Who is David Burke

In this original and challenging cookbook, meatloaf is a starting point rather than a destination. Having introduced the world to smoked salmon pastrami and goat cheese lollipops, the executive chef and co-owner of davidburke & donatella is known for his quirky, often humorous sensibility in the kitchen. Here, he turns his attention to American comfort food. The guiding principal is that once a cook masters a classic recipe, he or she can transform it into haute cuisine-and then use the leftovers to create something else entirely. Eggs benedict is transformed into a Canadian Bacon and Onion Potato Cake with Poached Eggs and Spicy Tomato Salsa; the following day it becomes Bacon, Potato, and Eggs Strudel. It's in these second-day dishes that Burke displays his whimsy. Few cooks, after all, make Oatmeal Gougères, Barbecued Chicken Sticky Buns, and Coconut Cheesecake Beignets with Red Fruit Sorbet and Berries at home. These are convenient, creative solutions, but they are not shortcuts; even the "classics" go a few steps beyond basic and require considerable skill and time. The results, however, are almost always worth the effort.

A unique and clever approach to cooking raises this cookbook above its rivals in the genre of cookbooks based on restaurant cuisine. Celebrated New York chef Burke presents each dish in three separate and distinctive guises: classic, contemporary, and second day (leftovers). This tripartite approach allows him to address cooks possessing different levels of expertise and sophistication. Burke creates a simple pot roast made from beef brisket festooned with standard root vegetables. The same piece of meat with ginger, spices, rice wine, and soy sauce becomes a very modern Asian pot roast. Leftovers from either of these recipes may be shredded and mixed with barbecue sauce and chopped peppers for an elegant Sloppy Joe. Burke's imagination roams free: his spareribs call for replacing the bones with asparagus spears. A large number of these recipes require advanced kitchen techniques so that only the most experienced cooks will have the skills to reproduce Burke's results. Color photographs help guide when the instructions alone fail to communicate the chef's intent.-- Mark Knoblauch