Posted on Thu, Dec. 13, 2007
A philosophic (or phobic) friend might enjoy
My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes by Melanie Dunea (Bloomsbury), which gives a rare glimpse of the insider game chefs play, with their favored recipes.
The global food market and increasingly universal tastes and ingredients have brought more books to make those foods accessible and easier for home cooks to prepare.
Take easy steps toward an international kitchen with
Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day by Padma Lakshmi, host of Bravo's
Top Chef, who brings the flavors and memories of India and her world travels to dishes as basic as southern fried chicken.
Consider, too,
Where Flavor Was Born by Andreas Viestad (Chronicle), in which the Norwegian host/chef of PBS-TV's
New Scandinavian Cooking traces foods along the Indian Ocean spice route.
Modern Indian Cooking by Hari Nayak and Vikas Khanna (Silverback) re-creates classic dishes using the flavors of India with fresh ingredients and simpler techniques.
Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking: Simple, Elegant Recipes for Contemporary Tastes by Harumi Kurihara (Home Books) expands our limited sushi-tempura-teriyaki view of Japanese foods. With book sales topping 15 million, TV spots, and her own brands, the author is, dare we say, Japan's Rachael Ray.
For those favoring speed-cooking, short prep times are the fogus of Nigella Lawson's
Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast (Hyperion), although some dishes call for unattended baking.
Anyone with a sweet tooth will appreciate
Pure Dessert: True Flavors, Inspiring Ingredients and Simple Recipes (Artisan) in which Alice Medrich limits her signature chocolate creations in favor of sweets such as sesame brittle ice cream,
fleur de sel caramels, and lemon tuiles.
Still, one cannot have too much chocolate
.
Enlightened Chocolate by Camilla V. Saulsbury (Cumberland House) shows both the sweet and savory sides of dark chocolate and cocoa powder, going beyond mole to recipes like cocoa-laced chai tea and cocoa vinaigrette.
Vodka-marinated chilies dipped in chocolate, anyone?
If eating, not cooking, is your passion,
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press) is a must-read and potential stocking-stuffer that challenges us to focus on real foods and avoid the products of food science and nutrition policy that he claims have only made Americans sicker and fatter over the last 30 years.
A sampling of the recipes
To give a sampling of tastes from the books on our gift list, we've selected some easy yet representative dishes in a range of styles.
Among Pierre Gagnaire's food memories in
Reinventing French Cuisine is the potato cooking tip he gleaned in 1971 from a former Maxim's staffer with whom he shared military service:
Pommes Maxim's (Deluxe Potato Chips)
Peel firm-fleshed potatoes, cut them into 11/4- to 11/2-inch diameter cylinders, and dry with a clean kitchen towel.
Do not wash them in water, which will leach away some of their starch. Slice the cylinders in fine rounds 1/16-inch thick using a mandoline.
Mix the rounds with warm clarified butter, lay them on a nonstick baking sheet, sprinkle with salt, and bake in a preheated 400-degree oven until golden and crisp.
And another potato dish, one of the first recipes Gagnaire had to master as an apprentice in 1965, was this easy yet elegant dish from Chez Paul Bocuse:
Potato Gratin
Rub the inside of a gratin dish with a peeled garlic clove and coat with fresh butter. Layer potatoes, cut in thin slices, in the dish, adding salt and pepper to taste. Cover with heavy cream and bake in a heated 350-degree oven until the potatoes are golden and all the cream has been absorbed.
Flourish
today's 
