Have you ever wondered why restaurants have nightly specials? There are many reasons, actually, but they all have one thing in common: spontaneity. Nightly specials are a way to cook with seasonal fruits and vegetables, the catch of the day, unexpected leftovers, and spur-of-the-moment market finds. They are also a way for chefs to experiment with exciting new ingredients, develop their own signature dishes, and road-test new ideas that may eventually become regular menu features.
If these reasons sound familiar, that's because they all apply to home cooks as well.
Because there's no set menu in a home kitchen, every dinner is a nightly special. But all too often, home cooks find themselves in a rut, recycling the same meals week after week. Nightly Specials shows home cooks how restaurant and home cooking can meet. Acclaimed New York chef and host of the Travel Channel's Epicurious, Michael Lomonaco, along with award-winning food writer Andrew Friedman, offer up 125 recipes that use fresh and spontaneous ingredients to create innovative starters, salads, entrees, sides, and desserts. All the recipes are simple, loosely improvised dishes that will inspire home cooks to be flexible and remain open to each day's culinary possibilities. Best of all they can be selected at the last minute and cooked successfully in relatively little time.
No matter what the season or occasion, you'll find the perfect recipe in Nightly Specials. Toss together salads like Cool Roasted Beets with Mint or Mango and Red Onion Salad with Basil Vinaigrette. Warm up with a bowl of Curried Pea Soup with Frizzled Ginger or Moroccan Lamb Stew. Main courses include everything from quick-comforting favorites such as Supermarket Mushroom Risotto to show-stoppers such as Hacked Chile Lobster and Boneless Roast Leg of Lamb with Feta Cheese, Olives, and Eggplant. Desserts range from holiday classics such as Pear-Cranberry Upside-Down Cake to peak-of-the-summer favorites such as Plum and Peach Cobbler and indulgences such as Baked Alaska with Coconut Sorbet and Chocolate Ice Cream and Chocolate Truffles.
Michael Lomonaco is one of America's most popular and brightest culinary stars. His long list of accomplishments includes serving as executive chef at both '21' Club and Windows on the World, two of New York's most legendary restaurants. He is the host of Epicurious on the Travel Channel, and is a regular guest on The Late Show with David Letterman and the Today show.
Andrew Friedman is the author of Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New American Profession (2018), and producer and host of the independent podcast Andrew Talks to Chefs, currently in its sixth year. He is also the author of Knives at Dawn: America’s Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d’Or Competition (2009), co-editor of the internationally popular anthology Don’t Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs, and co-author of more than twenty-five cookbooks, memoirs, and other projects with some of the United States’ finest and most well-known chefs. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor within the School of Graduate and Professional Studies at the Culinary Institute of America. An avid tennis player, he co- authored American tennis star James Blake’s New York Times bestselling memoir Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life (2007), and was for several years a TENNIS magazine editor-at-large. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
