From the Authority on Where to Eat and Why It Matters Hillary Dixler Canavan EATER is dedicated to all things food and dining, compris- ing a national site covering food and dining culture, more than twenty city sites tracking local dining scenes, and a robust YouTube channel featuring documentary-style videos about the inner workings of restaurants. HILLARY DIXLER CANAVAN is Eater’s restaurant editor. U.S. $35.00 Can. $44.00 U.K. £26.00 ISBN: 978-1-4197-6576-6 ALL THE MUST-EAT RECIPES FROM THE MOST POPULAR, INFLUENTIAL RESTAURANTS Zuni Café’s “Chicken for Two” • Frenchette’s Tartare Frites • Milk Bar’s Chocolate Chip Pancake Truffles • Una Pizza Napoletana’s Cosacca Pizza • Felix’s Strangolapreti • Miller Union’s Passion Fruit Shortbread Tart • Compère Lapin’s Crawfish Hushpuppies • Camp Washington’s Cincinnati Chili • Via Carota’s Carciofi alla Romana • Dimes’ Big Salad • Zahav’s Five-Minute Hummus • State Bird Provisions’ Poppy Seed Cake • Dirt Candy’s Beet Carpaccio • Bridgetown Roti’s Curry Channa Doubles • République’s Shakshuka with Baguette • Peninsula Grill’s “Ultimate” Coconut Cake • Chez Panisse’s Goat Cheese Salad • Xi’an Famous Foods’ Spicy Cumin Lamb • Monteverde’s Cacio Whey Pepe • Thai Diner’s Disco Fries • Compass Rose’s Khachapuri • Dhamaka’s Doh Khleh Pork Salad • Red Rooster’s Fried Yardbird • Saffron De Twah’s Saffron Tomato Dip • Night + Market’s Brussels Sprouts Larb • Veracruz All Natural’s Migas Tacos • McLoons’s “Half-and-Half” Lobster Rolls and many more! Cover design by Diane Shaw 100 ESSENTIAL RESTAUR ANT RECIPES 10 0 ESSENTIAL REST A UR ANT RECIPES CMYKHillary Dixler Canavan “This book is like a dream dinner party with all your favorite dishes.” MARCUS SAMUELSSON, chef and co-founder of Red Rooster “Tried-and-true recipes from the country’s most beloved dining institutions.” CHRISTINA TOSI, founder and chef of Milk BarChilled Zucchini Soup, Baked Goat Cheese with Garden Lettuce, Big Salad with Kale, Carrot Chips and Pumpkin SeedsLunch • 71 To get your lobster meat, prepare both an ice bath and your large steaming setup. Quickly plunge a sharp knife into the head of the lobsters and add the lobsters to a large pot of boiling water fitted with a steamer rack. Steam for 10 to 15 minutes, until they’re bright red and cooked through. Immediately chill the cooked lobsters in your ice bath. Once cool, pick out the tail, claw, and knuckle meat. Start assembling sandwiches immediately, or store the lobster meat in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use. To prepare the sandwiches, spread softened butter onto both sides of each split-top roll. Toast in a skillet over medium heat until golden. Spread 1 teaspoon mayonnaise on the inside of each roll and fill with ½ cup (about 4 ounces/113 g) lobster meat. Make sure to give each roll an equal share of tail, knuckle, and claw meat. Melt the remaining butter and drizzle it over the top of the rolls. Enjoy immediately. Alternatively, if you’d rather have a warm, Connecticut-style roll, heat the lobster in a pan over low heat with melted butter until warmed through. Fill the toasted rolls with the warmed meat and sprinkle with fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon on top. 4 large lobsters, about 1¼ pounds (570 g) each ½ cup (1 stick/113 g) salted butter, softened 4 New England–style split-top rolls (see Note) 4 teaspoons mayonnaise, or to taste Chopped fresh herbs, such as chives, tarragon, and/or parsley, for Connecticut style Fresh lemon juice, for Connecticut style A quintessential Maine lobster shack, complete with red siding and its own dock on a working lobster wharf, McLoons sits on the coast of Spruce Head Island with picnic tables overlooking Seal Harbor. The setting is postcard-ready Maine, but for diners who can’t decide between a Maine-style or a Connecticut-style lobster roll, the Douty family splits the difference and finds perfection with their iconic “half- and-half.” Where a typical Maine lobster roll features meat that’s been tossed with mayo, McLoons opts for spreading mayo on the roll so that the sweet flavors of freshly steamed lobster meat shine through, which are then enhanced by the drizzle of butter that comes from the Connecticut tradition. It’s a lobster roll to convince you that a road trip is in order. At home, it’s your ticket to a New England summer escape: You’re steaming lobsters, you’re toasting split-top buns, you’re drizzling melted butter on hand-picked knuckle, tail, and claw pieces. Serve your rolls with a bag of Cape Cod potato chips and eat them outside to really get into the New England spirit. MCLOONS LOBSTER SHACK South Thomaston, Maine “HALF-AND-HALF” LOBSTER ROLLS JNOTE: If your local grocery store doesn’t sell split-top buns, you can find them online or use regular hot dog buns. Serves 4“Lola” Pizza, Grilled Pizza, Cosacca Pizza, “Flipside” PizzaChicken • 151 1 small chicken, 2¾ to 3¼ pounds (1.25 to 1.5 kg) Fine sea salt 8 ounces (225 g) slightly stale, chewy, open-crumb bread (not sourdough) Freshly ground black pepper 10 tablespoons (150 ml) mild olive oil, plus more for brushing the bread and cooking the scallions 2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar 1 tablespoon dried currants 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon warm water ¼ cup (26 g) thinly slivered scallions, white and green parts 2 to 3 cloves garlic, peeled 2 tablespoons pine nuts ¼ cup (60 g) lightly seasoned salted chicken stock 2½ to 3 cups (43 g) bitter salad greens, such as arugula, frisée, or mustard greens The Zuni Café roast chicken for two is perhaps the single most famous chicken entree in the entire country. On the menu at the legendary San Francisco restaurant since the eighties, it boasts wonderfully salty, crispy skin and impossibly juicy meat alongside a bread salad with greens tossed in simple vinaigrette and all the pan drippings from the chicken’s time in the open hearth. The bird is also one of the most iconic cookbook recipes; Zuni’s late chef Judith Rodgers detailed the process over several pages in The Zuni Café Cookbook. The multiday salting process is absolutely essential to achieving the proper result. Zuni’s former executive chef Nate Norris and chef Ben Cohen devel- oped this grilled version to help achieve that flame-touched feeling without a wood-burning oven. Grilling causes the chicken’s juices to fall directly onto the fire, so you’ll want to rest the chicken on a tray so you can add them to your salad for that signature Zuni flavor. ZUNI CAFÉ San Francisco, California ZUNI’S “CHICKEN FOR TWO” on Your Grill At least 24 hours and up to 72 hours in advance, trim the chicken and season with salt. While the chicken is resting, think about purchasing bread to dry out for your salad. When ready to cook, spatchcock the chicken to make it easier to grill. Trim the larger sections of fat around the cavity at the top of the breast near the wings. Using poultry shears, cut closely along both sides of the backbone to remove it. Lay the chicken with its breast facing upward and fold the legs so that the drumsticks run parallel and closely to one another in the center of the bird and the thighs point outward. Use the heel of your hand to apply firm pressure to crack the sternum by pressing on the upper middle area between the breasts and push to further crack the breastbone where it meets the wings. The goal is to create as flat a chicken as possible. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. Use 3½ grams salt per 1 pound (455 g) chicken. The thicker sections of muscle, such as the breast, will need more salt than the wings or drumsticks. Distribute the salt accordingly and season with black pepper. Tuck the wing tips underneath the back so the “elbow” points toward the legs and the “wrist” points toward the top of the chicken. About 1 hour before you plan to eat, heat up your grill. Propane gas will do, but hardwood charcoal is best. Trim the thicker bottom crust off the bread, taking care not to lose any of the bread’s interior. Trim most of the top and edge crust (save all these crusts for breadcrumbs or bread pudding) and lightly brush the trimmed surfaces with olive oil. Set this aside while the grill continues to heat up. Serves 2 to 4 ContinuedNext >