Cookbook review: State Bird Provisions by Stuart Brioza + Nicole Krasinski with JJ Goode

State Bird Provisions by Stuart Brioza + Nicole Krasinski with JJ Goode

State Bird Provisions, the cookbook, offers a visually stunning look at some of the dishes Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski offer at their San Francisco restaurant of the same name. The restaurant’s name comes from a fried quail with steamed onions dish that Stuart created while the couple worked at the high-end Rubicon restaurant, but the dish didn’t quite fit that restaurant’s menu.  At the time, he would present it to diners by sometimes noting that quail is the state bird of California. The word provisions got tacked on for the restaurant “because it suggests food but nothing fancy.”

A few flips through this gorgeous cookbook shows that this food is far from the average home cook’s idea of ‘nothing fancy.’

The restaurant started with the idea of the wait staff pushing around small carts of dishes that diners would pick up and sample, and the creative dishes in this cookbook provide a flavor of that style. Simple ingredients become fermented turnips (57) or kimchi-style pickled wax beans (59). Twelve pages on Aolis, ten on vinaigrettes &  sauces, and twenty six pages on sprinkles, crunches, and powders provide an impressive starting point for the recipes to follow. A 24-page section on savory pancakes features adventurous fare such as ginger-scallion pancakes with sea urchin and soy-lime glaze (117) or buckwheat pancakes with beef tongue, giardiniera, and horseradish bechamel (129). A couple of recipes for anchovies are followed by a longer essay on how the restaurant sources freshly caught anchovies. Later, Peanut muscovado milk and quail get similar treatments.

Other recipe highlights that caught my eye as worth trying in my foodie home kitchen include: marinated chanterelle toasts with chanterelle aioli (151), duck croquettes with wagon wheel cheese and raisin verjus (195), yuba “all’amatriciana” with fresh tomatoes and chanterelle mushrooms (255), and just about any of the desserts starting in the book’s final 100 pages, beginning on page 270. Why so much time on desserts? Because many of the dishes that Stuart Brioza creates for the restaurant are high-acid, spicy, and complex, so something sweet and delicious is just the thing to finish the experience.

The story of how the restaurant came to be is fascinating as well. The way it all came together seems like it’s part fate, part good fortune, and a huge part of skill and experience by several very talented chefs. An early positive review from a major food magazine naming State Bird Provisions as the best new restaurant in America pushed them from a neighborhood startup to a must-visit destination restaurant. And even then they were experimenting with the menu and creating their space in San Francisco.

Give State Bird Provisions the book to the foodies in your life. I say that a lot on cookbook reviews, I realize, but there are just some cookbooks -- and this is one -- that are a lot of fun to flip through as a foodie. After reading this title, I’ll definitely try to visit the restaurant on future trips to the bay area.