Big Bowl Noodles and Rice: Fresh Asian Cooking From the Renowned Restaurant [Hardcover]

Bruce Cost (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

When the first Big Bowl restaurant opened in 1997, its founding partners had one mission: to make good, authentic Asian food accessible to American diners. Tired of greasy takeout and soggy egg rolls, they created an entirely different kind of Asian menu-one based on healthy techniques, market-fresh ingredients, and vibrant, traditional flavors. From steaming bowls of handmade noodles to fiery curries and fragrant stir-fries, every dish at Big Bowl became a delicious celebration of homestyle Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai cooking.

Now Bruce Cost, the celebrated cook and a culinary partner behind Big Bowl's spectacular food, reveals how to prepare the house favorites in your own kitchen. Beginning with a basic explanation of Asian ingredients and cooking techniques, Cost's beautifully illustrated guide takes home cooks through the simple steps needed to create an Asian meal, whether it's a one-bowl dinner or a multicourse feast for family and friends. From Thai Chicken Noodle Salad to Blazing Big Rice Noodles with Beef to Shanghai Shrimp, all of Cost's recipes are incredibly flavorful yet easy enough for even the beginning cook to master. The instructions are clear, the ingredients are widely available, and the results are dramatic and delicious.

So if you think Asian food at home means little white boxes, think again. Big Bowl Noodles and Rice will show you how to bring the fresh, authentic flavors of Asia to your table any night of the week.

Hailed by Alice Waters as "one of the greatest cooks I have ever known," Bruce Cost is an award-winning restaurateur and chef, cooking teacher, and former food columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He currently serves as the culinary partner in Lettuce Entertain You's immensely popular chain of Big Bowl restaurants. Cost is also the author of Asian Ingredients, a comprehensive guide to Asian foodstuffs now available as a companion to this book.

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Feeling adventurous? Try your hand at chef and restaurateur Bruce Cost's recipe adaptations from the menus of his Asian noodle-centric Big Bowl restaurants. The book begins with a very useful guide to the special ingredients one needs to follow these recipes, including recommended brands. But take heed--there are more than a dozen pages of them. Still, Cost calls his food authentic and accessible, and, believe it or not, a trip to your local Asian grocery store for a handful of such staples as fish sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, and Chinese dark soy sauce should get you on your way. For the beginner, there are dishes with short lists of ingredients, including Steamed Mussels in Coconut Herb Broth, Glazed Sweet and Sour Eggplant with Sesame Sauce, and Red Braised Beef Short Ribs. The instructions are clear, detailed, and remarkably short.

As your pantry grows, so too can your repertoire. Once you've mastered Big Bowl's recipes for homemade red and yellow curry pastes, the book lists a host of mouthwatering recipes with which you can amaze your friends, such as Red Curry Seafood Soup, Thai Yellow Curry Beef Noodles, and Thai Red Curry Rice Noodles with Lamb and Chinese Chives. Cost recommends incorporating his dishes into your own menus, as well as using them to create entire Asian-inspired meals, and his recipes include helpful guides to how many people each dish feeds as a main course or as part of a larger meal. Classics such as Hot and Sour Soup, Indonesian Satays, and Vietnamese Summer Rolls are delectable and familiar enough to encourage kitchen novices to give this book a try, even if the list of ingredients and instructions for some of the recipes run long. For people who feel quite comfortable with a wok, there is plenty more to keep you challenged. Cost knows what his customers like best and has chosen his dishes carefully. Full-flavored, fresh, and interesting, this is a far cry from the brown-sauce-laden Chinese food available at the corner store. --Leora Y. Bloom

Review

Bruce Cost is one of the greatest cooks I've ever known. -- Alice Waters

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060194200
• ISBN-13: 978-0060194208
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #699,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At long last the book is finally here..., October 11, 2000

By 

Lisa Lim (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Bowl Noodles and Rice: Fresh Asian Cooking From the Renowned Restaurant (Hardcover)

While the Bay Area has an abundance of Asian restaurants few compare to Big Bowl in the Mid-West. The books aesthetics are very pleasing and the format is easy to follow. The special ingredients section was very informative in explaining the origins and use, as well as pointing out which recipes call for them. What makes this book such a great reference is the emphasis on using quality ingredients and the cooking techniques are well described and easy to understand. In addition, I also enjoyed the array of traditional and modern adaptations of the recipes and look forward to using this book more. I highly recommend the satay, the freshly prepared peanut sauce is a winner. We only wish Mr. Cost never left San Francisco.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Love the Restaurant, wish the book was as good..., October 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Big Bowl Noodles and Rice: Fresh Asian Cooking From the Renowned Restaurant (Hardcover)

I am a regular customer at the Big Bowl in Edina, MN. It's a wonderful place, with imaginative, tasty, fresh foods. I only wish this cookbook lived up to the restaurant. Unfortunately, many of the dishes in the book are also available in almost any good Asian cooking book. The dipping sauces - my personal favorites at the restaurant - aren't included in the book and neither are my other favorites from the restaurant.

I will keep going back to the restaurant, but this book is far from the next best thing to being there! Back to the kitchen...

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars VERY VERY DISSAPOINTING!, October 16, 2007

By 

amazon customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Bowl Noodles and Rice: Fresh Asian Cooking From the Renowned Restaurant (Hardcover)

Almost none of the dishes you would expect to see are in this book. Big Bowl advertises a cook book "from the renowned restaurant", but I didn't see any of my or my friends favorites in here - the Kung Poa chicken, the hot pepper dishes, Mongolian beef, beef and broccoli, thai basil shrimp, thai hot pepper shrimp with basil and peanuts, spicy sichuan beef, bbq pork chow fun, kung poa tofu and spinach, crispy orange chicken, lemon chicken, salmon pad thai, and the list goes on...the advertisement for the book should at least assert that these are not the main dishes from the restaurant, but rather a collection of other recipes that the restaurant recommends/likes.