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Review: Steak with Friends

August 6, 2010

Steak with Friends: At Home, with Rick Tramonto.  Rick Tramonto with Mary Goodbody.  Andrews McMeel Publishing.  $35.00.  (304p)  ISBN: 978-0-7407-9257-1

First off:  this is a really BIG book, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  Secondly, I learned a new trick from it that I wish I’d known years ago (to bake bacon rather than fry it).  Thirdly, in recipe testing for it I happily got to use my friend, Phil’s incredible bacon: All Natural Berkshire Pork Belly, Cured 10 Days, Applewood Smoked.  Phil is My Life as a Foodie, a great cook, a great curer of meats, and a very cool guy.  My experience with this book was a good one from start to finish.

Chef Rick Tramonto has been in the restaurant business for 30 years, and owns three Chicago area restaurants: Tru, Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood, RT Sushi Bar & Lounge.  A James Beard Award winner, a competitor on Top Chef Masters, Top Chef and Iron Chef; he was also named a Top Ten Best New Chefs by Food & Wine magazine in 1994.  He has published six cookbooks before ‘Steak with Friends.’  He’s already tested and proven his cooking mettle.  This book is meant to bring all he knows, and his experiences as a professional chef, to the home cook.  He succeeds quite well at doing so.

“The title of this book says it all:  This is about eating steak dinners with good friends and enjoying all that implies,” states Tramonto.  Except it doesn’t stop at steaks.  It also includes hot and cold appetizers, salads, soups and sandwiches, fish and seafood, sauces, stocks, dressings, marinades, and syrups, other meat and poultry, side dishes, and desserts.  Shew!  The book does devote a number of pages to steak, in fact, there are three chapters alone on the subject.  There are enough recipes in this book (150) to cook complete meals from starters to desserts for at least a year.  (I didn’t do the math so maybe it’s only six months.)

In addition to the recipes Chef Tramonto throws in many ‘how-tos,’ and ‘abouts’ such as ‘About Oysters,’ followed by ‘How To Shuck an Oyster,’ or ‘Notes on the Steak Recipes,’ with ‘How to Choose a Great Steak.’  Helpful color photographs and diagrams are also sprinkled throughout.  Cocktail recipes usually thematically tied to the recipe on the same page also pop up.  Music and cooking play an important part of Tramonto’s cooking process; something I understand as most professional kitchens I’ve worked in usually played very loud, heart-thumping music during the many hours of prep.  He is a proponent of cooking to music and periodically makes recommendations of specific artists.  His taste seems to be fairly run of the mill pop and rock.  For example his recommendations for cooking cold appetizers are:  Billy Joel, Elton John, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, The Goo Goo Dolls, and The Allman Brothers.  Hmmm, not exactly cutting-edge choices!  Still an interesting, and unique, addition to the recipes.

I was only able to try a handful of recipes, and since steak is the star of the book I tried those first: Filet Mignon with Béarnaise Sauce, Bone-In Rib Eye with Bordelaise Sauce, and Steak au Poivre.  The first two were cooked on an outdoor grill, and turned out beautifully; the old-fashioned French sauces included (separate recipes).  The Steak au Poivre was prepared on the stove top.   All three preparations are familiar steak standards.  Tramonto’s cooking instructions including how long to cook for medium rare, medium and well done were spot on.  It had been awhile since I’d make a Béarnaise, or Bordelaise, or even an au poivre sauce and it was fun.  There’s a reason eating beef this way is so popular — it’s really, really good.

Other recipes I tested were Twice-Baked Potatoes with Irish Cheddar, Grilled Broccoli Rabe, Cucumber Salad, Lemon Aïoli, Rick’s BLTs — the reason I chose this one was because it required bacon, and I had my friend Phil’s bacon to use.  Knowing I was using bacon that Phil had lovingly cured added to the pleasure of testing, and eating, the recipe.  On the same page as the BLT recipe was a break out box ‘Cook Bacon Like a Chef’ — a genius thing.  Turn the oven to 350°, put the bacon on a parchment lined baking sheet, and let it bake until done, no turning, no smoke, no popping of hot oil.  I love to learn new kitchen tricks (or re-learn forgotten ones) and this is a great one!  Tramonto and Goodbody know how to create dishes and write recipes.  All the dishes I tried worked very well, and tasted even better.

The food and recipes in this book are fairly traditional, straight forward meat and potato preparations.  There’s no breaking of new ground here — nothing molecular, no foams or CO2 canisters.  It’s simple and honest food which I think was Chef Tramonto’s goal.  If so, he succeeded and this is definitely a go-to book for a family dinner on the weekend, or a casual yet nice dinner with friends.

My Status: Enjoying the coolest summer we’ve seen in Los Angeles in years (apologies to all readers living east of the Rockies).  Eating, cooking, restaurant-ing, blogging and writing.  A food-filled trip to San Francisco to join my friend, Chef Jeremiah Tower, coming up next week.  The IFBC at the end of August (see below), and a trip to Sonoma County in September: returning to Zazu & Bovolo…

Coming Up: International Food Bloggers Conference (IFBC), August 27 – 29, 2010, Seattle Washington.  So much fun last year that I’ll be attending again this year.  Are you?

Upcoming Posts: Cookbook Reviews ~ Cider Beans, Wild Greens, and Dandelion Jelly by Joan E. Aller; Mary Mac’s Tea Room: 65 Years of Recipes from Atlanta’s Favorite Dining Room by John Ferrell.

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