Description:
Apples, salmon, wild mushrooms, and Dungeness crab--these are some of the ingredients celebrated in Greg Atkinson's The Northwest Essentials Cookbook, an exploration of regional bounty and the cooking it inspires. Atkinson, food writer and chef at Canlis in Seattle, offers 150 accessible recipes peppered with personal culinary narratives evoking his own Northwest "journey." Readers interested in one of the country's most fertile and gastronomically distinguished regions, and those seeking straightforward yet polished recipes for its cooking, should be delighted. Organized by the ingredients (which, in addition to the above, include stone fruit, herbs, berries, oysters, and mussels, among other seafood), the book features recipes for the likes of Pork Tenderloin Sautéed with Morels, Grilled Singing Scallops on the Half Shell, and Warm Chocolate Hazelnut Cake. There's a definitive recipe for apple pie, a marvelous Dungeness crab gumbo and, among more modish offerings, Flame-Broiled Arctic Char with Cherry Salsa. If Atkinson's introductory essays on, for example, an early morning encounter with a wave-skimming salmon strain for effect, his recipes are always inviting and his culinary information comprehensive. Of particular interest and usefulness are his chapter-by-chapter investigations of apple, salmon, herb, and other food varieties (his discussion of apple types--he favors the jonagold for all-purpose use--is particularly good). Infused with a love of food and respect for ingredients treated simply, Atkinson's book does full justice to the richness of the culinary Northwest and its cooking. --Arthur Boehm
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