James Beard Award - Indianapolis

Fish is the ultimate sophisticated weeknight or company dinner, but it can intimidate even the most nimble home cooks. RICK STEIN'S COMPLETE SEAFOOD offers an almost limitless repertoire, with detailed instructions and extensive charts. Hundreds of photographs and illustrations show how to scale and gut fish for the grill, bake whole fish in a salt or pastry casing, hot-smoke fish, prepare live crabs, and clean and stuff squid, along with other essential techniques.  The most comprehensive full-color seafood instructional available, now in paperback. 2005 James Beard Cookbook of the Year. Carefully vetted and adjusted to correspond with North American fish and shellfish availability and sustainability. For all things fish related, we've found no better source than Rick Stein's Complete Seafood, a handsome, amply illustrated volume that details the selecting, handling, and cooking of every species imaginable." --Saveur (Top 100 Home Cook Edition) "Many step-by-step photos make clear how to scale, gut and fillet fish and how to handle a wide variety of shellfish and crustaceans...Cooking techniques are given the sam thoughtful, step-by-step treatment. And the text is compelling enough, with lots of first-person instruction, to read at bedtime."--Washington Post From the Trade Paperback edition.

A Blessing of Bread grew out of an interview that author Maggie Glezer conducted with a rabbi's wife about the symbolism of challah, that bakery staple deeply rooted in Jewish traditions. Captivated by the myriad meanings in every twist of the bread's braid, she spent years doing research and recipe testing. The result is this landmark guide to the amazing variety of Jewish breads found in communities all over the world, from Guatemala to Russia and everywhere in between. In it are more than 60 impeccably tested recipes both old and new, for challah and other Sabbath and holiday loaves and an exploration of the rich symbolism of their hisory, the rituals governing their baking and eating, and the sacred texts and commentaries from which these rituals derive. There are best-ever recipes for babka and honey cake, bagels, matzot, crackers, and everyday breads such as Jewish-deli rye. It is also loaded with totally unexpected breads that thrill, such as anise, almond, and sesame-studded Moroccan Purim bread; the spiced and leaf-wrapped Ehtiopian bereketei (whole wheat Sabbath bread); and the pitalike nooni honegi of the Bukharan Jews. Oral histories, ancient legends, shtetl folktales, aphorisms, and proverbs delight and inspire, and stories of grandmothers and great-grandmothers that recall life as it once was complete this volume, the most in-depth and wide-ranging one ever published on the subject.

You love good food. You prefer fresh ingredients, you appreciate lively flavors, you try to eat healthy. So what's keeping you out of the kitchen? Fear? Boredom with making the same old things? In this book, renowned cooking teacher and innovative California chef John Ash says, "Let's get back in there." Those lucky enough to have learned in the classroom alongside John Ash know that he is an extraordinarily gifted teacher who empowers beginning cooks and kitchen veterans alike to reach new culinary heights. In his celebrated classes, Ash takes the fear out of creative cooking by demonstrating the basics, then encouraging students to dive right in and experiment with the endless possibilities. Now, home cooks can reap the benefits of a private course with John Ash in this enlightening guide to cooking essentials and beyond. John Ash: Cooking One on Onefeatures lessons that focus on specific techniques, ingredients, or flavor-makers--vinaigrettes, pestos, and other building blocks that turn ordinary dishes into something special. With each lesson, Ash presents a handful of recipes--variations on a theme that start simply, then progress to reveal more complex combinations. With clear-cut instructions and a dash of charm, Ash helps cooks build confidence in the kitchen and proves that any dish, no matter how intricate, is based on a handful of simple techniques and troubleshooting know-how. This unique new collection of recipes--his first since the IACP Cookbook of the YearFrom the Earth to the Table--offers savory soups, satisfying main course salads, comforting vegetarian and nonvegetarian entres, and delectable desserts for every occasion. Pan-Seared Sea Bass with Pineapple Melon Salsa. Mojo-Marinated Skewered Beef. Warm Spinach Salad with Bacon, Apple Cider Dressing, and Oven-Dried Grapes. Mushroom-Ginger Soup with Roasted Garlic Custards. Orange Ricotta Cake with Strawberries. Discover an irresistible assortment of extraordinary recipes prepared with global accents and a light touch. As one of the guiding forces behind California cuisine, Ash uses fats judiciously and encourages cooking with seasonal produce. His final lesson, an introduction to wine, rounds out this groundbreaking cookbook. An unprecedented blend of instruction and inspiration,John Ash: Cooking One on Oneswings open the kitchen door, stocks the pantry, and invites cooks of all skill levels to dish up fresh, flavorful food at home.

With a client list that includes Sigourney Weaver, Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters, and Iman, Serena Bass is the caterer that chic Manhattanites call upon when it's party time. In Serena: Food & Stories, the fabulous Ms. Bass shares 100 choice recipes, organized into menus for 11 different occasions.

Who hasn'­t vowed to eat healthier? But who wants to give up great taste? Now you can have both. Introducing the cookbook that will change your mind about healthy meals, from the esteemed Mayo Clinic, the foremost authority on healthy cooking in America. Dedicated to the art of eating well, this all-new volume offers 150 inspired recipes for delicious dishes with appetizing photography and detailed nutritional analysis. Also includes Mayo Clinic¬Ã­s New Philosophy of Cooking and Healthy Weight Pyramid. Destined to be a daily staple for health-conscious cooks everywhere. Key Features: - 150 delicious recipes - Up-to-date nutritional information on the world's healthiest foods - Foolproof techniques for bringing out ingredients' richest flavors - Approachable strategies for achieving nutritional goals

Reflecting the culinary traditions of the native peoples of the Americas, this intriguing cookbook features a collection of illustrated short essays that reflect a Native American perspective on indigenous food traditions, accompanied by 140 modern recipes that incorporate foods cultivated by native people.

The American city is thriving. In urban neighborhoods across the country you can find intriguing restaurants, gourmet and ethnic markets, farmers' markets, and artisanal breads and cheeses. In her new book, Weir Cooking in the City, chef and teacher Joanne Weir takes readers and home cooks into our nation's ethnically diverse and vibrant culinary and cultural urban landscape. Exploring her adopted city of San Francisco as a guide, Joanne invites readers to search their own cities for the myriad international flavors and tastes they will find there. From local ethnic neighborhoods to the butcher to the farmers' market, Joanne seeks out the best ingredients and most delicious dishes and shows how they can be re-created in home kitchens anywhere. A companion volume to her new series on public television, Weir Cooking in the City brings every city to life.With chapters on Firsts, Soups, Mains, and Desserts, Weir includes more than 125 vividly flavored, inventive recipes, created with urban cooks in mind: those cooks with not enough time and too little space, but an appetite for creating memorable meals and social gatherings. Start your meal with Joanne's Straw Potato Cakes with Smoked Salmon and Caviar, Parmesan Flan, or Kale Soup with Pancetta and White Beans. Showcase beautiful salad greens in a Radicchio, Arugula, Golden Raisin, and Pine Nut Salad or a Duck Salad with Pecans and Kumquats, or spice things up with a Thai Beef Salad with Mint and Cilantro. Simple yet delicious main courses include Silver-Roasted Salmon with Sweet-Hot Relish; Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Mustard, Rosemary, and Capers; and Green Lasagna with Artichokes and Leeks. Sweets like Warm Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Coffee Tart; Plum Cake; Double Chocolate Ice Cream with Dried Cherries; and Panna Cotta with Raspberries will complete your meal. Each recipe is accompanied by wine suggestions from wine expert Tim McDonald. Filled with mouth-watering photographs throughout, Weir Cooking in the City is the cookbook for the modern home cook, with essential information on stocking your pantry, matching wine with food, and effortless entertaining. From creating a party of Mediterranean-inspired small plates to a simple but sophisticated supper after a movie or play, from bustling neighborhood markets to Joanne's welcoming kitchen, this excursion into city cuisine will inspire you to create a weekday meal or an impromptu dinner party.

No matter where you live, or how gloomy it may be outside, Patricia Wells will brighten your kitchen with the sunny flavors of France's bountiful south with The Provence Cookbook. A French-food expert and longtime Provence resident, Patricia offers readers an intimate guide to the culinary treasures of this sun-drenched landscape and dishes that will transport you and your guests with every flavorful bite. The Provence Cookbook's 175 enticing recipes reflect Patricia's long and close ties with the farmers and purveyors who provide her and her neighbors in Provence with a kaleidoscope of high-quality foods. Their year-round bounty is the inspiration for these exciting, healthful Mediterranean-French dishes,which Patricia shares with home cooks everywhere. Over the past twenty years, it is Patricia who has often been the student, learning Provencal ways and regional recipes directly from the locals. With The Provence Cookbook, her readers benefit from this rich inheritance, as she passes along such recipes as My Vegetable Man's Asparagus Flan, or Maussane Potter's Spaghetti. Along side authentic and flavorful dishes for every course from hors d'oeuvre to dessert, as wellas pantry staples, The Provence Cookbook features eighty-eight of Patricia's artful black-and-white photographs of Provence's farmers, shopkeepers, and delightful products. More than a cookbook, this is also a complete guide and handbook to Provencal dining, with vendor profiles, restaurant and food shop recommendations and contact information, and twelve tempting menus -- delight in An August Dinner at Sunset or perhaps A Winter Truffle Feast. Whether you are a home cook, a traveler, or an armchair adventurer, enjoy Provence as the locals do, with Patricia Wells and The Provence Cookbook as your guides.

Thomas Keller, chef/proprieter of Napa Valley's French Laundry, is passionate about bistro cooking. He believes fervently that the real art of cooking lies in elevating to excellence the simplest ingredients; that bistro cooking embodies at once a culinary ethos of generosity, economy, and simplicity; that the techniques at its foundation are profound, and the recipes at its heart have a powerful ability to nourish and please. So enamored is he of this older, more casual type of cooking that he opened the restaurant Bouchon, right next door to the French Laundry, so he could satisfy a craving for a perfectly made quiche, or a gratin#65533;ed onion soup, or a simple but irresistible roasted chicken. Now Bouchon, the cookbook, embodies this cuisine in all its sublime simplicity. But let's begin at the real beginning. For Keller, great cooking is all about the virtue of process and attention to detail. Even in the humblest dish, the extra thought is evident, which is why this food tastes so amazing: The onions for the onion soup are caramelized for five hours; lamb cheeks are used for the navarin; basic but essential refinements every step of the way make for the cleanest flavors, the brightest vegetables, the perfect balance-whether of fat to acid for a vinaigrette, of egg to liquid for a custard, of salt to meat for a duck confit. Because versatility as a cook is achieved through learning foundations, Keller and Bouchon executive chef Jeff Cerciello illuminate all the key points of technique along the way: how a two-inch ring makes for a perfect quiche; how to recognize the right hazelnut brown for a brown butter sauce; how far to caramelize sugar for different uses. But learning and refinement aside-oh those recipes! Steamed mussels with saffron, bourride, trout grenobloise with its parsley, lemon, and croutons; steak frites, beef bourguignon, chicken in the pot-all exquisitely crafted. And those immortal desserts: the tarte Tatin, the chocolate mousse, the lemon tart, the profiteroles with chocolate sauce. In Bouchon, you get to experience them in impeccably realized form. This is a book to cherish, with its alluring mix of recipes and the author's knowledge, warmth, and wit: "I find this a hopeful time for the pig," says Keller about our yearning for the flavor that has been bred out of pork. So let your imagination transport you back to the burnished warmth of an old-fashioned French bistro, pull up a stool to the zinc bar or slide into a banquette, and treat yourself to truly great preparations that have not just withstood the vagaries of fashion, but have improved with time. Welcome to Bouchon.

Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious. Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment. On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy." Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques. On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.

The art of braising comes down to us from the earliest days of cooking, when ingredients were enclosed in a heavy pot and buried in the hot embers of a dying fire until tender and bathed in a deliciously concentrated sauce. Today, braising remains as popular and as uncomplicated as ever. Molly Stevens's All About Braising is a comprehensive guide to this versatile way of cooking, written to instruct a cook at any level. Everything you need to know is here, including: * a thorough explanation of the principles of good braising with helpful advice on the best cuts of meat, the right choice of fish and vegetables, and the right pots * 125 reliable, easy-to-follow recipes for meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables, ranging from quick-braised weeknight dishes to slow-cooked weekend braises * planning tips to highlight the fact that braised foods taste just as good, if not even better, as leftovers * a variety of enlightened wine suggestions for any size pocketbook with each recipe

"A land of wheat and barley, of grape vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey . . . you shall eat and be satisfied."?--Deut. 8:8-10 A Celebration of Classic Jewish Vegetarian Cooking from Around the World Traditions of Jewish vegetarian cooking span three millennia and the extraordinary geographical breadth of the Jewish diaspora--from Persia to Ethiopia, Romania to France. Acclaimed Judaic cooking expert, chef, and rabbi Gil Marks uncovers this vibrant culinary heritage for home cooks. Olive Trees and Honey is a magnificent treasury shedding light on the truly international palette of Jewish vegetarian cooking, with 300 recipes for soups, salads, grains, pastas, legumes, vegetable stews, egg dishes, savory pastries, and more. From Sephardic Bean Stew (Hamin) to Ashkenazic Mushroom Knishes, Italian Fried Artichokes to Hungarian Asparagus Soup, these dishes are suitable for any occasion on the Jewish calendar--festival and everyday meal alike. Marks's insights into the origins and evolution of the recipes, suggestions for holiday menus from Yom Kippur to Passover, and culture-rich discussion of key ingredients enhance this enchanting portrait of the Jewish diaspora's global legacy of vegetarian cooking.

New in Paper Whisky is widely considered the finest spirit in the world--and this is the definitive history of the "water of life." Written by the editor of Whisky magazine, and Scotland's leading writer on the subject, it's the perfect blend of anecdotes and pioneering research. Superb illustrations help tell an intriguing story that goes back as far as 2000 B.C., and that includes a cast of fascinating characters who smuggled, bribed, conspired, and advertised with a vengeance to turn whisky from a common man's drink into a proud part of the Scottish national heritage. Unfolding decade by decade, it presents names such as John Walker and Sons, Glenlivet, and Macallan, providing a treasure trove for the whisky connoisseur or anyone interested in a really good read.

Food has never been more exalted as part of a lifestyle, yet fewer and fewer people really know what good food is. Drawing on enough culinary experiences to fill several lifetimes, Gina Mallet's irreverent memoir combines recollections of meals and their milieus with recipes and tasting tips. In loving detail, Last Chance to Eat muses on the fates of foods that were once the stuff of feasts: light, fluffy eggs; rich cheeses; fresh meat; garden vegetables; and fish just hauled ashore. Mallet's gastronomic adventures appeal to any palate: from finding the perfect grilled cheese ("as delicate tasting as any Escoffier recipe") to combing the bustling food department at postwar Harrod's for the makings of "an Elizabeth David meal." The search for taste often takes her far from the beaten path--to an underground "chevaline" restaurant serving horsemeat steaks and to purveyors of contraband Epoisses, for instance--but the journey is always a delight.