We've talked a lot about a new crop of restaurant and co*cktail bar cookbooks that are driven as much by the narratives of chefs and employees as they are by a killer collection of recipes. Books that weave pre-opening horror stories, tales of kitchen disasters, and inside jokes with detailed recipes and step-by-step instructions.
Well, Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune (November 4, Random House) isn't one of those cookbooks.
After establishing Prune, one of New York's most beloved neighborhood restaurants, more than a decade ago, Hamilton went on to win heaps of praise for her excellent memoir Blood, Bones, & Butter in 2012. That book won fans with its honest, Kitchen Confidential-like retelling of her time in restaurant kitchens around the world and details about her eventful personal life.
Prune contains zero narrative and doesn't apologize for it. That's exactly the point.
The book's introduction doesn't cover the trials of opening a small, neighborhood restaurant in New York City. You won't find a dramatic retelling of What New York Used to Be Like Then. The recipe headnotes don't even explain the origins of her dishes.
Instead, Hamilton has written Prune like a manual for a line cook in her own restaurant kitchen. And in the process, she's created a recipe style all her own. The prose is casual and to-the-point. Recipe yields become number of customer "orders" of a dish. Recipes have notes in a hand-written-looking font that say things like "store in quart container of ice water during service." The whole cookbook has a faux-three hole punch that runs through it and spill marks on every other page. Yes, you can come in early if you are new to your station and need more time, but, by your third week on the job, you can't punch in before 8 a.m. Got it?
Hamilton wants to give the impression that this is her personal notebook that just happens to have been scanned, bound, and sold for $45. If you want the writerly stuff, you can pick up her award-winning book for that. If you want to learn how to cook the dishes people continue to go back to Prune for after a decade, with a generous dose of instructive bossiness, look no further.
Here are a few key takeaways we snagged from the book:
Brands Matter--When It Comes to Bloody Marys.
Prune is a restaurant known for its long brunch lines. Every Saturday and Sunday, dozens of hopeful brunchers--both tourists and locals--line up at the East Village spot for hours to nosh on eggs, Dutch baby pancakes, and the like. But the restaurant gets just as much acclaim for its roster of Bloody Marys, and you can bet the entire list of them are represented here.
The key to Prune's base mixture lies in the brands used (they "matter immensely" says Hamilton). Even if you're using your favorite basic bloody mary recipe, make sure to use Sacramento tomato juice, Gold's horseradish, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco. Once you make the mix, the variations are easy: The Mariner uses lemon vodka and clam juice; The Maria substitutes vodka for tequila; and the Bloody Bull capitalizes on the genius addition of beef bouillon.
