Michael's Cookbook

Nation's Restaurant News, July 30, 1990 by Michael Schrader

MICHAEL'S COOKBOOK

McCarty, one of the pioneers of California cuisine, is chef-owner of Michael's in Santa Monica, Calif., and New York.

"Michael's Cookbook" reflects what McCarty calls "Modern American Contemporary French, California style. As he explains, "It's American because I'm American ... [and]...because I prefer to use American ingredients whenever possible ... My food is also French ... because after high school and before college I lived in Paris and earned degrees in French cooking ... [and] both modern and Californian ... Every dish on my menu has a contemporary emphasis on freshness, simplicity, and lightness."

The book is structured according to the courses of the meal, beginning with wine, through soups, pasta, salads, seafood, poultry, meats, brunch and concluding with desserts. More than 200 recipes and 125 photographs (showing the dishes and some of the art displayed on the restaurant walls) are provided. This is gourmet fare, exemplifying McCarty's innovative philosophy of combining wine, food and art (the arrangement of food here is an art in itself).

New standards of excellence are set by such dishes as seafood terrine with two sauces, shad row with pommery mustard cream sauce and basil, softshell crab with ginger and lime, Brazilian mussel chowder, grilled quail salad, lobster with tomato basil beurre blanc (in which the lobster is removed from its shell and arranged in patterns on the plate), grilled saddle of veal with caramelized lemon zests and desserts -- such as hot caramelized figs with vanilla ice cream -- that lend a new meaning to the word "delicious."