The Paley's Place Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest
This scrumptious collection of recipes and stories from the owners of Paley's Place Bistro and Bar in Portland, Ore., offers an intriguing mélange of Eastern European Jewish, Mediterranean, mainstream American and Pacific Northwest culinary influences, from Truffled Crab Melt to Duck Wellington with Mole Sauce, designed to match a Syrah's flavors of cinnamon, clover, black pepper, cayenne, butter, chocolate, tobacco and fungus. Some recipes are almost outrageously simple, like George's Gathered Greens: mixed greens, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper. But most are complex, and many, like Chicken Roulade, in which chicken legs are ground with herbs and wrapped with breasts in caulfat—the lacy lining of a pig's abdominal cavity that keeps the chicken beautifully moist, then melts away in the cooking—require elaborate preparation, which, fortunately, the authors illustrate with excellently detailed photos. The Paleys often highlight their suppliers, such as Gene Thiel, a potato farmer in his 70s, who speaks of the pleasing esters present in potatoes, explaining how they affect both taste and smell and likes to breakfast on a pan-sized steamed potato pancake with herbed scrambled eggs and vinegared bread. Recipes for pantry items such as ketchup, maraschino cherries and persillade (a mix of chopped garlic and parsley) are included, as well as imaginative suggestions for wines to complement the dishes.(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.