Chef’s Choice: Inspiring Cookbooks

By Kristi Kates | Aug. 12, 2017

Ever wonder what cookbooks your favorite chefs read and use? We’ve sought out the tomes that are tops on the shelves of some of northern Michigan’s best local chefs and cooks. Find out why these particular cookbooks helped launch, sustain, or inspire their culinary careers!

Bruce Wallis, Chef de Cuisine at Harvest, Traverse City
“Momufuku” by David Chang (with Peter Meehan)
“I look for more in a cookbook than ‘just’ good recipes, so I think the one I’ve read the most is ‘Momofuku.’ It’s such a great read — a little profane, but great — it’s just full of ideas and inspiration. The recipes are mixed with stories of how David Chang started his first restaurant [Momofuku Noodle Bar, in New York City] and how he launched his culinary empire, plus I’m a writer as well, so I really appreciate good writing. In this book I learned that you can start on a shoestring, that you can follow and achieve your dream, and that if you screw up along the way, it’s not the end of the world. Food-wise, it taught me how to take Korean and other Asian cuisines and make them more understandable for someone raised in Western cultures and traditions. I especially like the recipes for some of his quick kimchi, as they’re fast but really tasty.”

Chef Christine Boerma, Sorellina, Traverse City
“The Silver Spoon” by Clelia D'Onofrio and “The French Laundry” by Thomas Keller
“I can’t pick just one! These two are my all-time favorites. The ‘Silver Spoon’ was a gift and is so fitting for my current position, since I’m at an Italian restaurant. That book and a recent trip I took to Italy this past January to take a course from Chef John Nocita have both really inspired me. I love the book’s bolognese sauce recipe in particular. Regarding ‘The French Laundry’ cookbook, I worked for Chef Ryan Johnston in San Diego for a while, and he’d trained under Chef Thomas Keller, who’s the owner of The French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley, and also the author of that cookbook. Working with Chef Ryan is how I learned about Chef Keller, so I had to get that book too. Both books have so, so many different techniques that I’ve learned so much from. They really teach you how to master your craft as a chef.”

Chef Eric Snyder, Bluefish Kitchen and Bar, Manistee
“The Professional Chef” by The Culinary Institute of America
“This is the one cookbook that I use all the time. It’s a huge, huge volume put out by the CIA [Culinary Institute of America] in Hyde Park, which is a famous chef school out in New York state. There are a few recipes in the book, but mostly it just focuses on technique. When I was in culinary school in Lansing, Michigan, I used, I think, the second edition, and now they’re on the ninth edition, which I actually just picked up a copy of about a month ago. You know, I’ve seen a lot of things in my 35 years as a chef — I’ve been doing this a long time — and a lot of recipes stick in my head, but sometimes I need to refresh on a particular technique or practicality, and I can always find it in that book. It’s such a solid reference guide, I’ve pretty much always had one around.”

Jill DeLeary, Owner and Chef at Red Top Pasteria, Lake Leelanau
“The Pizza Bible” by Tony Gemignani
“I bought ‘The Pizza Bible’ back in 2013, right after we attended the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. We’d been talking about opening a pizza place for quite some time, but I knew I didn’t just want to get some pre-made dough ball somewhere — I wanted the pizza to truly be homemade. I was already familiar with the author, Tony. As a matter of fact, I’d almost signed up to take his pizza-making course out West! And the book has recipes for practically every kind of pizza [style] you could think of — New York, California, St. Louis, Chicago — so it gave me a plethora of pizzas all in one spot. This enabled me to really experiment and try different recipes, which eventually led to me refining my own recipe, which is a version of Detroit-style pizza. The book was the catalyst that gave me the extra push I needed to go for it and open the restaurant."

Colbye O’Neil, Executive Chef at Minerva’s, Traverse City
“Working the Plate: The Art of Food Presentation” by Christopher Styler
“More so than what you might think of as a traditional cookbook, the one I refer to the most is this one, which has ‘recipes,’ so to speak, for different styles of plating and presenting food. It shows you how to build beautiful food presentation starting from one focal point on the plate; it’s all about the design. Before we eat food, we experience it in other ways — just think about going to a restaurant, seeing a plate go by, and saying, ‘Oh, what’s that? I want that!’ That’s what happens when, as a chef, you put that extra flair into things. From this book in particular, I learned how to make butterflies out of carrots, which I do a lot now; how to use different dishes to pack and build shapes out of sticky rice; and how to use micro-greens as a color palette for the plate in a way the best complements both the greens’ color and their flavor. I think the key thing that I learned from the book is how to present food in a way that really speaks to the soul.”