Home Bistro: Creating the Best of Restaurant Cuisine in Your Kitchen

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Why does food taste better in a restaurant? Even something as simple as
a grilled steak is a very different dinner at home than in a restaurant.

David Kingsmill believes that the difference lies 90 percent in the
selection of ingredients and only 10 percent in how they’re cooked and
presented. Therefore this cookbook gives an unusual amount of space to
the subject of how to select ingredients. While most books cover this
topic in a few sentences, Kingsmill gives it the full treatment. And he
does so with a light, readable style that makes this discussion the best
part of the work.

A lot of thought has gone into analyzing the restaurant experience and
isolating specific actions or characteristics that the reader can
duplicate at home. Kingsmill tackles myths and gives out secrets,
thereby letting home cooks gain insight into life in the kitchen of a
successful restaurant.

Each type of restaurant has its own mystique as well as a distinctive
menu. This book offers a closeup look at the ingredients and recipes
essential to the sense of a bistro, a trattoria, an ouzeri (Greek), a
casanda (Hungarian), a British Pub, a steakhouse, a crabshack, a
barbeque shack, and an adobe.

The recipes lean toward the rich and hearty, with generous use of
simple top-quality ingredients, fresh spices, and rich sauces. They
bring a feeling of authenticity, of only-the-best prepared in a climate
where shortcuts are unheard of.