James Beard Award - Indianapolis

Luminous at dawn and dusk, the Mekong is a river road, a vibrant artery that defines a vast and fascinating region. Here, along the world's tenth largest river, which rises in Tibet and joins the sea in Vietnam, traditions mingle and exquisite food prevails. Award-winning authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid followed the river south, as it flows through the mountain gorges of southern China, to Burma and into Laos and Thailand. For a while the right bank of the river is in Thailand, but then it becomes solely Lao on its way to Cambodia. Only after three thousand miles does it finally enter Vietnam and then the South China Sea. It was during their travels that Alford and Duguid who ate traditional foods in villages and small towns and learned techniques and ingredients from cooks and market vendors came to realize that the local cuisines, like those of the Mediterranean, share a distinctive culinary approach: Each cuisine balances, with grace and style, the regional flavor quartet of hot, sour, salty, and sweet. This book, aptly titled, is the result of their journeys. Like Alford and Duguid's two previous works, Flatbreads and Flavors ("a certifiable publishing event" Vogue) and Seductions of Rice ("simply stunning" The New York Times), this book is a glorious combination of travel and taste, presenting enticing recipes in "an odyssey rich in travel anecdote" (National Geographic Traveler). The book's more than 175 recipes for spicy salsas, welcoming soups, grilled meat salads, and exotic desserts are accompanied by evocative stories about places and people. The recipes and stories are gorgeously illustrated throughout with more than 150 full-color food and travel photographs. In each chapter, from Salsas to Street Foods, Noodles to Desserts, dishes from different cuisines within the region appear side by side: A hearty Lao chicken soup is next to a Vietnamese ginger-chicken soup; a Thai vegetable stir-fry comes after spicy stir-fried potatoes from southwest China. The book invites a flexible approach to cooking and eating, for dishes from different places can be happily served and eaten together: Thai Grilled Chicken with Hot and Sweet Dipping Sauce pairs beautifully with Vietnamese Green Papaya Salad and Lao sticky rice. North Americans have come to love Southeast Asian food for its bright, fresh flavors. But beyond the dishes themselves, one of the most attractive aspects of Southeast Asian food is the life that surrounds it. In Southeast Asia, people eat for joy. The palate is wildly eclectic, proudly unrestrained. In Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, at last this great culinary region is celebrated with all the passion, color, and life that it deserves.

There's a new culinary melting pot. It's called Seattle. Here you'll find everything from Japanese bento box lunches and Thai satays to steaming bowls of Vietnamese soups and all-American blackberry cobblers. No chef embodies this diversity with more flair and more flavor than chef/author/restaurateur Tom Douglas. And no book does it better than Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen. Tom's creativity with local ingredients and his respect for Seattle's ethnic traditions have helped put his three restaurants and Seattle on the national culinary map. Join Tom and celebrate the Emerald City's rich culinary tradition: sweet I Dungeness crabs, razor clams, rich artisan cheeses, and deeply flavored Northwest beers. Share in the delight of sophisticated Washington wines, coffee fresh vegetables, fruits, and the exotic flavors of the Pacific Rim countries. Tom Douglas' style is laid-back sophistication with a dash of humor. You can see it in the names of his chapters, "Starch Stacking," "Slow Dancing," and "Mo' Poke, Dadu" (this last title, courtesy of his daughter, Loretta, means "More Pork, Daddy"). And you can taste it in his signature dishes such as Dungeness Crabcakes with Green Cocktail Sauce, Roast Duck with Huckleberry Sauce and Parsnip-Apple Hash, Udon with Sea Scallops in Miso Broth, and Triple Cream Coconut Pie. Try his hearty Long-Bone Short Ribs with Chinook Merlot Gravy and Rosemary WhiteBeans or spicy Fire-roasted Oysters with Ginger Threads and Wasabi Butter. Relax in the comfort of the comfort foods he prepares for his own family: Loretta's Buttermilk Pancakes with Wild Blackberries, Basic Barbecued Baby Back Ribs, and Five-Spice Angel Food Cake. They're all clear, simple recipes that'll have you cooking like Tom Douglas from the very first page. But this is more than a cookbook; it's a food lover's guide to Seattle. Join Tom on a tour of his city with his list of top ten best things to do -- and eat -- in Seattle, from his favorite ethnic markets and neighborhoods to where to get the best breakfast. Why not turn your kitchen into a Seattle kitchen? All it takes is a little help and inspiration from Tom Douglas.

Maggie Glezer, the uniquely qualified, totally obsessed certified bread baker who teaches and writes about bread for both laypeople and professionals, set off across the country in pursuit of the best breads and best bakers in America. And she returned with the goods—impeccable recipes that reproduce the excellence and craft of the best breads being made today, scaled down and written for a home kitchen. But in addition to the recipes, she offers sumptuous color photography and portraits of the bakers, in words and pictures, that tell the story of America's artisan bread movement, from the wheat breeders in Kansas to a gristmill in Rhode Island, and specialty bakers from Berkeley, California, to Long Island City, New York. This is a book to bake from, to learn from, to read for the sheer pleasure of realizing the devotion and mastery that go into the making of our best daily bread, whether it be a dark rye, a Neapolitan pizza, a baguette, or a bialy. Whether your interest is epicurean, avocational, or vocational, you will be guided by step-by-step instructions detailing the best professional methods. Each recipe is categorized by skill level from beginner to advanced, and there are also helpful mail-order sources for ingredients and equipment. To savor the crust, crumb, and aroma of these breads fresh out of your home oven is to be touched by the soul of the specialty baker and his or her passion for excellence. If these truly great breads don't lay waste to the old adage that man can't live by bread alone, then nothing will.

Luminous at dawn and dusk, the Mekong is a river road, a vibrant artery that defines a vast and fascinating region. Here, along the world's tenth largest river, which rises in Tibet and joins the sea in Vietnam, traditions mingle and exquisite food prevails. Award-winning authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid followed the river south, as it flows through the mountain gorges of southern China, to Burma and into Laos and Thailand. For a while the right bank of the river is in Thailand, but then it becomes solely Lao on its way to Cambodia. Only after three thousand miles does it finally enter Vietnam and then the South China Sea. It was during their travels that Alford and Duguid who ate traditional foods in villages and small towns and learned techniques and ingredients from cooks and market vendors came to realize that the local cuisines, like those of the Mediterranean, share a distinctive culinary approach: Each cuisine balances, with grace and style, the regional flavor quartet of hot, sour, salty, and sweet. This book, aptly titled, is the result of their journeys. Like Alford and Duguid's two previous works, Flatbreads and Flavors ("a certifiable publishing event" Vogue) and Seductions of Rice ("simply stunning" The New York Times), this book is a glorious combination of travel and taste, presenting enticing recipes in "an odyssey rich in travel anecdote" (National Geographic Traveler). The book's more than 175 recipes for spicy salsas, welcoming soups, grilled meat salads, and exotic desserts are accompanied by evocative stories about places and people. The recipes and stories are gorgeously illustrated throughout with more than 150 full-color food and travel photographs. In each chapter, from Salsas to Street Foods, Noodles to Desserts, dishes from different cuisines within the region appear side by side: A hearty Lao chicken soup is next to a Vietnamese ginger-chicken soup; a Thai vegetable stir-fry comes after spicy stir-fried potatoes from southwest China. The book invites a flexible approach to cooking and eating, for dishes from different places can be happily served and eaten together: Thai Grilled Chicken with Hot and Sweet Dipping Sauce pairs beautifully with Vietnamese Green Papaya Salad and Lao sticky rice. North Americans have come to love Southeast Asian food for its bright, fresh flavors. But beyond the dishes themselves, one of the most attractive aspects of Southeast Asian food is the life that surrounds it. In Southeast Asia, people eat for joy. The palate is wildly eclectic, proudly unrestrained. In Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, at last this great culinary region is celebrated with all the passion, color, and life that it deserves.

WithThink Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio has created a new kind of cookbook. Rather than list a series of restaurant recipes, he uses simple steps to deconstruct a chef's creative process, making it easily available to any home cook. He starts with techniques: What's roasting, for example, and how do you do it in the oven or on top of the stove? He also gets you comfortable with braising, sautéing, and making stocks and sauces. Next he introduces simple "ingredients" -- roasted tomatoes, say, or braised artichokes -- and tells you how to use them in a variety of ways. So those easy roasted tomatoes may be turned into anything from a vinaigrette to a caramelized tomato tart, with many delicious options in between. In a section called Trilogies, Tom takes three ingredients and puts them together to make one dish that's quick and other dishes that are increasingly more involved. As Tom says, "Juxtaposed in interesting ways, these ingredients prove that the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts," and you'll agree once you've tasted the Ragout of Asparagus, Morels, and Ramps or the Baked Free-Form "Ravioli" -- both dishes made with the same trilogy of ingredients. The final section of the books offers simple recipes for components -- from zucchini with lemon thyme to roasted endive with whole spices to boulangerie potatoes -- that can be used in endless combinations. Written in Tom's warm and friendly voice and illustrated with glorious photographs of finished dishes,Think Like a Chefwill bring out the master chef in all of us.

A guide to Jewish cooking with a light touch reinvents the normally heavy traditional cuisine, subsituting ingredients and switching techniques to suit the more modern low-fat, low-cholesterol kitchen.

Rick Bayless has been acclaimed widely as America's foremost proponent of Mexico's thrillingly diverse cuisine. In this companion book to his 26-part Public Television series, he takes us, with boyish enthusiasm, through Mexican markets, street stalls and home kitchens to bring us the great dishes of Mexico, one "plate" at a time. Rick Bayless has been acclaimed widely as America's foremost proponent of Mexico's thrillingly diverse cuisine. In this companion book to his 26-part Public Television series, he takes us, with boyish enthusiasm, through Mexican markets, street stalls and home kitchens to bring us the great dishes of Mexico, one "plate" at a time. And each "plate" Rick presents here is a Mexican classic. Take guacamole, for instance. After teaching us the essentials for a perfect, classic guacamole, Rick shows how to spin contemporary interpretations, like his Roasted Poblano Guacamole with garlic and parsley. Rick's cuisine is always lively, but rooted in strong traditions. Always the teacher, Rick begins each "plate" with some never-before-found features: traditional benchmarks (Rick's idea of the best guacamole), when to think of the recipes (weeknight dinners or casual party food), and advice for American cooks (Rick's insight into the ingredients that make the dish). He rounds out each "plate" with suggestions for working ahead. To complete the journey into the Mexican mindset, Rick, with help from his testers, ends each "plate" with a question-and-answer section detailing just about everything a home cook might want to know: What are the best cuts of beef for grilled tacos? The best cheeses for quesadillas? Is one grill better than another? Rick draws from his years of living in Mexico, pulling us into the Mexican kitchen, to teach us how to create authentic Mexican dishes in our American kitchens. Rick is an Indiana Jones of the stove, a Julia Child of Mexican cuisine in black jeans and a T-shirt. Rick's goal: to enable folks all across the United States to create dishes that weave in the rich tapestry of Mexican flavor with ingredients that are widely available. He always provides ingredients that make the dish authentic, but he also delivers with the right substitute if an ingredient is hard to find. Experience food you can't wait to make in a new and user-friendly cookbook that contains the full range of dishes--Starters, Snacks and Light Meals; Soups, Stews and Sides; Entr#65533;es; Desserts and Drinks. Rick serves up such classic Mexican plates as Tomatillo-Braised Pork Loin, Quick-Fried Shrimp with Sweet Toasty Garlic, Chiles Rellenos, Cheesy Enchiladas Suizas, and Mexican Vanilla-Scented Flan. And for an exciting taste of the unexpected, try Rick's contemporary interpretations of the classics--Crispy Potato Sopes with Goat Cheese and Fresh Herbs, Grilled Salmon with Lemon-and-Thyme-Scented Salsa Veracruzana, Broiled Flank Steak with Tomato-Poblano Salsa and Rustic Cajeta Apple Tarts with Berry "Salsa." Food and friends, food and family. Good cooking, for Rick, is the unspoken animator of friends and family as they gather to share a meal. Rick's recipes lend themselves to weeknight family meals or celebrations. Take part in a tamalada, the tamal-making party before the party, or the ritual of a barbacoa, an earthy experience that Rick has made possible with a kettle grill in the backyard. 24 color photographs of finished dishes Photographs of Mexican location shots throughout

Good cooks have always known that when you have an egg, you can make a perfect meal at a moment's notice. Now nutritionists are confirming what our mothers told us: the egg is good food. In this landmark collection, Marie Simmons, an award-winning cookbook author whose deftly irresistible flavor combinations have inspired millions, celebrates the versatile egg with more than 250 recipes. This is the most comprehensive book on egg cookery ever published, and it's a dazzlingly diverse collection. It encompasses sophisticated dinners -- Gnocchi with Butter and Herbs, for instance -- as well as such superb desserts as Fallen Chocolate Soufflé Cake. And it's filled with tips and techniques for the basics: how to scramble, fry, bake, poach and hard-cook eggs. In these pages can be found convenient appetizers, comforting soups, flavorful sandwiches, innovative salads, sauces, soufflés, cookies, cakes, pies and tarts. Simmons provides us with literally hundreds of dinner possibilities, many of them vegetarian. She reinterprets such classics as quiches, adding broccoli and provolone or caramelized tomato and corn, and rediscovers dishes from the past, including the savory bread puddings called strata. She takes pasta far beyond red sauce with renditions that include eggs, fresh vegetables and herbs, and she serves up exciting main-dish salads for warm weather and, for wintry months, hearty Greek lamb stew with artichokes, thickened with egg-lemon sauce. And yes, there are scores of recipes for breakfast and brunches, ranging from Eggs Scrambled with Wild Mushrooms and Fresh Herbs to Eggs Baked in Fresh Tomato Salsa with Melted Cheese, not to mention French toast, Popover Pancakes, and more than thirty different omelettes and frittatas -- meals for any occasion. For dessert, choose between seductively light selections such as Hazelnut Meringue Cookies and Lemon Angel Food and rich creations like Classic Crcme Caramel, Lemon Curd Tart with Berries, and Spiced Sponge Roll with Maple Cream Filling and Walnut Praline. With egg information and intriguing snippets of lore throughout, THE GOOD EGG is the ultimate cookbook for a new generation of cooks.

Provides over two hundred recipes arranged by season for a wide variety of vegetarian dishes, and shares tips and techniques for preparing flavorful meatless meals.

Only a generation ago, the United States was little more than a footnote in the story of wine. Then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. American varieties began outscoring their counterparts in international competitions and tantalizing palates at home and abroad. Today, American wines not only compete successfully with prestigious imports but also set international standards for style and quality. How did a country with virtually no winemaking traditions of its own suddenly become a world leader? In AMERICAN VINTAGE, Paul Lukacs tells the story of the improbable rise of American wine. He populates his narrative with a series of quirky heroes and visionaries who changed the course of wine history. They include Nicholas Longworth, the founding father of American wine, a diminutive real estate tycoon who in the decades before the Civil War transformed Ohio into "the American Rhineland"; George Husmann, a nineteenth-century Missouri grape grower who passionately believed that American wines belonged on American supper tables; and Gustave Niebaum, a Finnish sea captain who made a fortune in the fur trade and went on to establish one of California's premier vineyards. Lukacs chronicles the fall of wine during the dark days of Prohibition and then its gradual rise at the hands of the "first families of American wine" -- the Mondavis and the Gallos -- who held opposing views of the new direction that American wine would take, with important consequences for its future. In chronicling the tumultuous history of wine, Lukacs reveals as much about American culture as he does about wine and viticulture.

The latest collection from "the most enticingly serendipitous voice on the culinary front since Elizabeth David and M.F.K. Fisher" (Conoisseur), Pot on the Fire celebrates--and in classic Thorne style, ponders, probes, and scrutinizes--a lifelong engagement with the elements of cooking, and with elemental cooking from cioppino to kedgeree.