Restaurant Cookbooks: Mainstreet, etc.

Posted on 18 December 2006 under Cookbooks, Restaurant Chit-Chat

Something I like to do is try to figure out how a dish at a restaurant has been put together, so I can fix the same thing at home. Most of the time, it’s just for fun, such as the Salmon with Cranberry Conserves Chef Tad at the Frog Leg Inn in Erie put together this fall. At other times, such as this past June for the anniversary of our reception, I’ll end up with a dish that tastes very strange but has a good concept. At a restaurant in Monroe, I had a lobster-and-sage-stuffed salmon that had a number of harsh flavors all competing with one another. Rethinking this dish, I came up with a cornbread-and-whitefish-stuffed salmon with Hollandaise that came across much better.

Ask some older home cooks how they make something and you might get an answer of, “You know, I don’t really know … I just throw things together.” Ask some professional cooks or chefs how they do something, and you might get an allusion to what’s going on in the kitchen but not always. Television chefs are a different matter, though. You can buy Emeril’s Essence, the ‘BAM!’ spice, in most grocery stores. Or, you can download the recipe from his web site and make it yourself using the same recipe they use in the Food Network kitchen.

There’s a little publishing company in Ann Arbor, Huron River Press, that’s changing this for the Ann Arbor/Toledo area. Formerly part of Michigan’s delightful Sleeping Bear Press (my kids love their children’s books!), Huron River Press has published cookbooks from such venerable Michigan institutions as Win Schuler’s, and The Common Grill in Dexter.

About 12 years ago I visited The Real Seafood Co. in Ann Arbor for the first time and simply loved it. Over the next few years I’d gone back probably four times for various occasions. They serve simple, honest seafood that’s presented well and has amazing flavors.

This past Halloween for my birthday, Mary got us tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra at the Seagate Center. The tickets were for the 3 p.m. performance, and she intended to take me to a downtown restaurant afterward. A couple weeks later on the designated Sunday, we headed down for some head-banging Christmas music performed by long-haired entertainers in tuxedos, and were both visually-and-aurally blasted for three straight hours. Satisfied from this, we headed to the restaurant … only to find it was closed. Driving upriver, we remembered the restaurants just across the river from One Seagate. I parked the car, we walked up … there was The Real Seafood Co. all over again, and we didn’t have to drive to Ann Arbor to get there!

As soon as we got inside, I spotted something I knew I’d be getting sooner or later; Mainstreet Ventures Distinctive Recipes, published by that same Huron River Press in Ann Arbor. Browsing through those copies that had been autographed by Executive Chef Simon Pesusich, I found a few dishes, such as the Spinach and Three Cheese Cannelloni, that I knew I’d had at the Ann Arbor location.

Mary and I had an extremely wonderful meal. I had the Sautéed Lake Michigan Whitefish with Michigan Dried Cherries, something I felt I might like to make at home sometime. Mary’s dessert of a Vanilla Bean Creme Brulée was in the same league, something I felt I could do.

On our way out, out of curiosity I browsed through one of those books. The recipe for the whitefish dish was on page 50, the creme brulée on page 176.

I just had to have the darned thing!

This past Saturday, my sister Janet gave me a $25 gift card for Border’s books. The Mainstreet Ventures cookbook is now sitting right here. And the whitefish recipe? It’s very doable. American Spoon Foods in Petosky sells the Michigan dried cherries by the bag. I’ll bet good money that’s where Chef Simon gets his.

Mainstreet Ventures owns and operates other restaurant besides The Real Seafood Co. Maybe you’ve heard of them or eaten there; Zia’s, The Chop House, Ciao!, Tidewater Grill, Gratzi, Blue Pointe, La Dolce Vita, Palio, and Carson’s American Bistro. Every last one of these fine restaurants is represented in this cookbook.

The back of the book lists wine and cigar pairings, how to cook pasta correctly, what to look for in a tomato, and many other professional hints. There’s some great stuff in here.

Do you want to cook like they do at your favorite restaurant? Maybe you can. Just do what they do.

Practice. Practice over and over using their own recipes, just like they do.

That’s why, at these places, it’s perfect.

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