Secrets of Success Cookbook: Signature Recipes and Insider Tips from San Francisco's Best Restaurants

by Michael Bauer

The Book of Kells, one of the great illuminated manuscripts, sits in the library of Trinity College in Dublin, a new page daily revealed to the public. You could do much the same with Michael Bauer's The Secrets of Success Cookbook in your kitchen, displaying a new and wonderful signature recipe from a San Francisco restaurant each day for 300 days. Imagine. You would start with Parmesan Budinis with Warm Asparagus and Pea Shoots from Acquerello, learning the secrets of baking a successful custard, and end with an Apple Galette from Zax wherein the secret of success consists of unsalted butter and chilled dough. As a food and restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Bauer has had ample opportunity to take a note or two about the kinds of dishes that make one restaurant stand out from another, the so-called signature dish. It would be one thing to cajole Bay Area chefs into sharing their recipes and making certain those commercial recipes actually work in a home kitchen. But Bauer takes it one step He ferrets out the successful technique behind each dish. Who in their right mind would go to all the time and trouble to preserve lemons for a dish like Moroccan Game Hens with Preserved Lemons and Olives as served at Kasbah? Well, it turns out that what normally takes a month can take a week if you freeze the lemons and add salt--so why not give it a try?Bauer introduces each recipe with detailed notes about the chef and restaurant as well as baseline information about the actual dish. Recipe instructions have been pared down to the essentials. A Secrets of Success sidebar accompanies each recipe. The difficulty comes with page after page after page of deliciousness. Where to start? What to try next? Will you start with the Grand Café recipe for Polenta Soufflé with Mushroom Sauce? Or what about Bradley Ogden's Potato Skins with Smoked Salmon and Horseradish Crème Fraiche from the Lark Creek Inn? Baronda's Mixed Green Salad with Grapefruit and Warm Shrimp certainly looks good. So does the Seared Black Pepper Lavender Fillet of Beef from Café la Haye. The list is 300 recipes deep. One a day would take you through the better part of a year. And what a year that would be. --Schuyler Ingle

Genres: Cookbooks

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2000

Reviews

[Justin Welch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks! These 300 recipes, compiled by Michael Bauer, the former San Francisco Chronicle food editor, represent the pinnacle of San Francisco's restaurant scene, circa Y2K. Although many of the restaurants have come and gone, these recipes are timeless. Each one comes with a chef's tip and the appendix features a helpful technique section for the home cook. Some of my favorites are: Chicken In Carmel Sauce from Slanted Door, Grilled Fillet Of Pacific Salmon With Thai Red Curry Sauce from Terra, and Minced Chicken in Lettuce Cups from Betelnut. (Some of my favorite veggie recipes: Warm Moroccan Beet Salad With Tangerines and Honey from Zibibbo, Chestnut Soup With Leeks And Apples from Chapeau, and Batter Fried Green Beans With Meyer Lemon Aioli from Bizou).