Not surprisingly, the genre of home cooking was flooded with solid contributions. America's premier cooking school dived into the fray with "Cooking at Home With the CIA: Essential Techniques and Recipes for Creating Great Food" (Wiley, $40). Carefully conceived, with just enough recipes to cover basic techniques, this is an outstanding choice for the new cook looking for a comprehensive primer without shortcuts or compromises.
Former Times restaurant critic Raymond Sokolov offered "The Cook's Canon: 101 Classic Recipes Everyone Should Know" (HarperCollins, $25.95), one man's alphabetized list of recipes to take to a desert island. Some are indisputable (coq au vin, fried rice, omelet), others impractical or downright odd (coulibiac, suckling pig). Still, even at his most idiosyncratic, his rants and anecdotes never cease to entertain. Anne Willan is the founding mother of La Varenne, the bilingual cooking school in the heart of Burgundy. In "Good Food No Fuss: 150 Recipes and Ideas for Easy-to-Cook Dishes" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $27.50), she simplifies and streamlines French-influenced classics and makes an art of the one-pot meal.
"The Way We Cook: Recipes From the New American Kitchen," by Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven (Houghton Mifflin, $27), is especially appealing as a small all-purpose cookbook for family and company. Julian and Riven, who write a food column in the Boston Globe Magazine and also in the Food section (Julian is the Globe's food editor), have tailored their recipes in response to real-life readers, which makes this book more accessible than most.
Equally appealing to comfort-foodies is Marion Cunningham's "Lost Recipes: Meals to Share With Friends and Family" (Knopf, $22), beautifully bound in evocative vintage food prints (with a pocket for recipes in the front cover!). Her lovingly assembled roster of nearly forgotten traditional American dishes -- spoon breads, stews, puddings -- makes an ideal gift for anyone who reminisces about a talented grandmother in the kitchen.
More multicultural than the others, but still based in traditional flavor combinations, "A Flash in the Pan: Fast, Fabulous Recipes in a Single Skillet," by Brooke Dojry and Melanie Barnard (Chronicle, $22.95), is a tribute to the saute and the stir-fry. Even braised dishes in this book take no more than 10 minutes, an ideal arrangement for the cook who wants to travel around the world in 30 minutes or less.
To sample a bit of everything -- food magazines, newspaper food sections, websites, and newsletters -- it's impossible to beat "The Best American Recipes 2003-2004," edited by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens (Houghton Mifflin, $26). The authors have been at this for five years and understand what makes a great recipe, as in bourbon pecans, "amazing" overnight waffles, and scrambled eggs with scallops and bacon.
For general utility, "Perfect Vegetables," by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine (Boston Common Press, $29.95), is indispensable. Comprehensive (56 pages on potatoes; 14 on tomatoes) and, needless to say, tested to a fare-thee-well, this book should be greeted with open arms by anyone who loves the sides as much as the mains. For tenacity, there's no one like the indefatigable Peter Reinhart, whose "American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza" (10 Speed Press, $24.95) can sit beside the pizza stone in the kitchen. In addition to exploring every conceivable way to outfit your oven to bake a pie, Reinhart has recipes for prebaked freezer dough, many Italian crusts, and New York-style dough, plus sourdough, grilled, Chicago deep dish, Sardinian carta da musica, and focaccia. And if only because nothing quite like it has ever been done before, it's hard to resist "The Appetizer Atlas: A World of Small Bites," by Arthur L. Meyer and Jon M. Vann (Wiley, $45). Starting in the Americas and traveling westward, the authors cover the gamut from fried clams to spring rolls to foie gras.Ethnic/international A decade ago it would have been viewed as sheer perversity to issue a book dedicated to foods that take hours to cook, but Paula Wolfert's "The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook" (Wiley, $34.95) is a treasure. Whether you embrace fast food or slow food, it's a fact that only time on the stove or in the oven can offer Wolfert's deep, thrilling flavors.
"Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking," by Fuchsia Dunlop (Norton, $30), is a wonderful surprise, condensing the fire and passion of an ancient cuisine into a neat, approachable package. Home cooks have long been ready to experience the authentic regionalism available in Italian cookbooks. This is a fine step to learning the same depth about Chinese regional food.
If last year's Mideast sleeper hit was "A Fistful of Lentils," this year's is "Feast From the Mideast: 250 Sun-Drenched Dishes From the Lands of the Bible," by Faye Levy (HarperCollins, $29.95), which extends all the way from North Africa to Iran in a kind of Menu of the Old Testament. Levy, who has written many books on Jewish cooking, does a marvelous job of adapting the recipes to an American kitchen -- no roasting of whole lambs on spits here.
"The Jewish Kitchen: Recipes and Stories From Around the World," by Clarissa Hyman (Interlink, $29.95), may well be the first to unite Sephardic, Ashkenazic, and Jewish-American traditions under one cover -- everything from Persian "jeweled rice" to latkes. It's fascinating to see how vastly different cultures handled the dietary restrictions of kashrut.
Maria Baez Kijac attempts to correct our shocking unfamiliarity with the cuisines of a neighboring continent in "The South American Table: The Flavor and Soul of Authentic Home Cooking From Patagonia to Rio de Janeiro" (Harvard Common Press, $19.95). With any luck it will be viewed by future generations as hopelessly broad. Can you imagine a cookbook titled "The European Table"? For now and for most of us, it's an enticing foray into new territory.
Unlike the intrepid Manhattanite who cooked her way through all of Julia Child this year, most of us would prefer a less stringent French regimen. Thank goodness for "My French Kitchen: A Book of 120 Treasured Recipes," by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde (Morrow, $24.95), which edits the favorites -- coq au vin, onion soup -- down to a manageable size.
Chefs and restaurants The big boys in New York have been busy this year, issuing gorgeous, glossy manifestos filled with grainy photographs and anecdotes of restaurant life. The swankiest of the lot is Marcus Samuelsson's "Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine" (Houghton Mifflin, $45), a gorgeous tribute to the artistry that has transformed the flavors of this Ethiopian-born chef's Swedish childhood.
Bright, clean, and meticulous, Tom Colicchio's "Craft of Cooking: Notes and Recipes From a Restaurant Kitchen" (Clarkson Potter, $37.50) restores hope with its simple, careful recipes. Apparently chefs can experience the same cravings, the same deep satisfaction as anyone else. Colicchio teaches you how to do simple tasks, such as sauteing spinach in garlic, pan roasting lamb chops, and roasting cod. It gets harder from there.
Another surprisingly approachable foray by a chef who has nothing to prove is "East of Paris: The New Cuisines of Austria and the Danube," by David Bouley, Mario Lohninger, and Melissa Clark (Ecco Press, $34.95). The foods of Mitteleuropa have never received such loving attention. Bouley owns Danube restaurant, and this is his tribute for cooks willing to reach beyond sauerkraut and schnitzel. They'll be amply rewarded.
Quintessentially French, with a fussy, fin-de-siecle design, the "Balthazar Cookbook," by Keith McNally, Riad Nasr, and Lee Hanson (Clarkson Potter, $37.50), has no right to be as utterly enchanting as it is. Like the brasserie that took Manhattan by storm in 1997, Balthazar the book marries the romance of a long ago Paris with a seductive urban vibe and succeeds in selling much more than steak frites.
Baking books Whenever she's in the running, Rose Levy Beranbaum leads the pack. "The Bread Bible" (Norton, $35) offers due diligence for many things that bakers take for granted -- conversions for volume and weight, crystal-clear instructions, helpful glossaries.
You'll find farmhouse desserts in the best heartland tradition, plus blue ribbon winners from fairs and church suppers, in "All-American Desserts: 400 Star-Spangled, Razzle-Dazzle Recipes for America's Best Loved Desserts," by Judith M. Fertig (Harvard Common Press, $18.95).
The photographs alone are worth the sticker price of "Modern Classics Book 2: Cookies, Biscuits & Slices, Small Cakes, Cakes, Desserts, Hot Puddings, Pie & Tarts," by Donna Hay (Morrow, $24.95). Large as life and so sharply tantalizing, these desserts look like you can eat them off the page. However, this isn't the easiest book to use. It suffers from small type and laconic instructions. But it will look great on the coffee table.
The art of Southern baking is usually hidden at the back of soul food cookbooks. "Sweets: A Collection of Soul Food Desserts and Memories," by Patty Pinner (10 Speed Press, $24.95), puts the cakes front and center in astounding profusion. Equally rewarding are Pinner's tales of her family, possessed of a sweet tooth that defies all reason.
The prize for cutest cookie book goes to "A Baker's Field Guide to Christmas Cookies," by Dede Wilson (Harvard Common Press, $14.95), with its anatomy-of-a-gingerbread-man cover and faintly ironic entries.
Several books written about on these pages this year include "The Gift of Southern Cooking: Recipes and Reflections From Two Great American Cooks, Edna Lewis & Scott Peacock" (Knopf, $29.95). Even the most snowbound Northern cook would find it hard to resist this instant Southern classic. "The New Legal Sea Foods Cookbook: 200 Fresh, Simple, and Delicious Recipes From Appetizers to Desserts," by Roger Berkowitz and Jane Doerfer (Broadway Books, $26), offers countless ways to dress up every fish in the sea in this updated version of the restaurant's cookbook. "Secrets of Baking," by Sherry Yard (Houghton Mifflin, $35.95), is for any home baker yearning to be an artisan and turn out luxurious desserts.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
