Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook

Book excerpt: This James Beard award-winning cookbook brings chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn’s Midwestern sensibility and flair for reinventing American food to Napa Valley with over 150 recipes. Mustards Grill is an institution in the wine country—the friendly restaurant where locals first started going for a full plate of inventive, delicious food and a glass of Napa's finest. Chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn, founding chef of San Francisco's original Fog City Diner, put down her roots in Napa over 15 years ago, and ever since then, Mustards has been affectionately known as the fancy rib joint with way, way too many wines. This cookbook is full of the best, most enduring recipes from Mustards Grill—ones people consistently ask for and ones to enhance any home cook’s experience in the kitchen. "Mustards is universally loved by local residents and tourists alike for its smoky, tender, spicy baby back ribs; cornmeal-coated fried green tomatoes; tasty Asian-marinated flank steak; Chinese chicken noodle salad; and, of course, Mustards' always-crisp tangle of deep-fried onion threads. The enduring vitality of this place comes from the fact [that Cindy Pawlcyn] put all the dishes she loved on the menu: country dishes transformed by her sprightly offbeat style and sparkle." —FOOD LOVER'S GUIDE TO SAN FRANCISCO