Stephanie Izard - Girl in the Kitchen: How a Top Chef Cooks, Thinks, Shops, Eats & Drinks

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Dave Gollan for help with recipe testing, everyone at the Goat (I love you guys!), Heather for putting up with me and my procrastination, and my parents for putting up with me for the past 34 years.

Stephanie Izard

THANK YOU to James Rahm for his help with the wine pairings, to Greg Hall for help with the beer pairings, to my agent Jane Dystel for going to bat for us whenever we asked, to my parents for unconditional love and support, and, of course, to Steph for believing that we could create an awesome book together and for sticking it out while we did.

Heather Shouse

IM SITTING IN THE BACKSEAT OF A CAR THATS PACKED WITH TWO GIRL & THE GOAT MANAGERS AND OUR HEAD MIXOLOGIST. WE ESCAPED FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE OPENING IN JULY 2010, FOR A 24-HOUR ROAD TRIP TO FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY, TO BUY A BARREL OF BUFFALO TRACE WHISKEY FOR MY RESTAURANT. AND POSSIBLY ONE FOR MY HOUSE. BEN, THE MIXOLOGIST, IS RAMBLING ON WITH INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF SAZERACS WHILE MY MANAGER DAN AND I ARE DISCUSSING THE DESIGN OF THE POWER-GENERATING WINDMILLS DOTTING THE INDIANA LANDSCAPE. IN THE MIDST OF THIS, I DECIDED TO PULL OUT MY LAPTOP AND FINALLY WRITE THIS INTRO, WHICH, OF COURSE, IS LONG OVERDUE. AFTER THIS ILL PULL OUT LAST NIGHTS MENU FROM THE RESTAURANT, COVERED IN VARIOUS SCRIBBLES AND IDEAS, AND TRY TO FINISH WRITING THE NEXT MENU THATS SET TO GO ON IN A FEW DAYS. THATS HOW I WORK: VERY LAST MINUTE, VERY SPUR OF THE MOMENT, ALWAYS A LITTLE NUTS, AND PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS HAVING A GOOD TIME.

This way of life is what got me into cooking in the first place. Its crazy hectic, but its just plain fun. My first day of culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, Arizona, my teaching chef said, Beware, 80 percent of chefs become alcoholics. I figured I was in the right place. Its no secret that Ive always loved to party, but when it came to cooking, somehow Ive always managed to put my head down, work hard, and have an awesome time doing it.

THE ETHIC OF THIS BOOK IS LIKE MINE: ITS A SOLID COLLECTION OF RECIPES BUILT ON A FEW CLASSIC TECHNIQUES, SO THAT YOU WALK AWAY HAVING ACTUALLY LEARNED HOW TO BE A BETTER COOK, BUT WITH ENOUGH TIPS AND TRICKS TO HELP TAKE THE STRESS OUT OF COOKING AND TO ALLOW YOU TO JUST HAVE FUN.

And for those of you with cookbook addictions like me, whose shelves are buckling under the weight of books you never actually cook from, I wanted to make this more than just a bunch of recipes. Through personal stories, spotlights of my favorite ingredients, and simplified breakdowns of cool techniques, theres plenty to read from the comfort of your couch, and plenty of insight into my style of cooking to hopefully inspire you to find your own. (And even if youre not cooking, try out the beer and wine suggestions throughout the bookthat always makes reading a bit more fun.)

Back to those books cluttering up my house. Before Heather and I started writing this, I looked through every book in my home collection, pulling out old ones stashed away in boxes, flipping through the stacks in my living room and the piles that leave little room for eating on my kitchen table (although what chef actually has time for eating at home?). One of the first books I remember reading still stands out as the book I enjoyed the most. It was A Cricket in Times Square, and it was the summer before third grade. It took me three library visits to finish it, since, of course, I kept finding other things to do that summer, but I can still remember discovering the pure joy of reading because of that book, turning the pages while sitting in my bed, on my banana-yellow sheets with my purple-flowered walls all around. A bit later in life I switched over to cookbooks. My mom, sister, and I would sit at the kitchen table in my childhood home in Connecticut every Sunday, flipping through cookbooks and writing the weeks menu to hang on the refrigerator. Pages were marked and recipes were followed to a T, and the posted menus helped my friends decide what night to come over for dinner (my friend Sue always made sure she was around for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding night).

A few of my friends thought I was weird for loving Julia Child, the Frugal Gourmet and Yan Can Cook, which werent exactly on par with Michael Jackson and Michael J. Fox for most twelve-year-olds. Aside from swimming (which I did competitively for most of my life), food was my main interest through childhood. I was always helping out in the kitchen, but for some reason it didnt immediately occur to me to be a chef. I followed the norm and went to college, getting a sociology degree from the University of Michigan, but felt lost even before graduation, unsure of what I was going to do next.

It was my dad who suggested culinary school, saying Why waste your time trying to be white collar when we all know youre more white coat? I enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu and found the place I was supposed to be all along.

In culinary school, cookbooks became references for techniques and insight into the world of restaurants and chefs that I was about to enter. After school, when I was thrown into sixty-hour workweeks with little money or time for traveling, cookbooks became a way for me to understand food from all over the world, to visit foreign places through pages of culinary history. And now I use books for inspiration, flipping through and registering recipe titles while glancing at the pictures, being reminded that, Hey, I havent used grapefruit in a while or If beets with pistachios works and beets with oranges works why not pistachios with oranges?

How I think about food and how I come up with dishes is the core of my career as a chef, and the core of this book. Since Top Chef wrapped and since the launch of Girl & the Goat, Ive often been quoted saying that I just want to make your whole mouth happy. What I mean by this is that with each dish you want to find the right balance of savory, sweet, salty, and even a little spice. When all of your tastebuds are utilized, the experience is heightened, more intense, more memorable. By looking at a recipe and understanding why each ingredient is there, it makes it easier to substitute if something is not available.

Take the tuna salad on page 115 for example. We have beautiful fresh fish with nice rich texture. We add raw snap peas to bring a bit of crunch and freshness. We add blueberries to bring a bit of sweet and tart, and the sorrel helps bring out the tart notes even further. The fatty pine nuts round it all out. So lets say you have no blueberries. How about some diced tart plums, or some sliced strawberries? Both have the same sweet and tart notes. Or lets say you arent able to get tuna, but you have some beautiful lump crab. Sub it in. Experiment. Go nuts. Above all,