Prune: A Cookbook

by Gabrielle Hamilton

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom Gabrielle Hamilton, bestselling author of Blood, Bones & Butter, comes her eagerly anticipated cookbook debut filled with signature recipes from her celebrated New York City restaurant Prune. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLYNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON BY Time • The Oprah Magazine • Bon Appétit • EaterA self-trained cook turned James Beard Award–winning chef, Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune on New York’s Lower East Side fifteen years ago to great acclaim and lines down the block, both of which continue today. A deeply personal and gracious restaurant, in both menu and philosophy, Prune uses the elements of home cooking and elevates them in unexpected ways. The result is delicious food that satisfies on many levels.   Highly original in concept, execution, look, and feel, the Prune cookbook is an inspired replica of the restaurant’s kitchen binders. It is written to Gabrielle’s cooks in her distinctive voice, with as much instruction, encouragement, information, and scolding as you would find if you actually came to work at Prune as a line cook. The recipes have been tried, tasted, and tested dozens if not hundreds of times. Intended for the home cook as well as the kitchen professional, the instructions offer a range of signals for cooks—a head’s up on when you have gone too far, things to watch out for that could trip you up, suggestions on how to traverse certain uncomfortable parts of the journey to ultimately help get you to the final destination, an amazing dish. Complete with more than with more than 250 recipes and 250 color photographs, home cooks will find Prune’s most requested recipes—Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter, Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad, Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg, Roasted Capon on Garlic Crouton, Prune’s famous Bloody Mary (and all 10 variations). Plus, among other items, a chapter entitled “Garbage”—smart ways to repurpose foods that might have hit the garbage or stockpot in other restaurant kitchens but are turned into appetizing bites and notions at Prune. Featured here are the recipes, approach, philosophy, evolution, and nuances that make them distinctively Prune’s. Unconventional and honest, in both tone and content, this book is a welcome expression of the cookbook as we know it.Praise for Prune   “Fresh, fascinating . . . entirely pleasurable . . . Since 1999, when the chef Gabrielle Hamilton put Triscuits and canned sardines on the first menu of her East Village bistro, Prune, she has nonchalantly broken countless rules of the food world. The rule that a successful restaurant must breed an empire. The rule that chefs who happen to be women should unconditionally support one another. The rule that great chefs don’t make great writers (with her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter). And now, the rule that restaurant food has to be simplified and prettied up for home cooks in order to produce a useful, irresistible cookbook. . . . [Prune] is the closest thing to the bulging loose-leaf binder, stuck in a corner of almost every restaurant kitchen, ever to be printed and bound between cloth covers. (These happen to be a beautiful deep, dark magenta.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction, Memoir, Reference, Foodie

727 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 23, 2014

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think everyone who likes to cook has imagined working in a professional kitchen, or starting a little bakery, or having a food cart, etc etc etc, and I am no exception. I usually think about it a bit and then remember how slow I am at the whole cooking process and know that I would be an utter failure as a professional chef. In that same vein, I'm not usually a big fan of "professional chef" cookbooks because everything just seems too much work to take on at home.

However - I love Gabrielle Hamilton - or I should say I love her writing, her sassy attitude, her love of order and non-pretentious anything. I'm not sure how much I would actually LIKE her, if that makes any sense, but I will read anything she writes. And this cookbook is fantastic. Written like recipes/notes to her cooks and staff at Prune, it is fun to read and even has some recipes that I not only wanted to try but that worked for me! Granted, it is somewhat heavy on the seafood I can't get and the organ meats I'm squeamish about, but the vegetable recipes are very abundant and all sound good, and the no BS drink recipes are worth the price of the book alone. And it has even revived that little dream I have of working in the food business :) I got this from the library but even as I downsize my cookbook stash this is one I want to own. Very recommended.

Recipes tried and delicious:
Canned Sardines with Triscuits, Dijon Mustard, and Cornichons
Roasted Mixed Onions with Onion Butter and Toasted Seeds
Breton Butter Cake (Hamilton warns that it is "tricky"; made it on the advice of The Tipsy Baker and it wasn't hard at all)
Bacon and Marmalade Sandwich on Pumpernickel Bread

Want to try:
Cornmeal Cookie with Candied Rhubarb and Cold Almond Cream
Cauliflower, Salami, and Fresh Flageolet Salad
3-Rum Punch Base
Stewed Chickpeas, Butter-Crumbed Eggs, Homemade Flatbread, and Condiments

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although she occasionally annoyed me with her NY chef-y insistence that she was not being pretentious but just wanted to make a good, basic meal of caraway seed flecked bone marrow and seaweed foam, I really liked her storytelling and enjoyed this book.

[Starr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure the recipes are delicious, but most of them are a bit beyond what I can do in my incredibly land-locked and budget oriented kitchen. It doesn't help that I found her memoir well-written but very bossy and angry--the cookbook feels about the same.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What it is: Pretty glorious. It's smart, it's succinct, and it's beautifully laid out, from a graphic and typographic stand point. I'm not sure I'll use it enough to justify buying it and giving it shelf space, but I might, it's certainly worth it in terms of the book itself.

What it's not: A cookbook for folks who aren't serious about cooking. There's no headnotes, it assumes a fairly high level of cooking competency and knowledge, and is basically a handbook for the staff at the restaurant. It's not the kind of cookbook where you're going to say "oh, I want to bake cookies" and then thumb through many recipes for cookies. Some of the recipes are really generously sized, many talk about time consuming and varied ingredients and components and some of the recipes are super time consuming.

[ednnos · Rating 4 out of 5]

cannot stop thinking about braised zucchini tops

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made a number of things from this cookbook. First, I need to say that everything was tasty, and some things were outstanding (for example, the manti, the peppermint patties, and the version of the Breton Butter Cake published by the NYT, NOT the version in the cookbook itself). I found the conceit -- that it was just the binder of recipes from the restaurant's kitchen -- to be annoying and unhelpful. Too much speciality terminology -- few of us have salamanders or Vita-Blends in our kitchens -- and too much condescension (the butter cake just isn't all that hard, lady, and we are not your sous chefs). The candied citrus was not all that thrilling, and she has a very heavy hand with the salt, for example, in the butter sauce for the manti. I like salt a lot, and it was way too much for me. The peppermint patties, while a bit sticky to make, are creamy and delicious (although, again, I question some of the amounts -- I used HALF the amount of peppermint oil (hard to find, btw) and the patties were very minty. I think she may not have done enough recipe testing. All that having been said, I would certainly cook out of it some more, and I will go back to certain recipes.

In her memoir, Hamilton sure comes off as not especially nice, an impression reinforced by this book. She was a judge a year or so back for the Food 52 Piglet, and sneered -- very snottily -- at Dorie Greenspan's food styling, which I find pretty ironic, given that her cookbook is doctored with fake grease stains and counterfeit handwritten Sharpie notes.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm excited to try several recipes in this one. I'm super sad that I won't have the opportunity to actually try these recipes in person at Prune (Eff U very much, COVID). This is definitely a foodies' cookbook. Most of these have ingredients that are not easily accessible to the everyday and/or landlocked cook. These are recipes FOR the restaurant, with prep notes for staff, and not modified for my family of five in any apparent way. That said, if you know what you're in for, this book like like a GREAT adventure.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last bit of an author interview piqued my attention a couple of months ago, so I put this book on reserve at the library. Clearly, the author needs no introduction for those in the know, but I'm not one of those people. I would have appreciated a little background, and some insight into her status as legendary restranteur (which I can only imagine from the tone of exasperation and hauteur her scribbled notes).

The premise appears to be a publication of the cookbook used by her sous chefs, covered in food splotches, and grease spots, annotated with adjustments, scanned in as they are. The concept may have been charming when she first conceived it, but I would rather add my own grease to a book than look at your crusty bits embedded forever in two dimensions on my page.

The chapter I found most instructive was 'Garbage', raw ingredients (passed their use-by date) reconstituted into something new or the cuttings most of us would toss straight into the compost (cauliflower hearts, limp/dead celery).

Suffice it to say the recipes are far too restaurant-y to make an appearance on my dinner table, though I'm sure I would jump to order them if I could elbow my way into her premises (steering clear of the zucchini tops and leftover brunch fruit salad dregs).

[Aileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I skimmed the book, I thought I wasn't going to like it. The notations seemed too type-A "this has to be done this way because I'm a chef and you don't know any better" for me. Once I got down to actually making something and following the recipe, it turned from the type-A micromanaging to REALLY REALLY helpful (I mean, she's a chef and yes, I don't know any better!). So yeah, another case of you can't judge a cookbook by a brief skim through. I love how it has a no none-sense get down to it feel. While most people want some sort of connection to the chef - a background to the recipe or a life story, sometimes you just need to make the damn thing. It's for when your banana bread heaves and you realize you didn't read her notation, "cream the eggs and sugar for a long while, don't take shortcuts." I love it. Bonus, the pages purposely looks marked and splotched as if someone turned the page while kneading dough, so if you have slightly dirty hands from cooking it'll just add more character.

[Maggie]

there are so many post-its in my copy of this book...and yet, will i ever make anything? maybe, maybe.

then there are the notes scribbled on a sheet of paper tucked into the front: PARS. WAX. what do these words mean? you can figure them out in context: “Monday and Friday lunch par is 30 burgers, so order meat accordingly on Sunday and Thursday nights. 15 is safe par for midweek." So PAR = average number of expected orders, par for the course. "Use this for vegetarian wax." Or "run this as a wax." WAX = the little extra the kitchen sends out to people they like/want to impress.

much of the writing is pointed: "Do not turn, touch, press down on, or otherwise molest the burgers when they are cooking." "Really fill the bowl. Not messy and overflowing, but like we mean it."

there is, infuriatingly, no index.

still, it's delicious.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m giving this a neutral review because I thought it would be a book about the restaurant Prune but it is actually a cookbook. I more skimmed than read it but I enjoyed the notes attached to the recipes and the words of wisdom and insight as to how restaurants work. I very much enjoy books about restaurants and cooking but I am not much of a cook and I am not an adventurous eater (no thank you to the veal hearts and calves’ brains) so there was not much in here that I would cook. I did clip the granola recipe.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, it's more than a little pretentious. And, no, there aren't more than a few recipes in it that I might actually cook.

But read as a demonstration of how very different restaurant cooking is from home cooking, it is fascinating. Some explanation along with demonstration would have made it even better. Let's just say the flavour balance is off.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So nice I'm reading it twice (and thrice and more and more).

This is written like restaurant cooks write their recipes. It makes pure, perfect sense. It makes me want to stock up my kitchen with half hotel pans and a tamis. (I'm surprised I haven't done that yet anyway.)

[Amy Reiley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite cookbook of the fall. It's quirky, unique and it uses the medium of cookbooks in new ways. (Author Gabrielle Hamilton speaks directly to the reader in hand written notes about the recipes--I love her sometimes snarky, straightforward voice.)

[Alli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Original review still stands. Her writing is a delight and I find a new phrase to be tickled by every time I turn the page - I think my favorite is comparing braised vegetables to crocodiles as they bob in the river.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was already a large fan of Gabrielle Hamilton thanks to Blood, Bones and Butter, her short-form writing and her stances as a restauranteur for fair pay and harassment-free workplaces. My wife snagged this cookbook a while back and managed an exclamation nearly every page "oh my god!" or "that's so clever!" At first I thought she was just consistently hungry (we spend more time and thought than average on our table, so we are typically thinking about food), then I got around to reading Prune and managed the same "oh my god!"s and "that's so clever!"s--Prune is a revelation.

Cookbooks are always meant to showcase the cook-author (hopefully they are the same person)'s personality--too often this takes the form of poorly-considered disquisitions, overly-dressed anecdotes or tiresome attempts at "personality" via wordplay/diction/etc.

Ms. Hamilton is a genius with an MFA and a career in food inspired entirely by a love for food and it shows through on every page. First, her choice of audience isn't the enthusiastic home cook but rather the line cook who must juggle dozens of tasks throughout a too-long day, eyes and ears always sweeping between board, burner and braising-pan. That choice by itself sets the tone and format admirably well and would be enough to place the book as a must-have in any kitchen.

And then there are the recipes, somehow the third-most important part of the book, behind Ms. Hamilton's brain and her phenomenal writing. The author's respect for her customers and her ingredients is paramount, and is demonstrated in every recipe. Very few chefs could pull off some of the more "naked" dishes--strawberry milk (I was shocked by the simple, honest brilliance of the recipe) in a restaurant setting. Each recipe is relatively simple, with few truly fussy preparations--though she includes a couple of prep-heavy beasts to give the reader a feel for the mountain of hidden work that goes into an excellent restaurant meal.

There are hundreds of recipes here, from dinner staples to an entire section on "lunch desserts"--which should alone win you over to Ms. Hamilton's ethos, to an extremely section on back-of-house work: prep, family meal, reuse of kitchen waste, cocktails, navigating service, etc. The recipes follow her peripatetic journeys of her pre-Prune days--Greece, northern France, the middle east, Italy, the New York catering scene all make appearances.

If you could have but one cookbook from which to build your home kitchen repertoire, you could do far, far worse than Prune. I sincerely hope that Ms. Hamilton is able to reopen Prune in a manner that makes her happy once the COVID-19 quarantine is lifted, but I hope even more that she continues writing.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The conceit of the book is deeply unappealing. This book was written by a very sour, bitter, unpleasant person. It is (I guess?) written with asides that are supposed to be little kitchen notes to employees- which would be an explanation for their nasty, bossy tone-, and some measurements written in 'charming' chicken scratch. The chicken scratch is at best silly and at worst hard to read. The notes are mostly condescending and make this less functional as a cookbook.

I am perfectly fine reading an 'aspirational' chef-y cookbook with hard-to-source ingredients/tools, difficult techniques, and time requirements that I will probably never be able to do justice to (a la Escapism Cooking, French Laundry, Alinea). This is not that kind of book, but the author seems to think it is.

Most of these recipes are classics are incredibly simple concepts or minor twists on classics: chicken braised in hard cider is basic chicken normandy; roasted Protein X with vinaigrette/butter/rub Y is eyerollingly simplistic. Some of the dishes are rendered interesting and unique because of how hard the ingredients would be for the home cook to source - but if you substitute pork shoulder for suckling pig, then your complimentary black eyed peas and pickled tomatoes are a fairly normal southern dish. The only seafood recipes that appeal to me are minor twists on pretty classic dishes - minor as in 'put on top of toast' or 'add mustard seed'. If I ever received one of the lunch recipes in a person's home, I would assume we were eating a leftover smorgasbord, not a recipe that someone paid to read.

There's this undercurrent of 'its good because it's not fancy, but because it's elevated classics' that I always find absolutely insufferable - that kind of inverted snobbery? Gross and hypocritical - that really pushed this into the 1 star category. That, and the book finished with an outline of rules for staff meal that was so contemptuous toward the reader and devoid of joy that I made a goodreads account just to leave a bad review.

[Cait · Rating 1 out of 5]

The conceit of this cookbook stressed me the fuck out. It's written as if it's the restaurant's own recipes with notes for the restaurant cooks- but I HATE IT. I hate it so much. It's such a weird halfway step- because the volumes are so clearly for home cooks, but the notes are like "Look on the left side of the walk in for fresh veg" and "don't use the good Parmesan for the family meal" and "don't quinelle the ice cream, we don't want to send that kind of message" (which, what? what?!).

It's sloppy is what I'm saying. Self-consciously, on purpose, sloppy writing, with a voice I respond badly to.
I read a lot of cookbooks, and I often come away with the impression that I don't want to hang out with the authors. (Which is fine- I don't have to want to be buddies with a person to appreciate their recipes.) But this book made me feel like I was working for a finicky and demanding boss who tells you to improvise, but then publicly yells at you for not following instructions. It's all very offputting.

And: it's a very meat heavy book. I don't mind skimming past calf brain recipes if there are some interesting things for me around the edges, but I think I marked two recipes in here, and now that I've set the book down I won't be coming back.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cookbook but it's also a manual for the restaurant that tells the cooks/chefs how to make the recipes (keep the pantry clean, not waste, etc). If you are looking for an inside glimpse of a restaurant kitchen, this book delivers. If you are looking for easy, accessible recipes, this may not be the best choice. It's a fun read, but I'm not sure that I'll cook anything from it.
There are some "simple" recipes like triscuits with sardines, but this recipe also calls for cornichons, so you need to have access to some "unusual" ingredients. And most recipes do not call for lots of ingredients or particularly fancy preparation (no foams etc.). But, the recipes just do not feel accessible to the home cook because of the ingredients, the required equipment and the sense that the cookbook is talking to a "sous chef", a role for which most home cooks do not qualify.
So, if you want to read a restaurant recipe journal written from the chef's perspective, you'll probably enjoy this book. If you are a home cook looking for some new recipes to try, you may want to look elsewhere.

[Ted Dettweiler · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it was the genius of the capon cooking technique that initially met my pre-Thanksgiving need, I stayed for a thorough browse through the rest of the cookbook which reads like a behind-the-scenes view of the author's Manhattan restaurant. If I ever found myself sitting in Prune restaurant, I just wouldn't know what to order - EVERYTHING in the cookbook sounds so good. Heightened my appreciation for the work of those in the food business while allowing me to discover some intelligent cooking and food-preparation techniques. Reinforced my belief that the quality of the ingredients is of utmost importance, but it is all down-to-earth food, some of it inspired by the author's Italian mother-in-law.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

By comparison, this book makes your standard straight forward cookbook seem lame and uninteresting. Feels real. Do not read this book with the inner voice of Gabrielle Hamilton speaking to you or else it will piss you off by seeming too demanding/controlling, you are paying for this she is not paying you. Read with the perspective of watching the line cook read her recipes and it becomes a very enjoyable experience. Would not serve well as a first cookbook for someone, but if you have the basics down, and love butter worship (as I do) and/or French style rustic cooking with neo-american influence this nails it. Reads more like a story of her kitchen than a traditional cookbook, highly recommend even if not willing to make every recipe.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I’ve looked at this book a bunch of times and rejected it, and then this last time decided to pick it up. But I can’t for the life of me, remember why. I know I saw a recipe I wanted to try, but I’ll have to dig harder to remember which it was.

The layout is a bit of a wreck. The notes written to restaurant staff could be interesting as a sidebar, but as the sole information they’re full of insider jargon and kind of annoying. (What the hell does wax even mean in this context?!) Add that to the bossy, snarky, and seemingly permanently aggrieved tone of the notes and it doesn’t add up to an appealing voice.

Plus, I just can’t get past the section on family meal and how little appreciation it shows for her staff. I get that you’d want to not blow the super spendy ingredients on family meal, and I get that it’s an opportunity for whoever is doing the cooking to use up excess and show some creativity and exploration. But I’m not sure I’d be burning to go to a restaurant where the staff waiting on me is being fed a meal revolving around a box of moldy green beans. It all just feels a bit too Dickensian.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and compelling recipes with detailed descriptions providing a context for the food one creates. Provides the reader with specific instructions on how, what, and why recipes are constructed. Welcome portrait of a restaurant to read currently as restaurants seem to be vanishing before our eyes. Not every recipe is (in my perspective) home-cook capable, but aspirations are sparked. The text inspires one to read Hamilton's autobiographical Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, also a very worthy read.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Features some (what are to me) very strange recipes. I would love to go to the restaurant, because I would get food that I am not going to get anywhere else.

What I most enjoyed about the book was the author's editorial comments to her staff on how to prepare and plate food.

Well worth reading, more than once.

[Carolyn Deboer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking this was a foodie book I was confused when she really didn't get into the foodie parts until about halfway through the book. That said, Gabrielle's history was worth examining as part of her evolution to the foodie world. Writing was outstanding. While you may not have the same feelings she has, with use of analogies you can completely know her feelings.

[Bree · Rating 1 out of 5]

Notes:
*recipes for restaurant cooking, not for a home cook
*maybe the worst cookbook I've ever read
*fake greasy fingerprints and stains on pages made it look so gross and unappealing
*photos of piles of raw meat -- uncooked rabbit, organ meat, and a suckling pig... vile.

[Maria]

part of a recent chef memoir kick. realized all chefs whose books i'd read were straight white men, this was a first attempt to re-balance that scale. Very quick read, interesting bits, but didn't ever feel like it really came together. i do want to visit prune next time in new york though.

[Sabrina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonderful guide book in a way, however these recipes are for chefs...no fun. Too many steps. You need a staff to execute. I am a chef and i wish i could get my money back. I may make 2 recipes from the entire book. Gabrielle is amazing, but im underwhelmed by this book.

[Matthew Scheunemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing cook book straight from the heart. It is written as if it was straight from the binder in the restraunt. Perfect for anyone whos worked in a kitchen. It may be intimidating to the home cook but I think you should see it as an telling glimpse into the life of a cook.

[Audrey Hepler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really 3.5. Stunning book. I enjoyed it. Loved the personal touches. The recipes look scrumptious, but this isn’t my life. I would have this cook sitting on a shelf but would probably never use. Love looking at the recipes and the pictures where stunning!