Ethan Stowell

This is one of those cookbooks that is hard to evaluate. On one hand, it's a great snapshot of Ethan Stowell's style and preferences as well as capturing what's current in Pacific Northwest cuisine. Many of these recipes would clearly be delicious and I'd order just about anything in the book if I found it on a menu (as I may well do at one of Stowell's Seattle restaurants) but I can see why people who don't live in an area with Seattle's food bounty would find a book calling for ingredients like geoduck and uni or homemade nettle pesto impractical. I'm a pretty decent and confident cook and there's no way I can see myself bothering to track down lamb's tongue, pig's ears, or trying his tripe recipe at home. On the other hand, duck egg ravioli with ricotta and Swiss chard sounds lovely and gnocchetti with pancetta, chanterelles and mint is definitely in my wheelhouse, as are most of the other recipes in the book. I give it a 4 for inspiration, innovation, and presentation (the Kindle version has a fully-linked table of contents and index and several color photos detailing step-by-step processes for some of the more complex instructions) and a 3 for practicality/usability.… (mere)