Harold Dieterle's Kitchen Notebook

December 1, 2014
It's hard to decide whether the sidebars (aka kitchen notebooks) or the actual recipes are more tempting in New York's Top Chef champion Dieterle's first book. The notebook, as he explains, is the chef's secret weapon. It's there that kitchen successes and failures, creations and ruminations are captured. He says these asides are tips and techniques; truth be told, they're so much more. In one, readers learn to pinpoint the differences between pink Maine shrimp, spot prawns, shrimp Royal Red, and the all-purpose shrimp. In another, all things popcorn surface, from curried popcorn mix and herb and cheese popcorn to popcorn bacon pudding. Both the startling and the traditional figure prominently in his recipes. Ingredients lists get a tad long, especially when the ingredients are already specified in the recipe's name, like grilled branzino and spicy cumin lamb with water chestnuts, red onion and bitter lime sauce, or crispy soft shell crabs with ramp kimchi and spicy passion fruit sauce. Yet who could resist a well-constructed gem lettuce salad or avocado mousse, a turducken lasagna or grilled big-eye tuna? Definitely for skilled home chefs who fancy experiments that will be worth tasting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)