Lummi: Island Cooking

My husband and I have been to Willows Inn twice over the past few years and have been blown away by the experience. I wanted to get this recipe book to see if we could bring a small taste of the island home with us. Several recipes are out of our abilities, as expected (we do not own a cold smoker, or have experience necessary to cold smoke safely) but there are some recipes we are excited to try, and will also try some of the cold smoked recipes by substituting long, low temp smoking in our regular smoker. The pictures and layout of the book are wonderful as well.

Beautiful cookbook! Blaine Wetzel is one of the finest, most inventive chefs in our country. He shares his celebrated recipes and how to present them in such an inspirational way.

Fraud!!!

The beautiful photography of the beautiful food is inspirational. But if you want to know where the restaurant is, the book does not tell you. That’s the tone for the recipe write ups. We are told to smoke the salmon, but no temperature is given. Brine 4 fillets for 32 minutes, suggests that those 2 extra minutes are critical, but then so would be the size or weight of the fillets, which we are not told. Maybe a larger or smaller fillet would need only 31 minutes. Many foods are vacuum sealed then cooked at a specific temperature, but we are not told how. Is this in a sous vide? You really can’t tell me how you cook it? I understand how to make the mouse, but I do not have a pacojet, which costs $4,900.00, to do the processing five times. When I grate for another recipe, I am left to wonder microplane, course, medium? In short, if the write ups were equal to the food and the visuals, the book would be a ten. But the write ups are lazy and inattentive to reader needs. Some are so poorly written, I believe there would be only a small chance of success. Very disappointing as I would love to prepare this beautiful food.

Fraud.Chef is a fraud - and the fact he has a cookbook is just unbelievable

Beautiful book written by one of the nation's best chefs. One of the most refreshing cookbooks I’ve read in some time.Simple cooking with beautiful presentations!Highly recommend it!