Product Description

With more than 200,000 copies sold, it's about time that Seattle's favorite guidebook dished up the best recipes from the city's hottest chefs. In Best Places Seattle Cookbook, all of Seattle's culinary stars are shining bright, bringing home cooks the flavors of this exciting food city. There's the Herbfarm's Jerry Traunfeld sharing his recipe for Pan-Fried Mussels on Rosemary Skewers, and favorites from Tom Douglas restaurants like Orcas Rack of Lamb with Spring Pea Flan and Cascade Morels (Dahlia Lounge). With 125 recipes and a chapter sodden with signature drinks, Best Places Seattle Cookbook will satisfy the hunger of food lovers near and far.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #775060 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Cynthia C. Nims is the food editor of Seattle magazine and co-author of the best-selling Northwest Best Places Cookbook. She lives in Seattle.

Food & Wine magazine named Kathy Casey as one of its Hot New American Chefs at age 23. In 1988 Casey founded Kathy Casey Food Studios, a restaurant consulting company. She is the author of Pacific Northwest: The Beautiful Cookbook and writes Dishing, a monthly column in the Seattle Times. She lives in Seattle, WA.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the city. For some time now, the Northwest region has been getting a lot of attention in cookbooks, but few yet have captured the distinctive essence of dining in the city of Seattle. This cookbook brings together recipes from 65 restaurants in the Seattle area, which together create an interesting snapshot of the comtemporary dining scene in the Emerald City. Reflecting the heritage of Northwest cuisine, the recipes are chock full of regional ingredients such as Bing cherries, wild mushrooms, salmon, crab, pears, apples, berries, mussels, you name it. But they go well beyond the traditional regional boundaries to include a vast array of ingredients and cooking styles, representing global influences that have become common in most large cities today.

The 125 recipes that follow were collected from restaurants featured in the 8th edition of the BEST PLACES SEATTLE guidebook, though we slipped in a few more recent openings that are certain to show up in the next edition: Waterfront on Pier 70, Restaurant Zoe in Belltown, Brasa downtown, and Le Pichet near the Pike Place Market, to name a few. These restaurants help represent the city's culinary landscape at its most up-to-date. Woven among the recipes, you'll find essays that help define the building blocks of Seattle's self-styled "cuisine," from ingredients such as oysters, cheese, and fall fruit, to broader themes such as grilling, Asian influences, and the city's lively farmers' markets.

The urban scene of a city like Seattle is one that is diverse, vibrant, and eclectic. This is echoed in recipes such as Yassa au Poulet from the Senegalese restaurant Afrikando, Sichuan Green Beans from Wild Ginger, Squid in Their Own Ink from the Basque taverna Harvest Vine, butter-sauteed Geoduck Batayaki from Nishino, and Salmon con Tamarindo from El Camino.

But much of what draws us out to eat in Seattle is casual, comforting fare from favorite spots around town. You'll find recipes such as Nectarine Blackberry Crisp from Anthony's, Corn Chowder with Dungeness Crab from Macrina Bakery and Cafe, Alder-Barbecued King Salmon with Fennel and Mint from Ivar's Salmon House, Lemon Rosemary Biscotti from the Still Life in Fremont Coffeehouse, and the deliciously classic Elsie's Bloody Mary from Hattie's Hat -- recipes that represent the more homey side of the city's restaurants.

Seattle is a still-growing city. While construction cranes bring more high-rises to downtown, traffic gridlock becomes an everyday thing, and the population continues to swell, the restaurant scene keeps pace by becoming more dynamic and inspiring with each passing year. Chefs and restauranteurs bring to this city increasingly distinctive dining experiences, blending flavors from close to home with those from far and wide. Whether you're a local recreating dishes from your favorite restaurants or a visitor wanting to savor Seattle in your kitchen elsewhere, we hope you'll enjoy this taste of Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Brings a luscious taste of Seattle into any home dining menu
The collaborative effort of Cynthia C. Nims and Kathy Casey, Best Places Seattle Cookbook collects 125 recipes from the most heavily patronized chefs in Seattle. Restaurant favorites such as Baked Oysters with Beurre Blanc; Heirloom Tomato Salad; Lemon Rosemary Biscotti; Fresh Blackberry Tart, Cadillac Margarita; and more come with exhaustively detailed preparation instructions to bring a luscious taste of Seattle into any home dining menu. The explicit text details the subtle nuances of each dish in this highly recommended resource for aspiring chefs of intermediate culinary skills and above.

Best of Vibrant Urban Cuisine
Take 125 recipes from the areas hottest chefs and put them in one cookbook, and you've got a winner. Especially when the area is as vibrant in local ingredients such as Seattle with its seafood, Walla Wallas and cherries, etc.

Here are some nice offerings from this full selection: Pate de Campagne; Swiss Leek, Oat and Smoked Chicken Soup; Grilled Salmon with Lentils and Brown Butter Balsamic Vinaigrette;Pork Tenderloin with Bing Cherries and Mint; Coconut Curried Lamb Shanks; Baked Hawaii (with macadamia nut cake, coconut ice cream and chambord berry sauce).

Also includes a great Cocktails section.

I am smitten
I am not a cook, but after reviewing this book, i really want to be, not to mention that the recipes left me salivating. It may not be a book for the complete beginner but with some enthusiasm, the recipes in this book are very do-able. The side essays written by kathy casey are funny and informative and both authors clearly try to make the recipes understandable and do-able for the home kitchen. I am smitten with my kitchen and the tasty treats i can make in it. Thanks to Kathy Casey and Cynthia Nims for their tempting inspirations!