The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter

The Kitchen Sessions
with Charlie Trotter

By Charlie Trotter

The Kitchen Sessions
"The recipes here, as always should be the case, are meant to be used as guides or as inspiration. And the best way to be a successful cook is to really love to eat. If you truly love eating and tasting and smelling, you will eventually arrive at a most satisfactory result."

... Charlie Trotter

The self-taught, improvisational chef is a rare find. Master chef Charlie Trotter is perhaps the rarest of his kind, an inspiration to all home chefs who have no formal training but all the right instincts. In Trotter's long-awaited cooking show, also titled The Kitchen Sessions, he conducts informal lessons that show how simple it can be to transform wonderful ingredients and a passion for food into rhapsodic dishes.

In this companion volume to his PBS television series, set to air nationwide in early 1999, master chef Charlie Trotter conducts informal lessons for home chefs, showing how simple it can be to transform quality ingredients and a passion for food into rhapsodic dishes. Patterned after the series, The Kitchen Sessions is divided into 13 chapters, all focusing on a key ingredient or specific dish in the Trotter kitchen. Soups, salads, lobster, scallops, catfish, salmon, tuna, pasta, poultry, pork, duck, beef, and desserts share the spotlight, as Trotter demonstrates the range of seasonings and techniques that make them all come alive. Each chapter features the four recipes developed for the series as well as two more, including:

Lobster Tabbouleh with Apricot Curry Sauce Tuna "Napoleon" with Crispy Potato Tuiles and Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce Blue Cheese Ravioli with Basil-Infused Tomato Water Tamarind-Glazed Roasted Chicken with Apple-Onion Potato purée Roasted Garlic-White Bean Soup with White Bean-Prosciutto Galettes Grilled Duck Breast with Braised Endive, Roasted Apples, and Red Wine Jus Zinfandel-Braised Short Ribs with Mustard Spaetzle and Aromatic Vegetables Chocolate-Ginger Truffle Tart with Pear-Caramel Sauce

In these thirteen delightful sessions, Trotter demonstrates the techniques and spontaneity that take place behind the stage at his now legendary namesake restaurant in Chicago. Mix his inspired ideas with a feel for the rhythm of good cooking and the jazzy compositions will fill your kitchen too.

The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter
By Charlie Trotter
Ten Speed Press
Cloth, $29.95
240 pages
Publication Date: January 1999
ISBN: 0-89815-997-0
Information provided by the publisher.