New Cookbook Features RI Chefs

New Cookbook Features RI Chefs

It’s high time that some of Rhode Island’s top chefs were praised alongside the celebrity chef greats such as Thomas Keller, Eric Ripert and Tom Colicchio. Harvest to Heat, the new cookbook by Darryl Estrine & Kelly Kochendorfer contains collaborations with all those great as well as two of Providence’s best: Chez Pascal co-owner Chef Matthew Gennuso and Nick’s on Broadway owner Chef Derek Wagner.

The wonderful thing about Harvest to Heat isn’t that it’s a compilation of recipes from some of the best of the best chefs cooking in the United States right now, but that it also includes the stories of the farmers and food producers that those chefs get some of their favorite ingredients from. Let’s face it, anyone who even modestly collects cookbooks has plenty of books of recipes, some that we don’t even cook out of any more. My favorite cookbooks tell a story around those recipes. There has to be some tale to connect the food and the cooking to why I’m going to want to make that dish. Otherwise there’s thousands of other recipes out there—especially given the breadth of recipes online—to cook.

So Harvest to Heat tells us the story of some of America’s great food producers, names you might recognize like Allan Benton, Annie Farrell & Betsy Fink and Tuthilltown Spirits. They’re paired with the chefs in beautiful photographs, showing their wares and inspiring delicious dishes. In the case of the two RI chefs featured in the book, the producers are also two of the area’s best. Chef Gennuso worked with the Santos Brothers of Shy Brothers Farm in Westport, producers of Hannahbell cheese and Chef Wagner worked with Paul Baffoni of Baffoni’s Poultry Farm in Johnston.

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Both Gennuso and Wagner have two recipes in the book, containing their partner farms’s ingredients. Personally, I want a cookbook I am able to cook from. I took the opportunity to make Gennuso’s Savory Bread Pudding with Bacon and Farmstead Cheese with Tomato Jam and Wagner’s Chicken Pot Pie. Both recipes worked very well with excellent results. The Chicken Pot Pie (with a buttermilk/pepper biscuit “crust”) was a runaway hit with my family and we also loved the rustic refinement of the Bread Pudding with Jam.

Gennuso told me, “It is an honor to be included in a book that features some of the best chefs in our country. It is nice to be recognized for all the hard work that the farmers and chefs do to support each other. The book is beautifully photographed book, touching on many of the amazing out of the way special places this country has to offer.” If you’re a fan, or know one, of many aspects of food and cooking today—the chefs, the farms, sustainability, creativity, great photography and storytelling—then I would definitely recommend Harvest to Heat.

Harvest to Heat is in bookstores and available online now.