Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Cookery / food & drink etc

POOLE'S

Ashley Christensen

Recipes and Stories from a Modern Diner

From Raleigh's James Beard award-winning chef, a comprehensive look at the guiding principles of great cooking--with over 100 recipes for the food that has made Poole's Downtown Diner one of the South's most celebrated restaurants.

Ashley Christensen is one of the most dynamic chefs on the food scene today. Poole's is her master class in making the best foundational recipes and then turning these into exceptional sides, mains, and desserts--all inspired by the food at her James Beard award-winning restaurant, Poole's Downtown Diner. The ingredient-driven recipes range from beloved Southern favorites like Pimento Cheese, Buttermilk Fried Chicken with Hot Honey, and Dark Chocolate Pecan Pie to modern updates like Turnip Green Fritters with Whipped Tahini, the one-dish Pork Cassoulet with Pit Peas and Collards, and Zucchini Doughnuts with Marscapone.

ASHLEY CHRISTENSEN is a media darling, and the owner of five restaurants in Raleigh, NC: Poole's, which opened in 2007; Beasley's Chicken + Honey, Chuck's, and Fox Liquor Bar, which all opened in 2011; and Death & Taxes, which opened in 2015. She is credited with revitalizing a languishing downtown area, and is widely praised for her charitable work on behalf of the Southern Foodways Alliance and several other regional charities. She has been written up in Bon Appétit, Gourmet, the New York Times, Southern Living, and Garden & Gun. She was named one of the "Female Chefs of the Next Generation" by Bon Appétit in 2008 and is the winner of the James Beard award for "Best Chef: Southeast." She has appeared on Food Network's Iron Chef America and MSNBC's Your Business.

Available products
Book Published 2016-09-20 by Ten Speed Press
Book Published 2016-09-20 by Ten Speed Press

Comments

[Poole's] pulls the cooking and ethos of Christensen's diner, providing recipe after recipe for Southern comfort food. The book presents at a much higher level than you might expect, with the gorgeous photography and glossy pages of a fine dining restaurant cookbook. The incommensurateness works well: We quickly understand that though this is a diner in the South, the techniques and ingredients are first-rate, that Christensen's recipe for cornmeal-fried okra with Tabasco mayo, say, or pork ribs with mustard sorghum sauce, requires the same honesty and care as any dish coming out of any classic French kitchen, New York bistro or L.A. farm-to-table restaurant.

Cauliflower soup with sulatanas, fried eggplant with burnt honey, rabbit poblano rellenos, and oysters rock-a-billy: the recipes here trip off your tongue and across your palate. Poole's is a catalog of great eats. It's also a work of sly philosophy, a meditation on community, and a celebration of the experiences that chefs and guests create together in those quicksilver moments when food and drink and good intentions converge at well-laid tables.

This book is just right. I want to eat at Poole's, drink at Poole's, meet all of Ashley's friends at the counter at Poole's. I want the white acre peas and the crispy flounder, and while we're at it, I want her dad's cold meatloaf sandwich. I hope she is very proud of the work. She should be.

Ashley Christensen does with food what Bob Dylan has done with song. She takes all the pieces we've come to understand in our life thus farthe ingredients, the familiar chordsand puts them together in a way that feels new, universal, and earth shaking, and yet somehow down-home. Having her food feels like church, sitting at the bar with best friends, and a history lesson all at once.

Most cookbooks fall into one of two categories: the aspirational and the useful, those that are flipped through on lazy Sundays, then returned to the top shelf, and those that live a dog-eared life on the counter. With Poole's: Recipes and Stories from a Modern Diner, Ashley Christensen has written the rare cookbook that begs to be labeled as both.

"Poole's reminds me of my favorite bistros and brasseries in Paris, the out-of-the-way places that thrive on real food and no hype, the beautiful yet simple little restaurants where the recipes are time-honored yet creative, the ingredients are not too far removed from the farm, the presentation is fun and never fussy, and the entire dining experience is an adventure that I think about long after the meal. Eating there is an absolute joy."

The first two snacks, among the more than 100 recipes in this collection, are misleading: pimento cheese followed by deviled eggs might cause readers to think that this is another tome featuring good old Southern comfort food classics. But the James Beard Awardwinning chef Christensen, owner of Poole's and six other eateries in Raleigh, N.C., quickly reverses course, steering head-on into the wilds of modern cuisine with fried eggplant with burnt honey aioli, and turnip green fritters with whipped tahini.