Recipes + Cook Books

Long gone are the days when people created their salads by purchasing a head of iceberg lettuce and a head or romaine, cutting up a tomato and a boiled egg and adding some wishbone dressing. Today anyone can create a delicious gourmet salad by picking up one of the hundreds of bagged salad mixes available and adding ingredients to create masterpieces such as:

• Mandarin Chicken Salad with Toasted Sesame Vinaigrette
• Classic Caesar Salad with Herb Croutons
• Spinach Salad with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Each salad has dressing recommendations and recipes, menu ideas, and nutritional information. The book contains recipes for more than 100 salads and dressings.

The "where do you want to go" part continues to evolve, as it always will, but remains just as evident in the way we sauce our creations, both elegant and fundamental. In the second edition of Sauces, released seven years after the first, the "we" has expanded beyond Frenchmen and their disciples, and now includes the broader range of flavors experienced by Italians as pasta sauces, as well as New World cooks and their counterparts in the Middle East and throughout greater Asia. The solid base from which all this grows, however, remains the lessons learned in the French kitchen--and a better kitchen for such lessons has never been developed.

To cook is one thing, to sauce another. The right sauce lifts the right dish to a wholly different plateau of dining than would be the case if the cook didn't bother. This can be a humble pasta sauce created as a perfect balance of ingredients on hand, or a carefully considered sauce the ingredients of which have been developed at the stove over days, not mere hours.

In the sauce can be seen the reflection of the cook. There is no room to hide. In the well-crafted sauce can be found the ultimate expression of simplicity, which leaves even less room to hide. It is James Peterson's great talent that he can draw the home cook and professional cook into his dialogue on sauces, and teach them both how to stay afloat in such shallow waters.

Peterson gives the reader--in close to 600 pages, mind you--the continuum on which sauces have been based in culinary history. He gives the reader the kitchen science that allows sauces to work. He gives the reader the techniques necessary to follow along where many a cook has already whisked up a splendid creation. But most of all, he gives the reader permission to go ahead and be creative, to cut loose with knowledge and technique in hand and discover for oneself the way an inkling of a flavor idea can find its way to a dish and make the combined ingredients lift off the plate. Or not. Finding out what doesn't work can be just as important.

This is a book that can be taken to bed and savored, page by page, sauce by sauce. It is a book that should be on the shelf in any kitchen, professional or homebody alike. It is not a book to ever gather dust and need dusting. --Schuyler Ingle

• Fondue creates an opportunity to sit down with friends or family to enjoy a leisurely, congenial...
• See Product Description below for a complete description of this item.

Her recipes include the standards, such as strawberry jam, and the obscure, such as Garlic and Onion Jam. Amendt also does the public service of explaining the real difference between jams and jellies. Special caution about food safety holds a prominent place in Blue Ribbon Preserves and Amendt teaches us how to chose optimal foods for canning as well as how to safely store preserves to avoid potentially lethal food contamination. Be prepared for a bit of a chemistry lesson, which can be a long and sometimes didactic read, but it's well worth it for the critical food-safety information.

So complete is the book that Amendt, herself a recipient of countless state-fair awards for her preserves, includes pointers on how to succeed at such competitions (in a very thorough chapter which includes insights into how judges pick their winners). Blue Ribbon Preserves covers everything that goes into a ball jar and more, and in the process earns not only a tight seal of quality but its own blue ribbon. --Teresa Simanton

Packed with hundreds of creative fondue ideas for appetizers, main courses, and desserts, this crowd-pleasing cookbook from Rhonda Lauret Parkinson will satisfy any crowd, offering a wealth of helpful preparation tips, as well as the skinny on the do's and don'ts of this decadent treat.

The Everything(r) Fondue Cookbook offers a variety of delicious recipes, including:

Tempting appetizers, such as "Crab Rangoon" Fondue
Irresistible main courses, such as Poached Chicken in Wine with Sweet Herbs
Delicious vegetarian fare, such as Oriental Vegetable Salad with Mediterranean Dressing
Scrumptious desserts, such as Tiramisu with Cream

For party time or anytime, The Everything(r) Fondue Cookbook is your all-in-one guide to saying can do to fondue!

Over 101 fresh and delicious ideas.

The best salad dressing recipes from three dozen chefs and cooks are now available in one great collection, Salad Dressing 101.

Chef Nathan Hyam has personally selected over 101 recipes for vinaigrettes, creamy dressings, low-fat dressings, Caesar dressings, and potato and pasta salads dressings.

The introduction provides an overview of the simple ingredients and techniques that make a perfect dressing and demonstrates easy ways to adapt dressing to any salad.

Along with classics that belong in any cook's repertoire, there are innovative dressings with international flavors. Symbols throughout the book provide guidance on which dressings go with which salads.

Discover delicious recipes such as:

• Basic Vinaigrette
• Green Goddess Dressing
• Classic Caesar Dressing
• Basil Balsamic Dressing
• Thai Coconut and Roasted Garlic Dressing
• Miso Gari Vinaigrette.

Salad Dressing 101 is a cookbook for everyone who loves fresh food with flavor that can't be topped.