There are many reasons to genuflect in Barbara Lynch's direction.
The accomplished chef has introduced Boston to modern fine dining (No. 9 Park), refined fish-shack cuisine (B&G Oysters), rustic charcuterie (The Butcher Shop) and the thrills of serious tippling (Drink).
Now, she's bringing her singular culinary ethos to the home kitchen with her first cookbook, Stir.
The book outlines her trajectory from a scrappy South Boston upbringing to her time in the kitchen at Todd English's Olives to the opening of No. 9 Park. It's a fascinating tale, but her recipes provide an even more compelling narrative.
No matter her idiom--whether haute French, rough-hewn Italian or fancy New England coastal--Lynch tiptoes a narrow boundary, cooking food that manages to be both gutsy and sophisticated.
In Stir, Lynch's refreshing point of view covers every page. Her fondness for fresh pasta is omnipresent, and she includes recipes for both No. 9's signature dish--prune gnocchi with foie gras--and her famed Odd Fellow marinara sauce (click here to download the recipe).
Equally useful are the knowing asides sprinkled throughout the book. In them, Lynch cries foul about the ubiquity of mesclun, expounds on the dangerous ineffectualness of tongs, and convincingly explains why fresh herbs should be added to homemade stocks and soups at the end.
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