James Beard Award - Indianapolis

A groundbreaking culinary work of extraordinary depth and scope that spans more than one thousand years of history, A Mediterranean Feast tells the sweeping story of the birth of the venerated and diverse cuisines of the Mediterranean. Author Clifford A. Wright weaves together historical and culinary strands from Moorish Spain to North Africa, from coastal France to the Balearic Islands, from Sicily and the kingdoms of Italy to Greece, the Balkan coast, Turkey, and the Near East. The evolution of these cuisines is not simply the story of farming, herding, and fishing; rather, the story encompasses wars and plagues, political intrigue and pirates, the Silk Road and the discovery of the New World, the rise of capitalism and the birth of city-states, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and the obsession with spices. The ebb and flow of empires, the movement of populations from country to city, and religion have all played a determining role in making each of these cuisines unique. In A Mediterranean Feast, Wright also shows how the cuisines of the Mediterranean have been indelibly stamped with the uncompromising geography and climate of the area and a past marked by both unrelenting poverty and outrageous wealth. The book's more than five hundred contemporary recipes (which have been adapted for today's kitchen) are the end point of centuries of evolution and show the full range of culinary ingenuity and indulgence, from the peasant kitchen to the merchant pantry. They also illustrate the migration of local culinary predilections, tastes for food and methods of preparation carried from home to new lands and back by conquerors, seafarers, soldiers, merchants, and religious pilgrims. A Mediterranean Feast includes fourteen original maps of the contemporary and historical Mediterranean, a guide to the Mediterranean pantry, food products resources, a complete bibliography, and a recipe and general index, in addition to a pronunciation key. An astonishing accomplishment of culinary and historical research and detective work in eight languages, A Mediterranean Feast is required--and intriguing--reading for any cook, armchair or otherwise.

Nothing says American like American home cooking. From a steaming bowl of New England Clam Chowder, to Tucson Chimichangas, to Door County Sour Cherry Pie, these are the dishes that form the soul of our collective culinary heritage. And these are the recipes that bestselling, award-winning authors Cheryl and Bill Jamison serve up right here--in American Home Cooking. In a lively and lucid style that appeals to both novice and experienced cooks, the Jamisons invite you to sample a coast-to-coast feast of more than 300 recipes straight from the heart of America's own home cooking tradition. To the degree that we are what we eat, the dishes are us, a vibrant expression of our national spirit that's as full of robust flavor as the food of any land. Cheryl and Bill speak with authoritative passion on the home-grown culinary tradition. They visited family cheese crafters in Wisconsin, over-nighted with Pennsylvania Dutch farmers between market days, and picked up techniques for frying catfish from the first African American catfish farmer in Mississippi. They talked with a vendor of live poultry in Providence's Little Italy over the din of squawking chickens and quacking ducks and barbecued a whole hog one night and day with a jolly and generous gang of rice farmers from Arkansas. They ate warm fig cake on Okracoke Island and chilled Dungeness crab freshly pulled from Oregon waters. American Home Cooking features the best home cooking the Jamisons found, with outstanding recipes for classic favorites like meat loaf, scalloped potatoes, iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing, sticky buns, angel food cake, and lemon meringue pie. Regional dishes with coast-to-coast appeal include Tidewater Peanut Soup, Kansas City Sugar-and-Spice Spareribs, Pennsylvania Dutch Noodles with Corn and Tomatoes, Maui Mango Bread, and Catahoula Sweet Dough Pies. You'll also relish recipes for intriguing local treasures like Louisville Benedictine, Iowa Skinny, and Miles Standish--all sandwiches. Exquisite color photographs illustrate the dishes, and sidebars celebrate our nation's food fancies, from peanut butter to po'boys, and memorable cooks, from Lydia Marie Child to Julia Child. Destined to become a culinary classic, this sweeping collection offers delicious ideas for every meal and occasion, every day of the year. Bring the best of America's home cooking tradition into your home with American Home Cooking.

The Bread Bible is the one book on the subject no kitchen should be without -- and now it's available in paperback. A trusted authority on baking, Beth Hensperger has brought together hundreds of time-tested recipes, both classic and intriguingly original, from Gruyere Pullman Loaf and Farm-Style White Bread with Cardamom to fragrant Tuscan Peasant Bread and Classic Buttermilk Biscuits. And don't just think loaves. Steamed Pecan Corn Bread, pancakes, golden brioches, flatbreads, focaccia, pizza dough, dinner rolls, dessert breads, strudels, breakfast buns -- the choices are endless. The recipes are foolproof, step-by-step, and easy-to-follow. Busy bakers will also appreciate the excellent selection of recipes for bread machines and food processors. With a glossary and easy-to follow tips such as how to store and reheat bread,The Bread Bible is "a keeper for anyone who likes to bake or plans to get started." -Chicago Tribune

This book delivers what it promises -- New Food Fast. Whether you've got 10, 20 or 30 minutes to make a meal, Donna Hay gives you the ideas, recipes and inspiration to create great dishes using fresh and interesting ingredients in next to no time. With busy people like herself in mind, Donna has solved the daily what's-for-dinner dilemma with a book full of fast, simple, tempting and satisfying answers. Keep this copy of New Food Fast on the kitchen bench and, even in your busiest moments, you'll never be left wondering what's for dinner.

The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, a companion volume to the award-winning television show, is a guide in gourmet cuisine for the home cook, with recipes for soups, salads, seafood, and more by mastermind chef Charlie Trotter. Book buyers and diners alike have marveled at the incredible food that emerges from the kitchen of Charlie Trotter's world-renowned Chicago restaurant and have bought over 125,000 copies of his cookbooks. Now, readers can step behind the scenes and take a lesson from the master himself. A fine-cuisine cooking class for the home chef, KITCHEN SESSSIONS is the companion volume to Trotter's new 13-part public television cooking series, which has aired on national television since. Each episode is a personalized introduction to an essential ingredient, from salmon to chocolate, complete with a wide range of glorious recipes, 120 in all. KITCHEN SESSIONS demystifies the professional techniques and tricks behind Trotter's show-stopping recipes, making them accessible for home cooks.

In Entertaining 1-2-3 Rozanne Gold maintains that party food can be easy to prepare, beautiful to look at, and delicious to eat. She shows how entertaining can become an integral part of our lives, not just an occasional exception, and that keeping it simple can also mean making it elegant. Gold's ingenious new repertoire of party ideas includes more than seventy hors d'oeuvres; original cocktails; and menus for brunches, casual lunches, and great buffets. Menus for sit-down dinners, organized by season, include Beef Shank "Italienne" in Tomato-Marsala Sauce for winter and Pork Tenderloin with Hoisin and Sesame and Basmati Rice with Tangerines for fall. There is a section on festive fare including a New Year's Celebration, a Valentine's Day Dinner, and a Mother's Day meal. Gold also offers suggestions for healthy, low-fat entertaining.

In Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, two legendary cooks invite us into their kitchen and show us the basics of good home cooking. Julia Child and Jacques P#65533;pin are synonymous with good food, and in these pages they demonstrate techniques (on which they don't always agree), discuss ingredients, improvise, balance flavors to round out a meal, and conjure up new dishes from leftovers. Center stage are carefully spelled-out recipes flanked by Julia's and Jacques's comments--the accumulated wisdom of two lifetimes of honing their cooking skills. Nothing is written in stone, they imply. And that is one of the most important lessons for every good cook. So sharpen your knives and join in the fun as you learn to make:   * Appetizers: from traditional and instant gravlax to your own sausage in brioche and a country * Soups: from New England chicken chowder and onion soup gratin#65533;e to Mediterranean seafood stew and that creamy essence of mussels, billi-bi * Eggs: omelets and "tortillas"; scrambled, poached, and coddled eggs; eggs as a liaison for sauces and as the puffing power for souffles * Salads and Sandwiches: basic green and near-Nioise salads; a crusty round seafood-stuffed bread, a lobster roll, and a pan bagnat * Potatoes: baked, mashed, hash-browned, scalloped, souffled, and French-fried * Vegetables: the favorites from artichokes to tomatoes, blanched, steamed, sauted, braised, glazed, and gratin#65533;ed * Fish: familiar varieties whole and filleted (with step-by-step instructions for preparing your own), steamed en papillote, grilled, seared, roasted, and poached, plus a classic sole meunire and the essentials of lobster cookery * Poultry: the perfect roast chicken (Julia's way and Jacques's way); holiday turkey, Julia's deconstructed and Jacques's galantine; their two novel approaches to duck * Meat: the right technique for each cut of meat (along with lessons in cutting up), from steaks and hamburger to boeuf bourguignon and roast leg of lamb  * Desserts: creme caramel, profiteroles, chocolate roulade, free-form apple tart--as you make them you'll learn all the important building blocks for handling dough, cooking custards, preparing fillings and frostings * And much, much more . . . Throughout this richly illustrated book you'll see Julia's and Jacques's hands at work, and you'll sense the pleasure the two are having cooking together, tasting, exchanging ideas, and raising a glass to savor the fruits of their labor. Again and again they demonstrate that cooking is endlessly fascinating and challenging and, while ultimately personal, it is a joy to be shared.

From Nina Simonds, the best-selling authority on Chinese cooking, here is a groundbreaking cookbook based on the Asian philosophy of food as health-giving. The 200 delectable recipes she offers not only taste superb but also have specific healing properties according to the accumulated wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine. The emphasis is on what's good for you, not bad for you. It's primarily a question of balance: eating in harmony with the seasons; countering yin, or cooling, foods (spinach, tomatoes, asparagus, lettuce, seafood) with yang, or hot, foods (ginger, garlic, hot peppers, beef) and neutralizers like rice and noodles. Feeling tired? Ms. Simonds offers a spoonful of ginger in her hearty chicken soup. A cold coming on? Try Cantonese-Style Tofu (to sweat out the cold) in Black Bean Sauce (healing to the lungs and digestion). Your immune system needs building up? Wild mushrooms (a cancer deterrent) are tossed with soba noodles (a stress reliever). Concerned about cholesterol and clogged arteries? Instead of giving up all the foods you love, indulge in Yin-Yang Shrimp with Hawthorn Dipping Sauce. Whatever your health concerns may be, you will find the right restorative and satisfying recipes. Babies and toddlers have special needs, as do adolescents, pregnant and menopausal women, the aging--and all of these are addressed with specific recommendations. The wealth of information Nina Simonds offers here derives from her extensive research into the evidence amassed over three thousand years by practitioners of Chinese medicine, and from her interviews with leading experts today in food as medicine, who offer their firsthand testimony. It is all here in this remarkable book. But, above all, it is the range of dishes, from the exotic to the earthy, that will convince you that you can enjoy marvelous food every day--relishing its good taste and knowing it is good for you.

Bestselling author Madhur Jaffrey's long-awaited compendium of her favorite vegetarian recipes from around the world is sure to be the season's most highly anticipated cookbook. The work of more than a decade, Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian contains more than 750 recipes from every corner of the world, making it the definitive guide to global meatless cuisine. She combines the treasured recipes from her childhood in the Punjab region of India with new favorites collected on her extensive travels, as well as her own original creations, which mingle European, Indian, and other diverse ethnic traditions in an irresistibly appealing way. Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian is divided into distinct sections highlighting the delicious possibilities of vegetables; beans; grains; and dairy with additional sections on soups and salads, and zesty chutneys and other condiments to round out a meatless meal. Jaffrey also includes menus for family and entertaining, and offers suggestions for creating complete meals that are nutritionally sound. Throughout, Jaffrey writes in a light, conversational tone, sharing anecdotes from her rich life as a food authority. She also offers invaluable information on everything from how to store and prepare a wide variety of vegetables to how to make Japanese soups or Ethiopian breads. Her unusually broad knowledge of seasonings, sauces and chutneys add zest and variety to even the most familiar staples of the vegetarian pantry.

Twenty years in the making, here is the long-awaited magnum opus from one of the world's great authorities on the history and use of food. This Companion is packed with 2,650 delightfully written A-Z entries--including 39 feature articles on staple foods--the vast majority penned by the renowned Alan Davidson, with additional articles by over fifty specialists from as far afield as the Philippines, Norway, and Australia. The coverage is spectacular, with the most wide-ranging treatment ever of foods and food products and how to use them. Indeed, the Companion covers everything--plant products, meats, birds and eggs, dairy products, nuts, fish and all seafoods, plant foods, cereals, and exotic foods. Davidson examines famous dishes from around the world--from cassoulet, croque-monsieur, and couscous, to spam, sherbet, and sonofabitch stew. There are over 140 entries on national and regional cuisines (Cajun cooking, Pennsylvania Dutch). Even Antarctica is included in this unique panorama. Other subjects covered in depth include food preservation, culinary terms and techniques, food science and diet, cookbooks and their authors, and the role of food in culture and religion. The book is enhanced by some 180 exquisite illustrations of foods by Laotian artist Soun Vannithone, ranging from the comfortingly familiar to the bizarre and rare. In fact, the common and the exotic mingle throughout, with the everyday (apples, apricots) and the exotic (akee, ambarella, baobab) found side by side. Here then is a true cornucopia, offering all the flavors, styles, and staples of the world, past and present, from classical Greek and Roman cookery to modern Australian and Hawaiian cuisines. Food historians, food scientists, food writers, chefs, restaurateurs, amateur cooks, and everyone with a serious interest in cooking--and eating--will feast on this authoritative reference on food.

Vast and authoritative, with 38 chapters containing nearly 500 recipes and 300 illustrations,The Cook's Illustrated Complete Book of Poultryoffers readers the very best methods for preparing chicken, turkey, duck, goose, quail, squab, and pheasant. Nowhere can you find the volume of testing and research that you do in Cook's Illustrated. Forty turkeys roasted to find the best Thanksgiving bird. Duck prepared ten different ways to ensure the crispiest skin and moistest meat. Countless chickens basted and turned to determine that preheating the roasting pan is the secret to the tastiest one. No other cookbook has taken this approach to the subject, and no other book has broken such new ground in the kitchen. Master recipes provide all the basics to prepare poultry in particular styles--from fried chicken to braised quail, sauted turkey cutlets to roasted Cornish game hens. The variations follow: an exhaustive listing that will yield fresh recipes for years to come. These include delights like Sauted Chicken Cutlets with Marsala, Chicken and Herb Dumplings with Spring Vegetables, and Cincinnati-Style Turkey Chili. There are even recipes specially designed to make use of leftovers. For grill enthusiasts, sidebars cover such topics as finding the best charcoal and setting up the grill for indirect cooking. Recipes range from easy grilled chicken wings to a show-stopping grill-roasted whole turkey guaranteed to be the best you've ever tasted. Step-by-step illustrations guide the reader through every technique. Informative sidebars rate everything from roaster racks to canned chicken broth. Enlightening, instructive, and invaluable, this is a book that any cook interested in poultry--and in learning the best way to prepare any bird--can't afford to be without.

The French word terroir is used to describe all the ecological factors that make a particular type of wine special to the region of its origin. James E. Wilson uses his training as a geologist and his years of research in the wine regions of France to fully examine the concept of terroir. The result combines natural history, social history, and scientific study, making this a unique book that all wine connoisseurs and professionals will want close at hand. In Part One Wilson introduces the full range of environmental factors that together form terroir. He explains France's geological foundation; its soil, considered the "soul" of a vineyard; the various climates and microclimates; the vines, their history and how each type has evolved; and the role that humans--from ancient monks to modern enologists--have played in viticulture. Part Two examines the history and habitat of each of France's major wine regions. Wilson explores the question of why one site yields great wines while an adjacent site yields wines of lesser quality. He also looks at cultural influences such as migration and trade and at the adaptations made by centuries of vignerons to produce distinctive wine styles. Wilson skillfully presents both technical information and personal anecdotes, and the book's photographs, maps, and geologic renderings are extremely helpful. The appendices contain a glossary and information on the labeling of French wines. With a wealth of information explained in clear English, Wilson's book enables wine readers to understand and appreciate the mystique of terroir.

A groundbreaking culinary work of extraordinary depth and scope that spans more than one thousand years of history, A Mediterranean Feast tells the sweeping story of the birth of the venerated and diverse cuisines of the Mediterranean. Author Clifford A. Wright weaves together historical and culinary strands from Moorish Spain to North Africa, from coastal France to the Balearic Islands, from Sicily and the kingdoms of Italy to Greece, the Balkan coast, Turkey, and the Near East. The evolution of these cuisines is not simply the story of farming, herding, and fishing; rather, the story encompasses wars and plagues, political intrigue and pirates, the Silk Road and the discovery of the New World, the rise of capitalism and the birth of city-states, the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and the obsession with spices. The ebb and flow of empires, the movement of populations from country to city, and religion have all played a determining role in making each of these cuisines unique. In A Mediterranean Feast, Wright also shows how the cuisines of the Mediterranean have been indelibly stamped with the uncompromising geography and climate of the area and a past marked by both unrelenting poverty and outrageous wealth. The book's more than five hundred contemporary recipes (which have been adapted for today's kitchen) are the end point of centuries of evolution and show the full range of culinary ingenuity and indulgence, from the peasant kitchen to the merchant pantry. They also illustrate the migration of local culinary predilections, tastes for food and methods of preparation carried from home to new lands and back by conquerors, seafarers, soldiers, merchants, and religious pilgrims. A Mediterranean Feast includes fourteen original maps of the contemporary and historical Mediterranean, a guide to the Mediterranean pantry, food products resources, a complete bibliography, and a recipe and general index, in addition to a pronunciation key. An astonishing accomplishment of culinary and historical research and detective work in eight languages, A Mediterranean Feast is required--and intriguing--reading for any cook, armchair or otherwise.