Customer Reviews

Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook: Breakfast, Brunch & Beyond from New York's Favorite Neighborhood Restaurant

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

See those pancakes on the cover? I made those! They turned out just as beautifully. A word of warning though, I would cut this recipe in half unless you have a football team lurking around. I used all of the batter and froze the remaining pancakes. One minute in the microwave and they tasted almost better than the fresh made ones. I have read about other cooks doing this with pancakes, but never tried it myself. I put them in zip lock bags with wax paper in between. Now whenever I want pancakes, I just put a couple in the microwave for about 45 seconds. My son is still talking about how good the maple butter was and it was quite simple to make. I also put aside some of that in the refrigerator for use later.

The recipes are all really good and I am working my way through the book. I found that they were quite easy to follow. All of the direction are clear and concise. The ingredients are easy to find, so no worries there like some other cookbooks. This is definitely a keeper for me.

This is a terrific cookbook. I have a large collection of cookbooks, but this one is my new favorite. The variety of recipes is wonderful...........the pictures are gorgeous and the directions are clear and easy to follow. The restaurant tips make you undderstand that sometimes it is the little tricks you learn that make all the difference.
If you have ever been to the restaurant (Clinton Street Baking Company) and had the pancakes, the biscuits, the fried chicken, the eggs Benedict etc......... the book will be well worth it so that you can make these recipes at home.
A perfect gift for any cook you know.

My cookbook stash is really too low. I don't even have a basic Betty Crocker cookbook, how sad is that? And I'm not really the best at picking out new cookbooks to add to my shelf... or I wasn't until the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook set the bar high for me. This very nice, hardcover book with glossy pages is full of everyday breakfast, brunch, and anytime recipes - basics like biscuits, buttermilk fried chicken, and split pea soup, and specialty dishes like baked truffled grits or coconut lemon curd cake. It's full of color photos, hints and tips, and step-by-step instructions that even I can't mess up. ;-)

So far my favorite recipe is the Blueberry Crumb Muffins. I made a batch of them one day and the next they were gone. And oh my word, SO good! They truly were the best muffins I have ever made, and were easy enough that I'll never feel that I need to go with a box mix again. In fact, just saying (or typing) "box mix" makes me feel like I'm cheating on these delicious muffins. YUM!

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5 *****
Skill Level - Basic

The Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook: Breakfast, Brunch & Beyond from New York's Favorite Neighborhood Restaurant was on my wish list and not one but two arrived under the tree this year. A week off from work for the holidays allowed me some time to review this book and create a couple of the breakfast items they serve at their popular brunch in New York.

The book itself is well written with excellent pictures to go with almost 90% of the recipes. They deserve high marks for that as pictures always draw me to a cookbook whereas plain text is just that "plain". The pictures are often full page and amply portray the simple creativity of each recipe. I originally put this on my list because of its favorable reviews and for a look at how a bakery turned into a restaurant found success. This husband and wife team combined their strengths and created an enterprising effort without a lot of flair. Known for their baked goods they expanded into lunch and sides. But what can be exciting about pancakes, muffins, biscuits and sandwiches? This is where Neil Kleinberg raises the bar and gives us his best twist on simple and soul-comforting classic recipes.

The book has ten sections ranging from biscuits to pancakes to fried chicken and, of course, some desserts. Each section has a brief introduction that often includes tips and notes, which one rarely sees in cookbooks today. These tips help one achieve optimal recipe results.

Our first test recipe were the buttermilk biscuits. I am not a big fan of biscuits but I have always wanted to make better biscuits from scratch. I have often read that, in the South, part of the trick to great biscuits was to use White Lilly soft flour made in Tennessee, which is mentioned in the book. However, I was surprised that the actual recipe required regular all purpose flour. Upon contacting Chef Kleinberg he responded that he had originally used the Lilly soft flour until it had become difficult to obtain and that the all-purpose flour was working fine with his recipe. We made the biscuits with a lower protein flour which produced great biscuits from his ingredients. We will try regular AP flour next time. We really appreciated one of the tips regarding biscuits - do not twist the cutter. That had always been my natural tendency and until this book I did not realize that it could affect the rise.

Next up on our trials were the pancakes that have been referred to as the best in New York. His trick here is incorporating beaten egg whites into the batter to lighten the pancakes. These were probably some of the best pancakes we have ever made. They do require more work than most recipes but the effort is clearly worth it for special occasions. We did not try the various toppings in the book because we wanted to try these straight up with the maple butter recipe. The maple butter was amazing! It will be the only way we'll serve pancakes in the future.

We plan to try the french toast, buttermilk streusel and fried chicken next, but our adventures in this book will not end there. We would recommend this book for anyone interested in sprucing up their breakfast, brunch or lunch. All the recipes are approachable and don't require spending a fortune on special ingredients. This is a book worth adding to your cookbook collection.

Five stars for design, ease of use, and quality recipes for those wanting to revisit some classics.

The Clinton St. Baking Company is one of Manhattan's best places to eat. Not everyone can make it there, and for those who are unable to due to geographical limitations, the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook provides a way to enjoy some of the best foods from their kitchen right to yours.

Cookbooks filled with recipes from delicious restaurants from faraway lands (in this case New York City), are really like bringing a taste of that culture right to your very own kitchen. The Clinton St. Baking Company is one of the hottest brunch spots in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and for those of us that can't make it there to taste for ourselves, this cookbook can almost make it feel like we've walked through their doors to enjoy a delicious meal.

Some of my favorites from the cookbook include:
* French-style omelet
* Lobster bisque
* Maple butter roasted squash soup
* Homemade caramelized applesauce
* Flourless chocolate cake

Another thing I love about this cookbook is that the dust jacket and the cover are different. The dust jacket is what you see in the cover image here, but the actual outside of the book shows a picture of the restaurant from the outside - like it is inviting you inside to taste their food. Very welcoming, and great idea!

Even though I couldn't try them all, they all look absolutely scrumptious. I highly recommend this book to all who want a little taste of this restaurant right in their own home.



Thank you to the publisher of Clinton St. Backing Company, Little Brown, part of the Hachette Book Group, for providing me with a copy for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Some cookbooks are just recipes (usually with too many that I'm not even interested in), some books are just about techniques, some are just for reading and looking at the pictures. This cookbook has it all. Recipes of dishes I actually want to eat. There is a little bit of everything -- easy-to-make jams, fried chicken, guacamole, eggs, baked goods, great desserts (I love the brookies), and Clinton Street's famous pancakes with maple butter. There are techniques of how to make dishes with tips and notes on what makes the food extra tasty or keys to cooking. This is particularly key with the pancakes. And there is good reading about the food, the restaurant, and the restauranteurs. The book goes from my nightstand to the kitchen and back.

The pancakes are great and are now my go-to recipe. However, I think many of the recipes contain editing errors:

1) The biscuits I made didn't brown and I think it's because the recipe doesn't contain baking soda; acidic batters, such as those that contain buttermilk, don't brown well.

2) The recipe for buttermilk waffles doesn't contain buttermilk

3) The white cake recipe has you fill a mixing bowl with dry ingredients and then never tells you what to do with it.

Such apparent errors wouldn't usually earn a cookbook four stars, but I'm so happy with the pancakes that I'm giving the authors the benefit of the doubt about the quality of the other recipes, assuming the correct recipe were deduced.

Note that one star would have automatically been deducted from this book because the authors fail to provide weights for the ingredients in the recipes. Shame on you.

I've made a couple recipes from this book so far. The pancakes were OK. Scrambled eggs were good, but I already knew how to make scrambled eggs. Something is off with the biscuit recipe --I think 2 tablespoons of baking powder to 2 cups of flour is way too much baking powder. Resulted in a bitter-tasting biscuit with a poor rise from inflating and (deflating) too fast [for the record, I don't use BP with aluminum]. The thing that ticks me off is I went to Martha's website and saw a video of him making "his" biscuits and he used an entirely different technique and recipe --that recipe had 8 cups of flour to 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons of baking powder and he baked them at 400 degrees (not 350 as called for in this book). I then went to Food and Wine's website and they had another recipe for "his" biscuits, which again, was entirely different; although, the editors said he "contributed," which means that they recognized that the recipe he gave them was a sham [for the record, the F&W recipe has 2 teaspoons of baking powder plus 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to 2 cups of flour, baked at 425 degrees]. I'm no mathematician, but even I can see the ratios are OFF. Hmmm. . . . . Overall, it is a beautiful book with good ideas for sprucing up breakfast and lunch. But don't think for one minute that you will actually be getting authentic (or tested) recipes if you buy this book. Neil wants you to think you're a failure in your kitchen so you have to stand in line for breakfast at his restaurant.

What a beautiful cookbook and so many of the recipes sound divine. Over Thanksgiving, I roasted baby sugar pumpkins and froze extra pumpkin puree which is a unique ingredient in the Black and White Cake. I've just made the cake and was disappointed that the cake fell in the middle. I'm a pretty experienced baker and I'm pretty certain the baking temperature was too low for the cake to rise properly. I would suggest baking the cake at 325 degrees as opposed to the 300 degrees noted in the cookbook.

Okay, here's another one that's definitely gift card worthy. Check out the cover - drooling yet?

DeDe Lahman and Neil Kleinberg own and operate the 32 seat Clinton St. Baking Company and Restaurant in New York City. Apparently the line up is always out the door - and once I read the book, I could see why.

It's comfort food, pure and simple.

"What's our secret? Neil says, 'It's love." I say it's that we make simple American classics using serious-chef techniques. Time and time again, we've been asked by devoted guests for our recipes, and now, without further ado, here they are."

I think that's why I found this cookbook so appealing - it's food that makes you feel good. Their first signature item was the classic buttermilk biscuit. Yep, I tried it on the boy who loves homemade biscuits in my house and he noticed that it wasn't my 'regular' recipe right away - as he grabbed another one.

The Clinton St. Baking Company specializes in (but isn't limited to) breakfasts and brunches. There are lots of variation on biscuit breakfasts. The muffin recipes are amazing as are the pancakes! The key is using fresh ingredients as much as possible.

Eggs. There's a great step by step full colour explanation of how to make a perfect three fold omelet. I've always flipped it to cook the 'inside' - wrong. I tried Neil's method and it makes for a 'fluffier' finished product.

Soups (the Maple Butter Squash was easy and delicious) paired with any of the great (simple!) sandwiches (grilled goat cheese - yummy) are perfect for a winter supper.

Sides, drinks and condiments are all featured as well. But the desserts....oh boy decadent. Flourless chocolate cake - simple but a hit!

Full colour glossy photos accompany every recipe. (And there are over 100 included)The instructions are clearly written as are the ingredient lists. I enjoyed the mini essays that DeDe has included explaining their background and thoughts on each entry.

Easy recipes that will impress everyone. Take a look inside and you'll see what I mean!