The Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired By The Seasons [Hardcover]

The flames were high and lasted well over 3-4 minutes.
The warning not to burn one's hands and face was good advice, but more detail was certainly in order.
Otherwise, some interesting recipes and good reading.

I know very little about wine and food pairings so my opinion on this subject is pretty thin. The advice includes a very wide variety of wines, including my favorite Rhine and Mosel area wines including wines from the Alsace, as the author's family originally came from the Alsace (Strasbourg). The author seems to show the proper amount of respect for pairing wines with vegetables, especially the dreaded artichokes and asparagus and varies the recommendation by method of preparation.

The focus on the seasons begs one to compare this to 'The Arrows Cookbook' and the focus on menus offers the comparison to Emeril Lagasse's new restaurant(s) cookbook. The commitment to the menu style is better done than with Emeril's book and I suspect the recipes are just a bit more discriminating than in Emeril's book. The realization of the dedication to the seasonal is less convincing than in the Arrows book. It is a lot easier to take seasonal thinking more seriously when you are in Maine than when you are in California.

Due to the organization by menu, where every menu has one or more desserts, you are getting many more dessert recipes for your money than you get from a more conventional organization, especially when the extra recipe (fourth or fifth) is often an additional dessert.

With forty menus, you are also getting about 15 salads, 10 soups, and 15 dishes, which can best be identified as appetizers. These 'starters' seem to have a high percentage of dishes, which are richer than what I may like to see (high concentration of oils, cheeses, and cured meats). This and the dessert population both contribute to the fact that this book is NOT for dieters. I also noticed a bit of repetition among the starters recipes. Some looked suspiciously like others two seasons past. Very odd for seasonally timed dishes.

The main courses continue the tendency toward the fatty. The 40 dishes cover protein with:

Beef 9
Fowl 8 (several of duck and goose)
Lamb 5
Fin Fish 5
Pork 4
Shellfish 3
Vegetarian 6 (mostly pasta or risottos with lots of mushrooms and cheese)

The 20% shellfish seems odd in today's healthy eating environment, but lets be clear that this book is about seasonal eating with wine, not loosing weight. Many of the main dish recipes such as coq au vin, pepper encrusted New York strip, and bouillabaisse are old friends, so you may have several of them already.

The quality of the recipes, the headnotes, and the cooks notes accompanying them is quite high. The author seems to give all the right cautions in all the right places. It's interesting to note where the author takes some special effort and where they gloss over things. The gloss on an easy couscous method would make Paula Wolfert cringe. On the other hand, the recipe for homemade crème fraiche is more detailed than any I have seen to date, including instructions on how to vary the tangyness of the product. The coverage of pastry doughs (Pate Brisee) falls somewhere in the middle. The basic recipe is sound, but not as detailed as you may find in a book on pastry. The author also uses the same Pate Brisee for conventional pies, tarts, and galettes. I know some picky pastry chefs who have separate doughs for each.

I found one misprint in a recipe where the text put a quantity of sugar, but neglected to put the unit, so you are unsure of whether it is teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, or pounds. Fortunately, from the context, an experienced cook will know which it is. Very annoying. Tends to put me on my guard for other mistakes.

The 'seasonal' card will never sell a book to me, since it has become so hackneyed it has become nothing more than a blurb word on a dust jacket for many books, accompanied by the obligatory endorsement quote from Alice Waters. On this book, Alice is joined by Bobby Flay and Charlie Trotter, both highly respected and both well paid for their opinions. But a Foreword by Thomas Keller! This is an entirely different cup of tea. Keller is risking his Olympian reputation for a few bucks to lend his name and thoughts to the reputation of this book. I think the book almost lives up to his recommendation.

As many people such as Nigella Lawson have pointed out, the 'local and seasonal' dogma may be good selling points for high end restaurants, but in an age when my local market up the street has fresh summer vegetables from California in January, I will eat them and enjoy them in January. I will even not turn up my nose to hothouse tomatoes. Therefore, the author has failed to sell me on her seasonal mantra. In fact, her rather starchy, rich menus in winter point up some dangers to following the seasons.

I like the book and it taught me some things I didn't know before. It is a good source for entertaining menus, although I suspect some of the menus may be a bit fatty or a bit dull with too few green vegetables.
Recommended, especially at the very reasonable price.