Ask New Yorkers to name their favorite restaurant and they are likely to reply: "Union Square Cafe." Indeed, Union Square Cafe has been ranked the city's most popular restaurant by the Zagat Survey for five consecutive years and has earned many of the food world's top honors, including a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant of the Year, two three-star rankings from the New York Times, seven Awards of Excellence from Wine Spectator magazine, and the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef in New York Award for Michael Romano. What makes USC stand out in a sea of other great New York City restaurants? A simple but rare combination of extraordinary food, excellent wine, and the sort of warm, genuine hospitality one typically finds only in a neighborhood spot. In this new cookbook, proprietor Danny Meyer and executive chef and co-owner Michael Romano share the delicious dishes that have kept their customers coming back for more, year after year. Following the high standards for taste and accessibility set by their award-winning Union Square Cafe Cookbook, Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe offers more than 140 inspired recipes for everything from appetizers, soups, and salads to pastas, main courses, vegetables, side dishes, and desserts. These are the dishes that USC customers have come to know and love, including such favorites as a new version of their renowned Fried Calamari, Salt-Baked Chicken, Bollito di Vitello, Roasted Root Vegetables, and Blueberry-Lemon Meringue Pie.
But, more than simply a recipe collection, Second Helpings is a valuable kitchen resource for anyone interested in elevating his or her cooking to a new level. Michael teaches home cooks how to make their own pasta, create the juiciest chicken imaginable, correctly clean morels, and add new depth of flavor to all kinds of dishes, while Danny offers lively commentary and wine accompaniments for nearly every recipe. With their able guidance, even the most inexperienced cooks can turn out spectacular food with ease and joy.
Second Helpings captures the unique spirit of Union Square Cafe not just with recipes and animated text, but also with original black-and-white images by internationally acclaimed photographer Duane Michals. A longtime friend of USC, Duane has contributed his witty visual stories and restaurant vignettes in an innovative departure from standard food photography.
On every level Second Helpings from Union Square Cafe is a cookbook you'll treasure using again and again. Like the restaurant, it will become a familiar favorite and a trusted source of great food.
The book is invitingly presented with it's story line approach through the photographs, sometimes silly. But yes, as another reviewer mentioned there is Jacque Pepin in the black and white photo essay in one chapter looking like he's truly enjoying himself. A great endorsement for this book as I love his cooking and personality as much as I do Julia Child.
I can't wait to try other recipes from this book and soon. I think that this book will become a regular for me to try out new recipes and enhance my own knowledge of my Northern Italian Nona's cooking every day.
The new volume uses it's photographs to add a rare element of humor to the cookbook. It is great good fun to do some celebrity spotting in the pics and be reassured that if Jacque Pepin takes the trouble to eat there, something good much be going on in the back of the house.
The new volume includes a long Pasta and Risotto chapter. A welcome addition.
On the down side, I find some of the recipes fairly long. Several are probably too much for the casual cook, although I believe some of the length is due to their being very thorough in their explanations.
Since this is a sequel to a well received book, I find the Pantry section to be a waste of space. Many named preparations from the first book are repeated in the second. Since these preparations are also available in hundreds of other books, I think this is blatant padding.
Bottom line is that the book is a worthy continuation to the original.
