselves also have a very accessible, personable feel to them: nothing too fanciful or formidable.)
A review, which put me onto the book said, "you know feel-good movies...this is a feel-good cookbook." It's a book to read at the kitchen table while you have breakfast, dreaming up what to cook for dinner. Dreaming of those anecdotes you tell about your own family's favorite meals. It's a fireside book. An emotional book: it about WHY we want to go to the trouble of cooking wonderful things for people we love. It's THE ideal book to give as gift, full of heart.

Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: You can tell when you pick up the book: quilting stitches are embossed on the cover. Quilt patches make up the cover: eggs, pie, soup, chicken. There are no photographs inside. No garnishes. Nothing about piling up the food into teetery towers and drizzling essences of something or another on a gigantic plate. YET these are America's best-known chefs. At least half of them must be James Beard Award winners. Their own cookbooks and restaurants have won most of the other awards. Cooking from the Heart is 100 chefs making up this treasury of family recipes, of familiar (to them) favorites, all designed for a home cook. Sure, there are a few recipes with a couple sub-recipes (you can't make a pie in one step...but we all do it without grousing). Sure, there are a few (but only a few) that have an ingredient that might require a trip to specialty market. But that's part of the joy in this kind of a book: finding something new to add to the standards in your own recipe file.
Unlike a lot of chef-written books, this one tells stories. Funny accounts of travels or mishaps or family members. Really touching tributes to grandparents, mentors, loved ones. And then the recipes themselves make this book a stand out. Try these titles: Brown-butter apple tart, blue cheese grits with wild mushrooms, crab cakes with a fried corn sauce. Or try something incredibly festive: a leg of lamb cooked for three days with a pound and a half of garlic--that's 1 1/2 pounds: marinated for a day, cooked for 7 hours, and rested for a day, resulting in something so tender and aromatic... A wild recipe from Philip Boulot in Portland, Oregon. The book is full of these simmered recipes that fill the house with something that's divine and earthly: Emeril's Sunday pot of bolognese sauce, John Ash's grandmother's beef stew, Suzanne Goin's devil's chicken with mustard and leeks.
Which makes this book sound too strong in the meat department, which isn't the case. Tons of great seafood, lots of homey desserts, and a big range of starters and first courses. It really is a quilt: bright patches from all across America, from every cuisine, from so many great talents. And like a quilt, something to pass on and cherish.