Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine [Hardcover]

Mark Miller (Author), Rodney Weidland (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

We're proud to bring you Mark Miller's latest tribute to America's exciting culinary history. Red Sage in Washington, D.C. is Mark Miller's celebration of the wild, wild West, a restaurant where diplomats, locals, and even the president dive into platters of Ribs Glazed with Guajillo and Black Coffee Barbeque Sauce and hearty Cowboy Biscuits. Loaded with photos, this cookbook showcases the food and style that have made Mark Miller one of the country's favorite chefs. Mark has well over a half million books in print by now, and the accolades keep coming: the 1998 Food Arts Silver Spoon Award, the 1996 James Beard Award for Best Southwest Chef, and Esquire magazine's coveted Ivy Award for Best Restaurant.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a young boy living in Massachusetts, Mark Miller fell in love with the West while watching cowboy movies. His continuing passion for the frontier led to the opening of Red Sage, his award-winning Washington, D.C., restaurant, where both the cooking and the decor express a vision of the West and Southwest. In Red Sage, Miller combines 100 recipes for dishes from the restaurant's menu with 18 essays about his passion for the freewheeling, romantic, adventuresome Old West.

Miller is a chef whose cooking influences other chefs. Dishes he created at the Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, helped change the perception of what Southwest cooking can be. At Red Sage, he uses Western along with Southwestern ingredients, from fresh buffalo meat and oven-dried beef jerky to chiles and masa--the corn treated with lime that is traditionally used in making tortillas and tamales--to make bold-flavored, sophisticated dishes anyone can enjoy. Miller's culinary creativity shows in both simple and complex dishes. His Dried Apple-Guajillo Grits starts with a time-honored staple cooked in cider and milk, to which he adds hot chiles, tart-sweet fruit, and creamy grated cheese. For Braised Buffalo Short Ribs with Sage Polenta, a dish that highlights how Miller's cooking marries regional ingredients and dishes with traditional cooking techniques and outside ideas, the meat is simmered with dark beer, smoky chipotle chiles, and earthy dried mushrooms and counterpointed with the flavor of prunes, then served on the sage-perfumed polenta, an Italian version of the cornmeal on which American frontier families relied.

Red Sage is both a cookbook and a volume of substance. The essays, archival photos, handsome color shots of the food, and story of how Miller conceived his restaurant ensure that Red Sage will appeal to anyone interested in the American West and Southwest, the U.S. culinary scene, and boldly flavored food. --Dana Jacobi

From Library Journal

Miller's most well known restaurant is the Coyote Caf?, in Santa Fe, but several years ago, he opened the flashy Red Sage in Washington, D.C., which he describes as a "Western American restaurant." His new cookbook presents the restaurant's specialties, grouped into such categories as "Main Dishes from the Ranch House" and "Sides from Pueblo Farms and Mission Gardens" (oddly enough, there's no separate appetizer chapter), along with a lengthy history of the restaurant and boxes on "The Cowboy: American Icon" and other topics. Some of the recipes call for hard-to-find ingredients (e.g., antelope chops), and there are no headnotes, but Miller does have some imaginative ideas. For libraries where chefs' books (and Miller's earlier titles in particular) are popular.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898157595
• ISBN-13: 978-0898157598
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 1 x 11.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,129 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting recipes. Difficult-to-obtain ingredients., October 15, 2001

By 

Hoc Stercus "beeper99" (Hudson, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine (Hardcover)

If you have easy access to squab, pheasant, loin of rabbit, quail, buffalo, antelope, Mexican oregano, blackberries, poblano chiles, gualjillo chiles, serrano chiles, chile molido, chile carib, chipotles in adobo sauce, Apaloosa beans, calypso beans, Steuben yellow beans, fresh hoja santa leaf, dry aged goat cheese, smoked gouda, chanterelles, Silver Queen corn, fresh marjoarm, fresh epazota, pumpkin seeds, cumin seeds, dried blueberries, huckleberries, etc., then you might find the recipes in "Red Sage: Contempoary American Cuisine" the kind that will give a fresh and creative twist to your culinary endeavors. Otherwise, you are likely find very little in this book that you can put to use in your kitchen.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for contemporary American cooking & dining., February 3, 2000

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine (Hardcover)

Mark Miller's Red Sage (provides a range of innovative dishes not to be found in competing cookbooks, based on fare invented for his restaurant. Spicy dishes are the trademark of the establishment and here a good dose of history - complete with vintage photos - is added to explain their origins. Enjoy Red Sage Vegetarian Bean Chili or Huckleberry Bread Pudding with Maple Custard Sauce in this collection of contemporary American foods.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite western cookbook!, November 28, 2000

By 

rodboomboom (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine (Hardcover)

Talk about a beautiful, well-done cookbook! I've cooked three recipes from this, and each was just spectacular in both taste and presentation. The difficulty in prep was medium, and he provides some alternative ingredients as well which really helps.

His balance between heat and sweet is sophisticated. Use of buffalo and antelope is remarkable. Takes me back to my western upbringing now that I reside in the midwest.

His anthropology background makes the surrounding test fascinating. Well researched and presented. Great read! Will become a favorite in my collection.