Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine
As a young boy living in Massachusetts, Mark Miller fell in love with the West while watching cowboy movies. His continuing passion for the frontier led to the opening of  Red Sage, his award-winning Washington, D.C., restaurant, where both the cooking and the decor express a vision of the West and Southwest. InRed Sage, Miller combines 100 recipes for dishes from the restaurant's menu with 18 essays about his passion for the freewheeling, romantic, adventuresome Old West.Miller is a chef whose cooking influences other chefs. Dishes he created at  the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, helped change the perception of  what Southwest cooking can be. At Red Sage, he uses Western along with  Southwestern ingredients, from fresh buffalo meat and oven-dried beef jerky  to chiles and masa--the corn treated with lime that is traditionally used in  making tortillas and tamales--to make bold-flavored, sophisticated dishes anyone can enjoy.  Miller's culinary creativity shows in both simple and complex dishes.  His Dried Apple-Guajillo Grits starts with a time-honored staple cooked in cider and milk, to which he adds hot chiles, tart-sweet fruit, and creamy grated cheese. For Braised Buffalo Short Ribs with Sage Polenta, a dish that highlights how Miller's cooking marries regional ingredients and dishes with traditional cooking techniques and outside ideas, the meat is simmered with dark beer, smoky chipotle chiles, and earthy dried mushrooms and counterpointed with the flavor of prunes, then served on the sage-perfumed polenta, an Italian version of the cornmeal on which American frontier families relied.Red Sage is both a cookbook and a volume of substance. The essays, archival photos,  handsome color shots of the food, and story of how Miller conceived his restaurant ensure thatRed Sagewill appeal to anyone interested in the American West and Southwest, the U.S. culinary scene, and boldly flavored food.--Dana Jacobi