The New York Restaurant Cookbook: Recipes from the Dining Capital of the World

In a previous lifetime, we went out to dinner. Often. Then our kid arrived. Now we go out less --- much less. And read cookbooks more --- much more. Especially welcome are books with recipes from New York restaurants that are now, for us, as remote as Lapland. We remember them --- and some of these dishes --- fondly. And it's not in any way sad that the closest we may get to them is to recreate them at home. 'The New York Restaurant Cookbook: Recipes from the City's Best Chefs' is a revised edition of a local favorite. This edition features more than 100 recipes from the city's best restaurants --- with no chef, even the most prolific, getting more than a single recipe here. Florence Fabricant is an ideal tour guide. A regular contributor to The New York Times, she's the author of eight other books, including Park Avenue Potluck: Recipes from New York's Savviest Hostesses; if you own it, you know she can go high and special as well as mid-range and effortless. Here, in an introduction that will take New Yorkers and aging visitors down Memory Lane, she also offers --- so gently that you don't feel you're being schooled --- some useful advice: shock blanched vegetables in ice water, add a dollop of butter to sauces, add the pasta to the sauce instead of pouring the sauce over the pasta. And, at the end, she presents a handy list of food sources and restaurants. Most to the point, she's collected recipes that taste like home cooking even when you have them in a restaurant: the Second Avenue Deli's chicken soup, Tavern on the Green's Caesar salad, onion soup from Capsouto Frères. And then she works up the complexity chain to recipes you may not dream of ordering, much less cooking: Felidia's ricotta and spinach dumplings, Bernadin's codfish with garlic sauce and chorizo essence, Blue Hill's poached duck with farro. Tasting is always the best convincer. So far, these recipes thrill.

This is an enjoyable cookbook---what a delightful walk down memory lane! Anyone who wants to really understand what makes NY NY would enjoy this book.