Chef, Interrupted: Delicious Chefs' Recipes That You Can Actually Make at Home

A prolific cookbook coauthor and food writer, Clark revises the innovative recipes of top restaurant chefs, hoping to make them easier for nonpros. Her tweaks generally consist of replacing hard-to-find or difficult-to-manage ingredients with more available and user-friendly ones, then condensing steps to reduce preparation time and carefully clarifying more advanced techniques. By deconstructing each dish into its most necessary elements and bypassing fussy flourishes, Clark succeeds in keeping the essence of most of the famous chefs' foods. Home cooks will be delighted by Mushroom Risotto with Truffle Tea Foam based on Marcus Samuelsson's Aquavit recipe, or the Charlie Trotter–inspired Five-Spice-Crusted Tuna with Roasted Carrots and Rutabaga Purée, or a streamlined version of Eleven Madison Park's Chocolate–Peanut Butter Parfaits with Caramelized Bananas. Though simplified, these are sophisticated dishes that require planning ahead. Prep times are generally an hour or more, and that doesn't include the many ingredients that require chilling overnight, marinating a day ahead of time or a few extra hours of baking. Despite these obstacles, the promise of being able to prepare dishes made famous by the likes of Mario Batali and Alain Ducasse is indeed alluring. Photos. (On sale Sept. 20)