The New Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion And Cooking Manual With Recipe

These days, most restaurant cookbooks proffer ease and utility and feature weeknight meals that require minimal work.

But the promise is usually better than the payout. The just-released cookbook from restaurant Frankies Spuntino the Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual, however, delivers the sort of recipes and techniques you can stick in your back pocket and take on the road.

The book is the work of two chefs, Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, who cooked in fancy restaurants for years before they eschewed fussiness and found success with an easy-to-replicate take on the Italian-American food they grew up with.

Their recipes are not "deceptively simple"; they are, in fact, simple: Tomato sauce–the cornerstone of many of the book's dishes–has five everyday ingredients in it (including salt).

One of the must useful recipes is among the least Italian: Caesar salad. No matter: The Franks' take on the dressing is an ingenious amalgam that imitates the real deal by mixing together a bunch of ingredients that are available in any two-bit grocery store in America (click here to download the recipe).

Plus, unlike real Caesar, there are no raw eggs to worry about, making the dressing suitable for picnics and other summertime situations where refrigeration is unlikely–but good food is essential.