I've been enjoying *Prune* cookbook from the author of *Blood, Bones & Butter*

M

marilynfl

Moderator
What I REALLY like about it is it looks like the restaurant's "bible"...recipes have *added* comments about how the cooks/chefs are to prepare each dish. Things like "leave a note on the oven door so the morning prep chefs..."

Most recipes serve 6, but then Gabrielle Hamilton's added a 2X order or 4 X order. The Bloody Mary bar blend makes either 6 drinks, x8 drinks or Daily Brunch...which starts with 16 46-oz cans of Sacramento tomato juice--I've been trying to find this canned juice since reading it!

She has a 3-Rum Punch base that is macerated batch of 5 quartered fresh pineapples, vanilla beans, lime zest and sugar with 5 quarts each of amber rum, Goslings Black seal rum, and Bacardi white rum. This MUST sit for 3 weeks to mature.

"Fill one ice-filled collins glass 3/4 full of rum base. Top with either club soda (or fresh coca cola if the pineapples weren't sweet enough).

Bartenders" diplomatically cut off anyone who orders a third. And do not allow this for staff shift drink unless they want to pay full price."

There is an entire section called 'Garbage" on recipes that use up the detritus of other foods (tops of zucchini stems, expired heavy cream, sardine spines. This is reality. It's a business...you don't waste food.

I feel like I'm Traca, working in a real restaurant and getting the real scoop.

 
Ha! Thanks for your recommendation. I can't wait to check out this book. It's funny because it

dawned on me the other day. All the food-related stuff I see on TV, and most of what I read online, in magazines, and books bears ZERO relationship to life in the restaurant business. I think that's why Lucky Peach, Gabrielle Hamilton and a small handful of others are so refreshing. Finally! Someone is speaking my language.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out a show called Real Food by Mike Colameco. It airs on the Create Channel and there are episodes available on YouTube. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this show late last fall. Gushing about it on Facebook, I learned that the show is now taping it's 13th season, but only recently got picked up for national release. It's based in NYC but since that is food central, it's fascinating. He's gone in the kitchens of legendary restaurants and gives the backstory about what makes them so extraordinary. (Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of this show. After gushing about Mike on Facebook, he reached out to me. I wrote his Wikipedia entry, and will definitely be looking him up in NYC. Love, love, love this man's work.)

Thanks again for the tip about the Prune cookbook. I can't wait to check it out!

 
I do have one complaint: there is no index at the end, so now that I've made up

a batch of Berbere spice blend, I have to shuffle through the book again, looking for where it was used.

Thanks for the NYC TV show. I'll see if we get it down here.

 
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