The Sustainable Kitchen: Passionate Cooking Inspired by Farms, Forests and Oceans [Paperback]

Stu Stein (Author), Judith H. Dern (Author), Mary Hinds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

The Sustainable Kitchen brings home the thrill of tasting fine cuisine made from the best seasonal ingredients grown locally. Designed for people who want to make food choices that promote the economic, environmental and social health of their communities, this book gives seasonal cuisine new flair, using recipes adapted for exciting home cooking. Its two talented chefs share their passion for the culinary arts and their regional focus that inspires home cooks everywhere to connect with local farmers and purveyors to obtain the freshest produce available. These connections encourage regional food supplies and a strong local economy, maintain community, foster earth stewardship, and protect the future of family farms.

The Sustainable Kitchen focuses strongly on ingredients, offering a chef's insights into how and why to combine several together into a sauce, soup or ragoût for optimum flavor. The sumptuous recipes are offered as guidelines-the basis for inspiration, but not as absolutes-to allow for local market variations and a dash of spontaneity. Recipes include the full range, with special sections featuring entrees:

from oceans and rivers-seafood
from forests and farms-game, meat and poultry
from fields and gardens-vegetarian

Additional sections cover the basic tastes, tips for pairing food and wine, preserving the harvest, and "Notes to the Cook"-collecting useful recipes for basic vinaigrette, vegetable stock, crème fraîche, pasta dough, and much more.

Stu Stein and Mary Hinds are executive chefs at The Peerless Restaurant in Ashland, Oregon, which they own together. Both award-winning chefs with national experience, Stu has also appeared as featured chef on the nationally syndicated cooking series New American Cuisine and has contributed to several cookbooks.

Judith Dern has won awards for her food writing.

John Rizzo's prized photographs have appeared in many cookbooks and periodicals.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Stein and Hinds's Peerless Restaurant in Oregon's Rogue Valley is becoming one of the compulsory stops for foodies making West Coast pilgrimages to places like Chez Panisse and French Laundry. Now the restaurant's executive chefs present the philosophy and recipes that inform their cooking from seasonal Northwest ingredients. Eating is political for the authors, and they make a strong case for home cooks as well as restaurant chefs to support local farmers and purveyors to "encourage a regional food supply and a strong local economy, maintain a sense of community, encourage earth stewardship, and protect the future of small to medium-size family farms." Sprinkled between elegant recipes for Sweet Corn and Shiitake Mushroom Custard and Pan-Seared Alaskan Sablefish with Green Garlic, Fiddlehead Ferns and Soft Polenta are profiles of farmers and fishermen, as well as concise, non-preachy explanations of the environmental consequences of different production methods, in order to help readers make responsible and sustainable choices. The emphasis is firmly on Pacific Northwest products, especially fish and seafood, but each recipe offers substitutions to encourage cooks to use sources from close to home. The first step to a good meal is quality ingredients, and for Stein and Hinds that starts with knowing where your food comes from. 30 color and b&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Stu Stein is an Executive Chef at The Peerless Restaurant in Ashland, Oregon which he owns with his partner Mary Hinds. An award-winning chef whose history includes work in France, Atlanta, Kansas City and Washington D.C., he has been a featured chef on the nationally syndicated cooking series "New American Cuisine" and a Chief Instructor at the California Culinary Academy. He has contributed to several cookbooks.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: New Society Publishers (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086571505X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865715059
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,635,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Restaurant-Quality Food for the Home Kitchen June 14, 2004

By E. Deland

OK, let's get the disclosures out of the way: my husband and I are fortunate to live near Ashland, OR and we are huge fans of the Peerless Restaurant. I was also fortunate to be one of the recipe testers while they were writing their book. That said, this is a great cookbook with very do-able recipes that any home cook with a little bit of experience should be able to do. I tried 6 of the recipes during the testing phase and a couple of others since the book just came out and they were all winners.

I might not be able to duplicate the beautiful presentations that Stu and Mary offer at Peerless but the flavors of the home-cooked versions as compared to the restaurant versions are right on. The recipes give clear instructions, advice regarding advance preparations, ideas for substitutions, and wine recommendations.

Interspersed with the recipes are essays on how to make food choices that are good for our planet, eating seasonally, and interviews with artisanal food producers which give the reader an appreciation for the foods we eat and an understanding of how they are grown and produced.

This is an excellent, fun-to-read introduction to sustainable and seasonable cooking that tastes great too!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Enhanced with 75 color and b/w photos July 16, 2004

By Midwest Book Review

Stu Stein and Mary Hinds are acclaimed chefs and co-owners of The Peerless Restaurant in southern Oregon. Together with Judith H. Dern, they have collaborated in The Sustainable Kitchen: Passionate Cooking Inspired By Farms, Forests And Oceans, a compilation of fresh, seasonal, flavorful, original, and thoroughly "kitchen cook friendly" recipes. Enhanced with 75 color and b/w photos, these delicious recipes range from Asparagus Custard; Three Oyster Stew; Heirloom Tomato Salad with Grilled Red Torpedo Onions and Pesto Vinaigrette; and Slow Roasted Ivory King Salmon with a Ragout of Mushrooms, Spinach and Fingerling Potatoes; to Sage Rubbed Leg of Pork with Apple-Fennel Pan Sauce; Root Vegetable and Onion Marmalade Pave; Chocolate Peppermint Brownie; and Honey Tangerine-Meringue Tartlet with Grand Marnier Pastry Cream and Berry Coulis. The Sustainable Kitchen will prove to be a welcome and appreciated addition to any kitchen cookbook collection!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The why of what you eat February 21, 2008

By Cecil Bothwell VINE™ VOICE

The intent of most vegetable gardeners extends beyond the carefully nurtured ecosystem to the plate. An early entry into the gardening cookbook category, The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash (Knopf, 1982), has long been a favorite of mine, with its delicious recipes side-by-side with planting and cultivating suggestions and the sometimes too-precious stories about the famous made-for-PBS garden. But that book stops short of integration into the wider food equation, the systems that feed us. Enter The Sustainable Kitchen.

A cookbook, this collection of scrumptious recipes is interspersed with theory. Though this isn't a large volume it is amazingly comprehensive, carrying you through from appetizers to nuts with seasonal dessert recipes that range from the crunch of Sun-Dried Cherry Biscotti to the liquid -- Chilled Syrah Poached Rhubarb Soup. Recipe ingredients include fish, shellfish, poultry, beef, pork, game, eggs, cheeses, and wild mushrooms, as well as fruits and vegetables, and a section on wine selection offers a splendid short course on a complex subject.

Whether you are a vegetarian (with the enormous ecologic benefits that inhere) or an omnivore, the authors want you to consider the source and the season when you choose your diets. Local and fresh are best -- not only because local is fresher, but because dollars stay in the local economy. They explain why most fish farming is a source of environmental degradation, how to tell the difference, and which methods of catching fish are most sustainable (as well as which fish are now managed most sustainably). Distinctions in meat production are made clear as well, with specific guidelines about humane treatment, organic feedstock (and no animal byproducts or waste), no use of hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics and growing the animals on land that is treated as a sustainable resource.