186 recipes from 35 years on the line. The small things a trattoria does every night that no package, box or recipe card ever prints, written so they work in your own kitchen.
It was never your fault. Nobody showed you how a restaurant does it.
This book does.
I was sixteen when I started washing pots in a trattoria in Florence. My chef, Renzo, did not let me near the line until I was nineteen. In 1991 I came to Boston's North End, and in 1997 my husband Paolo and I opened Da Marisa, forty seats and a kitchen the size of a hallway. On a Saturday night we fed a hundred and twenty people.
For twenty-two years, guests asked me the same thing: how do you get it like this? The answer was never a secret ingredient. It was a dry pan, a hot skillet, a cup of pasta water, a rack instead of a plate. Small things every restaurant kitchen knows and no package prints.
My daughter Chiara sat in my kitchen with a notebook and made me measure everything I had always done by feel. Every spoon, every minute. That notebook became this book.
Large, clear print you can read at the stove. Every recipe starts on its own page, with exact cups, spoons and minutes.
Tap a page to see it bigger.
Sunday ragù, Bolognese, and how to save a jar of store sauce.
Carbonara without scrambled eggs, lasagna that stands up, gnocchi that aren't gluey.
Juicy breasts, thighs with skin like glass, cutlets that stay crisp, wings without a fryer.
A steak in cast iron, pot roast, meatballs, burgers that stay juicy.
Ribs that fall off the bone, sausage that doesn't burst, Easter ham.
Shrimp that aren't rubber, mussels, crab cakes, Christmas Eve fish.
Minestrone, ribollita, pasta e fagioli, chicken soup that tastes like something.
Mashed without glue, risotto without an hour of stirring, crisp polenta.
Eggplant that doesn't drink the oil, mushrooms that brown, green broccoli.
Eggs that peel, bruschetta that stays crisp, an antipasto board for guests.
Focaccia, dough that stretches, real garlic bread, calzone.
Panna cotta, ricotta cheesecake, cannoli, cantucci, homemade limoncello.
Pasta in one pan, steak for two, a small lasagna in a loaf pan.
Christmas Eve fish, pizza rustica, lamb with rosemary, sausage stuffing.
70 answers for the moment dinner goes wrong, and what to do right now.
Plus 50 Line Cook's Tricks, 8 Saturday Night Menus with a full timing plan, the restaurant pantry, and kitchen charts.
Cups, spoons, °F and minutes, plus how it should look, sound and feel when it's ready.
The one thing a restaurant kitchen does, and why it works.
The usual mistakes, why they happen, and how to fix them.
How to keep it, warm it without ruining it, and what to turn it into.
These alone will change your next dinner.
Water has to steam off before anything browns. Dry food browns; wet food steams.
A crust forms only against still, hot metal. When it's ready, it lets go by itself.
A crowded pan boils instead of frying. Two batches beat one gray pan every time.
The cloudy water is what makes sauce cling to the pasta instead of pooling.
The last minute in the pan is where restaurant pasta becomes restaurant pasta.
A plate traps steam under the crust. A rack keeps it crisp to the last bite.
And 44 more inside the book.
Cook from the book for a full week. If it does not make your dinners better, ask for a refund within 7 days of your purchase and you will get every cent back. No questions, no hard feelings.
— Marisa
Right after payment you get access to the book straight away. It opens on your phone, tablet or computer, and you can print any page you want to keep by the stove.
Free recipes tell you what to do. They almost never tell you why it went wrong, or what the restaurant does differently. Every recipe here explains the one thing that makes the difference, and Kitchen Rescue answers 70 "why did my...?" questions.
No. It's written in plain words, with exact measures and what to look for at every step. Most recipes use one pan and ingredients from any supermarket.
No. A good skillet, a pot, a sheet pan and a thermometer are enough. Everything is sold at Walmart, Kroger, Costco or your own grocery store, and I name the brands I use so you know what to buy.
Both, plus the everyday dinners Americans cook every week: chicken, potatoes, ground beef, pork chops, eggs. Tuscan cooking from my childhood, and the Italian-American dishes we served for 22 years in the North End.
Yes. Many people buy it for a daughter, a son or a friend who just moved into a new home.
No. One payment of $39. No monthly charges, nothing renews.
Ask for a refund within 7 days of purchase and you will get every cent back. That's the whole policy.
186 recipes and thirty-five years of the things nobody ever told you. One payment, yours to keep.
Before you go
186 recipes and the tricks no package prints.
"What the Restaurant Knows" by Marisa Conti, a cookbook of 186 recipes, sold through marisaconti.com.
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