The result is pure alchemy -- a new kind of American cookbook that reinterprets the best of the world's food in 450 dazzling, original recipes.Main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club's HomeStyle Books and Better Homes & Gardens Family Book Service, and selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club.

    Cool. Fashion-forward. These aren’t adjectives you’d ordinarily think of applying to baked goods.  Think again. Not every baker wants to re-create Grandma’s pound cake or cherry pie. Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito certainly didn’t, when they left their advertising careers behind, pooled their life savings, and opened their dream bakery, Baked, in Brooklyn, New York, a few years back. The visions that danced in their heads were of other, brand-new kinds of confections . . .  Things like a Malt Ball Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting, which captures the flavor of their favorite Whoppers candies (and ups the ante with a malted milk ball garnish). Things like spicy Chipotle Cheddar Biscuits that really wake up your taste buds at breakfast time. Things like a Sweet and Salty Cake created expressly for adults who are as salt-craving ?as they are sweet-toothed. Which is not to say that Lewis and Poliafito sidestep tradition absolutely. Their Chocolate Pie (whose filling uses Ovaltine) pays loving homage to the classic roadside-diner dessert. Their Baked Brownies will wow even the most discriminating brownie connoisseur. And their Chocolate Chip Cookies? Words cannot describe. Whether trendsetting or tried-and-true, every idea in this book is freshly Baked.

    In The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins make the entire year a celebration of good food, good friends, and good times, as they offer menus, suggestions, and strategies. More than 450 new recipes have been developed especially for this collection.All add to the joyfulness of the rapidly growing Silver Palate legend: there are glorious soups, savory entrees, vegetables, salads, cheese, souffles, and showstopping, just-right desserts. As warmly inviting as the most rousing party, the pages of The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook abound with winsome line illustrations, pertinent quotations, unusual ideas—and with dishes including Cajun Chicken Morsels, Duck and Dandelion Green Salad, Pesto Fondue, Tex-Mex Stuffed Peppers, and more. The excitement begins in spring and continues right through to winter, with a lavish Christmas Goose accompanied by Scalloped Oysters and Baked Kumquats. The good times are here, with the compliments of The Silver Palate.

    Born and raised in Mississippi, Foose cooks Southern food with a contemporary flair: Sweet Potato Soup is enhanced with coconut milk and curry powder; Blackberry Limeade gets a lift from a secret ingredient–cardamom; and her much-ballyhooed Sweet Tea Pie combines two great Southern staples–sweet tea and pie, of course–to make one phenomenal signature dessert. The more than 150 original recipes are not only full of flavor, but also rich with local color and characters. As the executive chef of the Viking Cooking School, teaching thousands of home cooks each year, Foose crafts recipes that are the perfect combination of delicious, creative, and accessible. Filled with humorous and touching tales as well as useful information on ingredients, techniques, storage, shortcuts, variations, and substitutions, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea is a must-have for the American home cook–and a must-read for anyone who craves a return to what cooking is all about: comfort, company, and good eating.

    Simple to Spectacular introduces a unique concept developed by one of the world's top chefs, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything and the New York Times's hugely popular column "The Minimalist." Ever since their award-winning collaboration on Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef, the acclaimed duo has been cooking up a repertoire of new dishes that can be prepared in any of five progressively sophisticated ways.Simple to Spectacular features a total of 250 recipes in 50 groups. Each group begins with a simple, elegant recipe--a few ingredients combined for maximum effect--followed by fully detailed, increasingly elaborate variations. For example, a recipe for Grilled Shrimp with Thyme and Lemon leads to Grilled Shrimp and Zucchini on Rosemary Skewers, Grilled Shrimp with Apple Ketchup, Thai-style Grilled Shrimp on Lemongrass Skewers, and Grilled Shrimp Balls with Cucumber and Yogurt.Every aspect of the meal is covered, from superb soups and salads to unforgettable side dishes, entrees, and desserts. In Simple to Spectacular, everything--from the basics to innovations by a four-star chef--is tailored for a quick Tuesday night dinner or an elegant weekend party.  And in the now-classic Vongerichten-Bittman style, all of the recipes can be made in the kitchen of any home cook. With 80 full-color photographs giving a mouthwatering view of the Simple-to-Spectacular transformations, readers and cooks will eagerly explore the possibilities.Jean-Georges Vongerichten (right) won the 1998 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef and Best New Restaurant. His Manhattan restaurants include Vong, Jo Jo, The Mercer Kitchen, and Jean Georges, which earned a rare four-star rating from the New York Times.  In Simple to Spectacular, two titans of the food world have created a truly groundbreaking cookbook.  Here are 250 superb recipes arranged in a uniquely useful way: a basic recipe and four increasingly sophisticated variations, with each group (there are 50 groups in all) based on a given technique.  This ingenious organization enables cooks of all levels of expertise to understand how a recipe is created and to re-create the brilliantly simple recipes and dazzling variations from one of our best food writers and home cooks teamed with one of America's greatest chefs.

    With appealing vulnerability, he shows cooks of all levels how to become more confident and casual in the kitchen. The verve and naturalness of his approach earned raves from Food & Wine and Bon Appétit to GQ and the New York Times, which noted his dishes prove that “sometimes simple is anything but simplistic.” Some of the recipes in this book are weeknight healthyish meals, while others are perfect for off-the-cuff entertaining. Visual stunners, they’re often composed of fewer than five ingredients. Whether Bastardized Easy Ramen; Malaysian Chili Shrimp; Roasted Carrots with Carrot-Top Pesto; or Salty Lemon Squares, all are visual stunners and can be carried off with panache, even by beginners.

    Learn the fundamentals well, and you can bake perfect cakes, cookies, tarts, breads, and pastries each and every time.That's the premise of Baking, revered cooking teacher James Peterson's master course in baking fundamentals. In more than 350 recipes and auxiliary techniques--most accompanied by illuminating step-by-step photographs--Peterson lays the foundation for lifelong baking success.This book teaches you how to build finished baked goods from their essential components, providing both maximum guidance for less experienced bakers and great creative freedom for more confident bakers. The Cakes chapter, for example, presents basic cake recipes (Moist Sponge Cake, Devil' s Food Cake) followed by frostings, fillings, and glazes (Professional-Style Buttercream, White Chocolate Ganache), allowing you to mix and match endlessly. Or, if you're looking for knockout assembled cakes, go to the end of the chapter and discover complete illustrated instructions for, say, a decadent Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Filling and Hazelnut Buttercream, or an elegant Peach Crème Mousseline Cake. Baking is packed with the basic, must-have recipes for every baker's repertoire (as well as more ambitious classics), such as:Pound Cake • Crème Anglaise • Chiffon Cake • Cheesecake • Classic Puff Pastry • Cherry Pie • Lemon Meringue Pie • Miniature Raw Fruit Tarts • Linzertorte • Cream Puffs • Chocolate Croissants • Cheese Danish • Basic Butter Cookies • Lemon Bars • Biscotti • Challah • Rye Bread • Focaccia • Blueberry Muffins • Scones • Flourless Chocolate Cake • Cheese Souffles • Miniature Cake Petits Fours • Apple Strudel • Napoleons • Rolled Fondant • Bûche de Noël • Éclairs • Mushroom JalousieCopious photographs inspire and help bakers visualize the crucial moments of hundreds of recipes and techniques, including:Troubleshooting Tarts and Pies • Baking "Blind" • Making Liquid Fondant • Coating a Cake with Hot Icing • Assembling a Layer Cake without Using a Cake Stand • Decorating a Cake with a Caramel Cage • Coloring Marzipan • Making a Rolled Cake • Decorating Cookies with Colored Sugar • Filling and Using a Pastry Bag • Kneading Wet Dough in a Food Processor • Scoring Dough • Shaping a Fougasse • Repairing Chocolate Mixtures that Have Seized • Cooking Sugar Syrup to the Soft Ball StageThorough, approachable, and authoritative, Baking shows why James Peterson is a trusted source for home cooks of every level. Work your way through this book, and you will gain the skills you'll need for impressive results every time.

    Sherri Brooks Vinton includes recipes that range from the contemporary and daring — Wasabi Beans and Salsa Verde — to the very best versions of tried-and-true favorites, including Classic Crock Pickles and Orange Marmalade.

    Using the revolutionary new alkaline diet, it’s packed with recipes, tips and tricks to help you transform your daily routine from hectic and hurried to harmonious and holistic.Organic gourmet vegetarian cook, Natasha Corrett, and leading nutritional therapist Vicki Edgson combine their expertise in this fully illustrated guide to eating a balanced, alkaline diet that keeps the body in mind. They clearly explain the principles and benefits of this kind of eating, identifying both alkalizing and acid-forming foods, and offering the modern cook a host of flavorsome, easy-to-prepare recipes recommended for different times of the day and different stages of life.The first section deals with the basics: the principles of healthy eating, the sources of and role played by vitamins, carbohydrates and protein, the identification of alkalizing and acid-forming foods and the ways in which an alkaline diet can nourish the body without placing the digestive system under strain. Learn how to boost your immune system, increase energy levels, maintain blood sugar levels and focus your mind through healthy eating.The second section features mouth-watering recipes, from the first smoothie of the morning, through delicious salads and mains to the last healthy snack of the day. Accompanied by beautiful photographs, each recipe illustrates just how easy it is to prepare delicious and nutritious food that will make you feel great.

    And he wants you to conquer your fear of flour and learn to love every step of cake baking—including, of course, the step in which you present your made-from-scratch masterpiece to bedazzled, hungry-eyed family and friends. (Not to mention the moment when you yourself get to sample a slice of that lovingly crafted creation.)For Brown, love and baking are inseparable. After all, he abandoned an unrewarding career in law to do the work—baking cakes!—that he finds truly emotionally satisfying. Every page of CakeLove communicates that satisfaction, as well as Brown’s can-do approach to the art of baking. As he asserts, baking cakes isn’t a cakewalk, but it’s not rocket science, either—and getting it right isn’t nearly as hard as you think.Pound cakes, butter cakes, sponge cakes, cupcakes. Glazes, frostings, fillings, meringues. Brown provides all the basics on ingredients, equipment, and techniques, as well as recipes for more than 50 cakes that range from the classic (Chocolate Butter Cake) to the adventurous (“Sassy,” a pound cake made with mango puree and cayenne pepper). The informative step-by-step shots make you want to run to the kitchen and start baking, and the scrumptious color photos of completed cakes look good enough to sink your teeth into.

    Fast emerging as one of the world's hottest culinary destinations, Ireland is a country of artisanal bakers, farmers, cheesemakers, and butteries, where farm-to-table dining has been practiced for centuries. Meticulously researched and reported, this sumptuous cookbook includes 250 recipes and more than 100 photographs of the pubs, the people, and the emerald Irish countryside taken by award-winning photographer Christopher Hirsheimer. Rich with stories of the food and people who make Ireland a wonderful place to eat, and laced with charming snippets of song, folklore, and poetry, The Country Cooking of Ireland ushers in a new understanding of Irish food.

    Jody Williams, owner of Buvette restaurant, shows the home cook how to create casual, polished meals without spending a lot of money or time. She has a certain aesthetic that is a combination of Italian and French bistro cooking in that she uses sophisticated taste combinations, but prepared in simple ways to make unforgettable dishes. A comfortable and interesting table will make your meals a pleasure and Williams offers suggestions for using varied plates (from your shelves or the flea market) and helps you think creatively about serving food, like scooping ice cream into a tea cup, or serving chocolate mousse in a silver tablespoon. There will be recipes like Ricotta Fritters, Carrot Spoon Bread, Shaved Brussels Sprouts with Pecorino and Walnuts, Potato Chips with Rosemary Salt, Scallops with Caper Brown Butter, Ratatouille, Roasted Heirloom Apples Stuffed with Pork Sausage, Chocolate on a Spoon, and her special Tarte Tatin. There will be sections on Aperitifs and Cocktails and Coffees and Teas. Also included will be 25 sidebars that offer useful tips on everything from building a bar to removing wine stains. With gorgeous photography and surprisingly simple recipes, this will be the book cooks will turn to again and again.

    A proper cuppa tea and rock cakes in Hagrid's hut. Cauldron cakes and pumpkin juice on the Hogwarts Express. With this cookbook, dining a la Hogwarts is as easy as Banoffi Pie! With more than 150 easy-to-make recipes, tips, and techniques, you can indulge in spellbindingly delicious meals drawn straight from the pages of your favorite Potter stories, such as:Treacle Tart--Harry's favorite dessert, Molly's Meat Pies--Mrs. Weasley's classic dish, Kreacher's French Onion Soup, Pumpkin Pasties--a staple on the Hogwarts Express cartWith a dash of magic and a drop of creativity, you'll conjure up the entries, desserts, snacks, and drinks you need to transform ordinary Muggle meals into magickal culinary masterpieces, sure make even Mrs. Weasley proud!

    No one should have to sacrifice time, money, or flavor to enjoy the astounding health advantages of going raw. Learn how to soak and sprout vegetables and nuts to increase the nutritional value, what types of kitchen tools are best for preparing raw food, and which foods to have on-hand for use in raw recipes. Recipes include:Broccoli Saad with RaisinsIndian Cauliflower MashBeet Burgers on Romaine BunsI Can’t Believe It’s Not Salmon PatePapaya CarpaccioStuffed PeppersAnd much more!From creative salads to spicy burritos to chocolate mousse, every recipe will broaden your raw-food horizons. Complete with recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, desserts, and side dishes, Raw Food is an innovative approach to a wholesome way of eating.

    And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends.Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed "bad boy" of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl—a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have "morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten."The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency.