What I Can’t Live Without
This is a fabulous book, healthy recipes and quick and easy recipes-what more can we ask for?
What I Can’t Live Without
By Michele Deppe
Hear it through the grapevine: Napa Valley’s signature chef, Cindy Pawlcyn, shares some secrets behind her culinary success
Cindy Pawlcyn is the owner and creative inspiration behind a trio of Napa Valley restaurants, Mustards Grill, Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, and Go Fish. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pawlcyn moved to the Napa Valley over twenty-five years ago. These days, her name is synonymous with Napa’s regional cooking style.
Pawlcyn has been nominated twice for a James Beard Award for Best Chef: California, and was honored with the Robert Mondavi Award for Culinary Excellence. She is the author of three entertaining cookbooks that bring her love of zesty, fun, eclectic dishes– inspired as much by wine country as the world at large– to enthusiastic home cooks. Here’s our quick conversation with one of the country’s hottest restaurateurs.
In Big Small Plates, Cindy Pawlcyn, chef at more than a dozen restaurants including Mustards Grill in the Napa Valley, offers 100-plus recipes for her signature small dishes, to be served as hors d'oeuvres, starters, or, when combined, as a meal. Strongly influenced by Mexican, South American, and Asian cooking, these include the tempting likes of Asparagus with Shiitake Spring Rolls, Mussels and Clams with Andouille Sausage in Tangerine Broth, Fried Green Tomatoes with Spicy Rémoulade, and Black Pepper and Garlic Chicken Wings. The book also offers a small selection of sweets, such as Ann's Chocolate Biscuits and Lemon-Buttermilk Pudding Cake with Chantilly Cream and Berries, plus useful tips and menus that help readers match the dishes for various occasions. Readers also learn that any recipe may be increased to serve as a meal centerpiece.
Pawlcyn excels at recipe writing, so readers will have no trouble reproducing the dishes at home; chatty notes also offer comprehensive dish context while providing a sense of Pawlcyn's rather astonishing professional journey that began in 1983 and is still going strong. Her commitment to good food and enjoyment of the cooking process, implicit throughout, should rub off on her readers. With lovely color photos, this is a personal cookbook of the very best and most instructive kind. --Arthur Boehm
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