Manresa: An Edible Reflection [A Cookbook]

I pre-ordered this book based on many things I had heard about Manressa, the restaurant. It was my kind of book. It had an admired chef, a restaurant that was drawing people to its obscure location, and new recipes for me to get my hands into. I waited months, and finally received my copy.Manressa: an Edible Reflection, falls somewhere between The FrenchLaundry Cookbook and Grant Achez’s Alinea cookbook. In the French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller’s goal is clean tastes; In Alinea, Achetz goes for a total sensory experience. David Kinch, of Manressa, focuses on terrior, or “sense of place.”Keller aims at three bites per portion, Achetz (often) at one. Kinch at two.Right there, that should tell the reader what he or she is getting into. This is not a book about casual food, nor even “fine food.” This is a book for someone who is very serious, and who appreciates and wants to experience what a driven chef has to offer. Manresssa (the book and the restaurant) is about tweezers-arranged preparations and attention, attention, attention, to detail.I found the book to be almost all of what I wanted it to be. Manressa: an Edible Reflection is an intense book. David Kinch found his epiphanic moment when he connected with Love Apple Farm, and built on that experience, taking the well worn California mantra, “buy the best available product and cook in season,” and elevating it to new levels to try to create a “sense of place” for his restaurant. Love Apple farm is not simply a purveyor, it is an interactive player where Kinch not only purchases the produce, but indicates what he wants planted. Vegetables seldom, if ever, see refrigeration. Fresh means exactly that. The same is true of his other purveyors. Their bounty powers his menu. His relationship with them is extraordinary. Although he doesn’t forage like René Redzepi, (well, not all the time) he does devote considerable energy to making vegetables sing, and puts the proteins in a different relation to the presentation than what is commonly done.The book is full of beautiful pictures and David Kinch’s text is interesting to read, at once philosophical and technical, and there is enough of his writing that the book is worth it for that alone. He is pragmatic enough to make use of any techniques and equipment that will bring him closer to producing what he feels will give the reader a sense place, of what is Manressa. He explains everything, from the butter which they make in house from locally sourced dairy products to things like infusing with peach leaves to add another dimension to an offering.So why a four and not a five?My problem with this book comes in relation to the recipes. I expected them to contain hard to find ingredients; locating places to purchase them is part of the fun of cooking at this level, and there is a list of purveyors provided. My problem is that none of the recipes have been tested or adapted to the home kitchen; all are exactly as they do them in the restaurant. Of course, it is Chef Kinch’s prerogative to do so, but in doing so, Chef Kinch has created a small but noticeable distance between himself and the reader like myself who wishes to use the recipes, that seems to belie his desire to “share” Manressa. Even if I obtain everything needed, will I be able to cook them in my kitchen?If the reader turns to the “How to use this book,” section, he or she is exhorted to try more ambitious recipes, but “ambition” sometimes translates into “equipment.” The difficulties of a number of the well-spelled out recipes often have less to do with ambitiously following steps or even obtaining materials, and more to do with having a combi-oven (one that introduces steam…you can buy a .6 cubic foot countertop one for only $300 that will just about hold a small chicken).This means, for example, that his interesting method of roasting, as time consuming as it is, probably would not work with my oven.I have cooked recipes from enough high end restaurants to know that chefs at this end of the spectrum have access to high end equipment. Many of them, however, when writing a book for mass distribution, take that situation into account and offer alternatives or home testing. (Thomas Keller in Bouchon Bakery offers, for example, a tested chain-rock-super soaker squirt gun method to put steam into a home oven for baking bread.) Those things are missing in Manressa. While some alternatives are offered, essentially, the reader is told that if you don’t have the high tech equipment (and sometimes the “low tech” equipment that he uses for making butter), then, for many of the recipes, well…you are on your own.Readers who have purchased, or are considering purchasing the book for other reasons, or who own super high-tech equipment, may, understandably, see things differently. For me, although I can understand all of the reasons why the recipes were not adapted for, or tested in, the home kitchen and could even find myself defending those reasons, still, the distance was a little disappointing. Testing in a home kitchen would have, for me, put this book over the top.There are also some other admittedly nit-picking items. A small item was the de rigor use well worn mantra of getting the best materials, and treating them respectfully. Use them in season and buy locally, unless you are speaking about truffles, foi gras, and caviar (maybe lobster, too?). I have heard it over many years, and have come to question it. Shouldn’t one of the responsibilities of a chef be to locate and bring forth the potential in the bounty he or she is offered? Should there be no fried green tomatoes because they are not perfectly ripe, or tomato water from over ripe tomatoes?Another item just proved annoying. The book ended with an abstract and somewhat gratuitous stream of consciousness epilogue which appeared to try to capture the essence of David Kinch. In it there was a line about David Kinch seldom using “I.” I found “I” many, many times in the book, and it should be so. This is, after all, his book, and his dream, so why present him as something that he isn’t?I like the book, and I am fascinated by the author. I thumb through it often. I think that most people interested in restaurants at this level will find it an excellent read. Being stubborn, I may try, with the equipment I have, to approximate some of the more difficult ones anyway, and see what happens. Maybe converting things on my own is David Kinch’s challenge to readers like meAmazon does not allow for fractions, or I would have scored it at 4.5. I like the book, but like the person one almost married, I find myself not loving it as I thought I would.

First things first; this is a remarkable book written by a unique chef. It's easily worth the price tag. And it's a refreshing, inspiring change from most of the volumes hitting the culinary shelves these days.For instance, it's *not* a "hot new chef book" by somebody who has run a kitchen for a year or two and who is now trying to parley his 15 minutes of fame into a half hour. Instead, chef/author David Kinch has been at the stove for more than three decades in Louisiana, New York, California and Europe, and he knows exactly what he's talking about.It's *not* a "TV chef book" by somebody more attuned to staring into the camera while flashing a mouthful of shiny white teeth than focusing on the precise but natural-looking plates going out of his kitchen. To my knowledge, Chef Kinch's only foray into the wild, wild world of the Food Network was back in 2009, when he thoroughly kicked Bobby Flay's butt in Battle Cabbage on Iron Chef America. Rather than jump on the fabled media bandwagon after that experience, Chef Kinch went back to what he intimately knows and loves - his restaurant, and all that it involves.And it's *not* a "coffee table cookbook," meant simply to look great in your living room this holiday season. Yes, on first gaze, it looks that way. Oversized ... check. Texturally-correct abalone shell on the cover ... check. Absolutely killer photographs (from Eric Wolfinger) sprinkled here, there & everywhere ... check. But it's *way* more than that.This is the rare culinary treatise that embodies so much more than recipes. It encompasses Chef Kinch's philosophies (insofar as things like these can be captured by the written word) about food, nature, cooking, hospitality, technology, professionalism, respect (in all its relevant guises), mentoring the next generation of chefs, etc. It's an ode to his 11 year old restaurant, Manresa, and his life in the industry.I've dined at Manresa several times (and enjoyed Chef Kinch's hospitality at Sent Sovi - his previous restaurant - well over a decade ago). But don't think that I'm just raving about the book because I've been to the restaurant. If anything, my firsthand experiences only increased my expectations for the book. Clearly, I needn't have worried.You should understand upfront that Chef Kinch's recipes weren't designed for home cooks or home kitchens. This is Michelin-starred stuff folks, presented the way they do it at Manresa. Indeed, to me, the recipes are included primarily because they are necessary to tell the story of the chef and the restaurant. That some folks will want to duplicate the food at home, I think, is necessarily secondary. For most of us mere kitchen mortals, some of the recipes are inspirational; we may never be able to exactly reproduce them, but we can still take from them pearls of wisdom for use in our own cooking.Now, does that mean it's impossible to make all of these recipes at home even if you are a reasonably skilled home cook with a well-outfitted home kitchen? No, of course not; some are really pretty simple. But you need to recognize that many recipes require time and attention to detail. Many include obscure or not easily sourced ingredients, too, but for me, that's part of the book's charm. It speaks directly to Chef Kinch's desire to make Manresa distinctive while still focusing on the local, the seasonal, the best of what's available to him. If you really want to cook from this book, read the recipes carefully before you step into the kitchen ... heck, before you even think about heading to the market. Then you'll know which ones your kitchen, local markets and cooking skill level can accommodate and which ones you can dream about eating at Manresa.The bulk of Chef Kinch's recipes shun flashy, high tech gizmos (like Pacojets and immersion circulators) and ingredients (like hydrocolloids). He's not blind to the potential advantages technology offers culinary professionals, but at heart he's a cook's cook. As he notes in a brilliant little essay entitled, "Creativity and Technology," beginning at page 251, "what I've learned is that I want to use the best possible techniques that are right for me, whether they are ultramodern or ultratraditional." In other words, if a lamb rack cooked in a water bath no longer has the texture of lamb, why bother? Why, indeed.This book also plumbs the details of Chef Kinch's relationships with his purveyors, most especially Cynthia Sandberg's Love Apple Farms, with which Manresa has an exclusive association. These local connections with passionate folks allow Manresa to showcase the terroir of the Santa Cruz Mountains foothills in an utterly unique way. And, boy, does he take advantage of it.In my dining experience, no other American chef distills (and refines) his locale onto the plate better than David Kinch. You usually hear the word "terroir," roughly translated as "a sense of place," in the world of fine wines, but it's certainly an apt description of what Chef Kinch relates in this book and in the Manresa dining room. And he's more than happy to share the limelight; as he so correctly notes at the end of a short piece beginning on page 9 called, "How I Met Cynthia Sandberg," "thanks to Love Apple Farms, our food tastes of nowhere else in the world."If you have any interest at all in learning what goes on in one very creative and successful culinary mind when it comes to developing dishes and menus, please read, "Building a Dish: 1, 2, 3" (p. 163) and "Building a Menu," (p. 191). Really ... I mean it. Even if you have to borrow somebody else's copy or (gasp!) sneak off to your nearest brick and mortar bookstore.In my opinion, the cookbook segment of the market has been over-saturated for years, and so it's rare and gratifying to find a book like this one that both informs and resonates without sounding preachy or holier-than-thou.

A lovely book, well presented. Easy to follow precise recipes, pictures do the food justice. I bought this book for ideas and different ways of producing food. This is not a book for the average kitchen cook as the ingredients will not be readily available. I would recommend it for professional chefs though.

Like everything

great book for profesionals

A beautiful book to look at and an inspiration to read

Amazing book, recopies are incredible, a must for your collection