I’m conflicted about chefs who have successful restaurants and feel, consequently, that they must write a cookbook. Is the point both to get us to make their food at home and to go to their establishments as diners? And, an auxiliary confusion: Do I really have a shot at cooking as phenomenally as Daniel Boulud or Thomas Keller or even Emeril? Will a chef’s cookbook transform me into a kitchen star?

Frankly, I don’t believe my Green Tea Tiramisu is ever going to taste as good as Nobu’s. And there’s no way I am giving up the opportunity once every 56th paycheck to eat at landmark restaurants in this country.

I’ve learned to approach cookbooks not so much as a possibility for what might show up on my dinner table, or to counter my food-seeking map around the world, but as actual reading material. I’ll probably never make Lemon Sabayon-Pine Nut Tart with Honey Mascarpone Creme, but I confess to studying Keller’s recipe with the same concentration I reserve for literature. To me, a cookbook is not only an invitation to use the Cuisinart, but also a chance to discover what’s really going on philosophically under the chef’s hat.

And it combines two vital life support systems: words and food.

So it was with heady expectation that I took up “The Arrows Cookbook” (Scribner, 2003) by Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier, chefs and owners at Arrows Restaurant, the farmhouse of fine fusion dining in Ogunquit. In 2001, Arrows was voted one of the top 50 American restaurants by Gourmet and is an AAA four-diamond restaurant, one of the few in Maine. It was inevitable after 15 years of serving diners from around Maine and New England (Boston, only an hour from Ogunquit, provides a substantial patron base) that a cookbook would appear.

The last time I ate at Arrows, which is nearly three hours from Bangor, my co-diner and I were so gustatorily mesmerized we had to pull over every 30 or so minutes on the way home to switch off driving.

Thankfully, the point that Frasier and Gaier make in their new book is not that you, too, can lull people off the road with magic incantations of flavor. They do, of course, seem happy enough to share their secrets about food preparation. But they mostly want to tell their story, with the help of writer Max Alexander, about becoming restaurateurs who work the land, work the kitchen, work the dining room. They want more chefs – and, in a way, that means you – to get their hands dirty – literally.

In other words, “The Arrows Cookbook” is an all-around beginner’s guide to mindful food creation beginning with the dirt itself.

Which is, in a way, how Frasier and Gaier began. Each left jobs in Northern California to open their dream restaurant in an old farmhouse in Ogunquit. “We wanted the book to be a get-started book,” said Frasier. “We wanted to communicate that we didn’t know anything when we started and that anybody can do what we did.”

What the two upstart chefs didn’t sufficiently anticipate at the time was the lack of local supplies for innovative cooking – let alone a decent bottle of olive oil.

But Ogunquit has changed in the past decade. For that matter, Maine has changed. Iceberg lettuce isn’t the only kind a chef can order in bulk these days. And there’s no doubt that Frasier and Gaier, who have an acre of garden on the Arrows property, have had a hand in helping to expand the offerings.

“What we did was risky,” said Gaier, who worked in a restaurant in Maine in the early 1980s. “But we did it gradually. The food is exciting and fresh. It’s eclectic but not irritating or so complicated you can’t understand it.”

Arrows, as well as Primo in Rockland, The Castine Inn in Castine and the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport – to name a few of Maine’s darlings of fine dining – have nudged Mainers toward a broader palate while using the freshest local ingredients available. Each chef has apprenticed with groundbreaking chefs in other parts of the country and, indeed, other parts of the world, and has set up house in Maine to blaze his or her own trail. The Arrows owners met at Stars, the San Francisco brasserie of California cuisine master Jeremiah Towers (who wrote the introduction for the Arrows book).

On the one hand, it’s not hard to imagine Frasier and Gaier jet setting in food boutiques and international markets, but after reading their cookbook, it’s also not hard to imagine them walking into town to pick out that night’s lobsters. And then making plans for winter travel in Southeast Asia. In the end, they may be presenting dishes that most people associate with a more urban setting, but they insist that rural Maine has been the bedrock of their dream from the get-go – even if they return to Northern California for the chilliest part of the year.

“Really, if you go to France or Italy, you expect to have elegant, sophisticated, cutting-edge restaurants in the country,” said Frasier, who, with Gaier, is, indeed, a world traveler. “In America, you expect that in the city. For us, it’s a flip-flop. We see ourselves in the view of a Michelin restaurant in the country, like the Inn at Little Washington [in Virginia]. The really great restaurants are not in the city. They’re in the countryside and people with the money and the interest have to seek them out. And that’s a little bit of what Arrows is: You have to get in your car and drive to get here. But once you get here, you’ll get what you can’t have in the city.”

The combination of recipes, garden instruction, and food and flower tips in “The Arrows Cookbook” is enough to inspire any home cook to move his or her passion beyond the kitchen and into the back yard or at least to the farm stand down the street for the freshest food available. The lists of “8 Edible Flowers You Can Grow,” “14 Easy Seeds” and “10 Veggies That Let You Have a Life” are not only useful for but friendly toward the novice. Organized according to season, the material becomes a reference book to use throughout the year.

As for the recipes in “The Arrows Cookbook,” I can’t wait to try the English Pea Soup, the Rosemary Poached Pears with Chocolate Creme Anglaise, the Lentil, Root Vegetable and Herb Cakes, Rhubarb Gelato with Mexican Wedding Cakes, Creamy Goat Toasts, and Asparagus and Dry Jack Cheese Custard. And while I generally feel there’s no more honorable way to prepare lobster than the traditional method, I am intrigued by the challenge of steaming Maine’s most famous bottom feeder in bamboo racks over herbs and ginger aromatics.

Most of all, these instructions on food preparation make me want to get in the car, go back to Arrows and swoon.

Grilled Rib-Eye Steak with Herbs and Caramelized Onions

Serves 6

Rib-eye steaks, which the French call entrecotes, are richly marbled, which makes them quite juicy and full of flavor. Because they don’t dry out over high heat, rib-eyes are our favorite cut of beef to throw on a searingly hot grill. Try to find aged rib-eye steaks, which are more tender and have a mellower flavor. Most aged beef is sold directly to restaurants but good butchers and even some supermarkets stock aged beef, especially in the summer grilling season.

In this recipe, sweet caramelized onions stand up to the smoky flavor of the meat. Intensely aromatic herbs such as tarragon (the foundation of that classic steak accompaniment, bearnaise sauce) also work well with grilled beef. Here we mix herbs into a salad that is sprinkled over the steaks.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2/3 cup white wine

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 medium yellow onions, cut in half around the equator, skin on

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

6 rib-eye steaks, 7 ounces each, preferably aged

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup tarragon leaves

1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley

1/4 cup chervil leaves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the butter into small pieces and sprinkle it over the bottom of a small baking dish.

Add the wine and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle the flat side of the onions with salt and pepper and arrange them flat side down in the baking dish. Bake until the onions are very soft and brown, about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, cover with foil, and keep in a warm place until ready to serve. (The onions can be prepared up to 2 hours ahead.)

Start a gas or charcoal grill.

While the onions are cooking, brush the steaks on both sides with the 2 tablespoons olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and set aside at room temperature for up to 30 minutes or in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours.

When the coals are white hot and you can barely hold your hand over the fire for a second, grill the steaks for about 3 minutes on each side until medium-rare.

While the steaks are grilling, whisk together the extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Toss in the herbs and season with salt and pepper.

Put a steak on each of 6 plates and add an onion half flat side up. Drizzle the steaks with some of the cooking liquid from the baking dish and top with the herb salad. Serve at once.