Cookbook review: The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living

By Tom Mentzer
Scripps Howard News Service
Dec. 11, 2006

Tucking California cuisine neatly into a cookbook is a tricky affair, like fitting a square chicken into a round pot.

California cuisine leans heavily on whatever happens to be fresh that day, so recipes must be flexible enough for home cooks and their local supermarkets. In addition, the fusion dishes of California regularly rely on a variety of cooking methods, so techniques must be simplified for home cooks and their kitchens.

"The PlumpJack Cookbook: Great Meals for Good Living" (Rodale Books, $35) does an admirable job of overcoming those obstacles, balancing quality with accessibility and aptitude with simplicity.

Author Jeff Morgan adapts nearly 80 recipes from the restaurant kitchens of the PlumpJack group, a hospitality empire spread throughout Northern California.

The book features a wide variety of choices for every meal, with appetizers and desserts tending to be lighter and breakfasts, entrees and sides heartier.

The old standbys of California cuisine have a seat at the table, including a traditional Cobb salad and several airy seafood dishes. But Morgan ranges further afield to fill his roster, drawing inspiration from the old-school (game, including rabbit and venison) and the trendy (pork belly and Southeast Asian flavors).

Most sauces are quite simple, often just a handful of items tossed into a blender. A lemongrass/chile sauce and a pomegranate gremolata both offer a lot of flavor without a lot of effort.

The sides may be bit heavy for the mostly hearty entrees, but they're delicious. A simple roasted Brussels sprout dish with bacon could win over the most anti-sprout diners.

Morgan takes a few liberties with ingredients (traditional lemons are rarely "equally suitable" to sweeter Meyer lemons, especially paired with delicate scallops), but the results are usually successful. Replacing duck liver with chicken liver in a flan is hardly a facsimile of restaurant fare, but the result is agreeably lighter.

Morgan also doesn't hesitate to order up items like lamb shanks and fresh squid, prepared just so by "your butcher" and "your fishmonger." The book does a fine job choosing ingredients that can show off their fresh flavors yet still be located by most cooks. The result is a strong list of recipes for the widest possible audience.

The book's writing is less consistent. While the intros to each recipe are well-written, offering useful tips and pointing out potential problem areas, the 30 pages of opening narrative are dreadful, more heavy-handed advertising campaign than accessible history.

"The PlumpJack Cookbook" isn't perfect, but it does a good job of offering nearly restaurant-quality dishes while demanding less-than-restaurant-quality skills.