ALL IN ONE POT

We’re are the beginning of 2011 and most of us have staggered away from the orgy of Christmas cooking that overtakes us during the holidays.  Most convenience-centered cooking flies right out of the window as we ambitiously prepare the time-consuming dishes we love.  In our modern age, once the carnage of the holidays is past, the need to get real sends us back to reality.  I’ve always been a big fan of quality short-cut or fast-cooking.  For me it started with The 60-Minute Gourmet cookbooks by Pierre Franey some thirty years ago, but the genre has been extended and polished. Jacques Pepin, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart and many others have been slicing away at the time it takes to put a meal on the table:  30-minutes, 20-minutes, 15-minutes.  But there are others that are looking to be very selective about what short-cuts they will take while still delivering convenience and good taste, Sara Moulton accomplished this in her recently published Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners.  Pam Anderson is the latest to capture my imagination, and her work deserves to be in every one's kitchen.  This review was originally written by my guest reviewer, Jennifer McCord and then I made one of the recipes from the book and decided that we both would weigh in on it.

Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages and White Beans

We recently looked through PERFECT ONE-DISH DINNERS: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers (Hougton Miffin Harcourt; $32.00) by Pam Anderson, food columnist for USA Weekend, and the author of a number of bestselling cookbooks. Anderson’s latest has numerous kinds of one-dish recipes in a number of categories, including Stews for All Seasons, Worldly Casseroles, Roasting Pan Complete, Big Summer Salads and Grilled Platters.  The author’s introduction explains how the idea was planted for this book. She was teaching a cooking class and an attendee raised her hand and said "I can make one dish just fine, but when I have to orchestrate the rest of the meal so it all comes out at just the right time, I get flustered." Anderson insists "that a memorable meal can be as simple as bringing out one beautifully complete dish at a time." She shows how to do this on a video that can be found when you search for the book on Amazon.com.  Here Anderson puts together a Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages and White Beans casserole in record-breaking time without breaking a sweat.  In a large roasting pan, she combines Italian sweet sausage links, cherry tomatoes, one chopped onion, sliced garlic cloves, extra-virgin olive oil, a few drops of balsamic vinegar, some dried thyme, bay leaves, salt and freshly ground pepper, which she roasts in the oven. Ten minutes before the dish comes out of the oven, she adds a few cans of white beans and the dish is complete.  You could sprinkle fresh bead crumbs toasted in some butter for a final touch, she suggests, but it’s an extra bit, and not part of the recipe.  Fast, flavorful food doesn’t get any easier than this.

The meal Jennifer and her husband, Murray, choose is called Tamale Pie. “It made me think about the first time I tasted a Tamale Pie,” relates Jennifer. “I was in junior high and my mother was trying out new casserole recipes. This casserole passed the test and we were very fond of the dish for years.  This was the kind of dish that could be taken to church suppers or get-togethers with family and friends such as Campfire Girl end-of-year suppers. Tamale Pie was one of the first dishes that I made for my husband after we were first married.” 

Tamale Pie

“Reading about Tamale Pie in PERFECT ONE-DISH DINNERS brought back such fond memories. It was easy to compile the ingredients and begin cooking. As we added the chili powder, cilantro, pinto beans, green chilies and salsa it looked and smelled so enticing.  We spread the corn meal mush over the top of the cast iron frying pan and sprinkled on the cheese and cilantro. The pan went into the oven that was set on broil.  We snuck peaks and then waited for it to be done.  The dish came out looking golden brown. We waited the recommended five minutes and then dished it up in bowls.  It was the perfect evening supper for a rainy night.  I gave some to a friend of mine who stopped by to take home. She has already called and asked for the recipe.  There is nothing better than a hot, flavorful meal on a Sunday evening before the next week begins.  We plan to make this again soon.”

PERFECT ONE-DISH DINNERS works wonderfully well for family dinners and for company. The six veal shanks called for in Osso Bucco with Dirty Polenta, can add big bucks to the cost of a meal, but Rioja Beef with Chickpeas, Peppers and Saffron or Coq au Vin Blanc with Spring Vegetables, are affordable, easy and deliver a flavorful punch when eating in or serving guests.  Each one-dish meal offers appetizer, salad and dessert options--all of them easy to prepare and comes with a wine recommendation.  This is a book that takes the stress out of producing a multi-course, multi-dish meals worthy of standing ovations.   

Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages and White Beans

Serves 8

If there’s time, sprinkle buttered bread crumbs over each plated portion for a nice touch. Heat a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Toss 2 cups fresh bread crumbs (made in the food processor from a good European-style loaf) with 2 tablespoons melted butter and a light sprinkling of salt. Add the crumbs to the skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Stored in the refrigerator and warmed on the stovetop or in the microwave, this dish means instant dinner later in the week.

2½ pounds sweet Italian sausage links

3 pints cherry tomatoes

1 medium-large onion, cut into 1½-inch chunks

4 large garlic cloves, sliced

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons dried thyme

3 bay leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 cans (about 16 ounces each) white beans, undrained

Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix sausages, tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, thyme, bay leaves, and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper in a large heavy roasting pan. Set pan in oven and roast until sausages are brown and tomatoes have reduced to a thick sauce, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven, stir in beans, and continue to cook until casserole has heated through, about 10 minutes longer. Serve.

Drink An earthy, full-flavored Languedoc or Grenache

Tamale Pie

Serves 6

You can use ground beef or even meat-loaf mix in place of the turkey. Onion lovers, sprinkle the casserole with ½ thinly sliced red onion along with the cheese and cilantro. You can make the tamale pie a day ahead, including topping it with the cornmeal mush. Place a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the pie to prevent a skin from forming. An hour or so before serving, adjust the oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the plastic wrap, top the pie with cheese, cover with heavy-duty foil, and bake until heated through, about 30 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle with the cilantro and the red onion, if you like, then follow the broiling and resting instructions in the recipe.

Any leftovers can be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days and reheated in the microwave.

1½ pounds ground turkey (94% lean)

Salt

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons chili powder, divided

1½ cans (about 16 ounces) pinto beans, undrained, ½ can mashed

1 can (4.5 ounces) chopped green chiles, undrained

2 cans (2.25 ounces each) sliced black olives, drained

1 jar (16 ounces) store-bought salsa (2 cups)

½ cup chopped fresh cilantro, divided

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup (8 ounces) grated sharp cheddar cheese

Adjust oven rack to middle position and turn on broiler. Heat a large (11- to 12-inch) deep skillet with an ovenproof handle over medium-high heat. Add ground turkey and cook, stirring frequently and seasoning lightly with salt, until it loses its raw color, a couple of minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons chili powder, then beans, chiles, olives, salsa, and ¼ cup cilantro and simmer to blend flavors, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring 3 cups water, cornmeal, remaining 2 teaspoons chili powder, and 1 teaspoon salt to a boil in a medium saucepan, whisking frequently, until mixture thickens to mush. Pour cornmeal mush over hot meat mixture, spreading with a spatula to completely cover. Sprinkle with cheese and remaining ¼ cup cilantro. Broil until cheese melts and mush gets a little crusty, about 5 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Drink: A dry rosé or beer

THE GREAT MARCELLA HAZAN

This is the second in a series of reviews of classic cookbooks that have become staples in my cookbook library.  COOK WITH JAMIE by Jamie Oliver was the first.  There will be more in the coming year. 

I will never forget first time I ever ate a plate of pasta with Genoese pesto.  I was visiting my landlord in his home in East Hampton, New York.  I rented his Brooklyn Heights apartment in 1975 while he was taking a sabbatical from teaching at Hunter High School in New York.  Like me, Jack McNeil loved opera and he was an outstanding cook.  During a visit that long-ago weekend, he served pasta with pesto  and it completely blew me sideways.  I thought it was one of the most intoxicating dishes I'd eaten to that point. Fragrant basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, butter and Parmesan cheese were combined in a sauce and poured over hot pasta and tossed.  It seemed like the most exotic thing I've ever tasted, but at the same time, the simplest, most elemental of dishes.  A few years later, I bought THE CLASSIC ITALIAN COOKBOOK (Knopf), Marcella Hazan's first cookbook, and found her recipe for Blender Pesto.  I spent what seemed like a fortune on a bunch of fresh basil, Parmesan cheese, and some pine nuts at Balducci's an upscale New York Italian grocer in Manhattan's Greenwich Village (sadly no longer around) and made a batch of pesto for a dinner party. Everyone loved it and  I thought I was the most sophisticated of hosts.  Ms. Hazan's recipe had butter, which added a touch of richness and combined both percorino and Parmesan cheese.  For me there's never been a recipe as delicious or as fresh-tasting as Marcella Hazan's.  I used to put up batches of freezer pesto sauce to enjoy in the winter months (when basil was impossible to find in the markets), where you added butter and cheese after you defrosted it.

Last summer when I planted basil in my new garden in Portland, I was rewarded with an enormous basil harvest.  I pulled THE CLASSIC ITALIAN COOKBOOK down from the shelves and made batches of pesto sauce, something I hadn't done in years.  It was just as wonderful as I'd remembered.  Over the years, I've sometimes I spooned this superb emulsion into risotto, or on a baked potato.  It was always delicious on freshly boiled homemade gnocchi.  I've tried other variations on pesto sauce with cilantro or parsley, and other ingredients but nothing matches the depth of flavor of classic Genoese pesto, and Hazan's recipe remains my go-to source when I'm craving it.


Marcella Hazan was the first widely read authority in this country on authentic Italian cuisine from all regions. Through force of personality, her celebrated cooking classes, and her contacts within the food world, including the influential New York Times, Hazan essentially taught us the differences between Italian food and Italo-American cusine (though it would be many years later when Lidia Bastianich wrote her masterful Lidia's Italian-American Table, which rightfully elevated this wonderfully lusty American hybrid cuisine). Hazan sourced the recipes by region in a scholarly, yet accessible way.  Her work introduced many young cooks to the pleasures of risotto, gnocchi, roast spring lamb with white wine, polenta, the many kinds of frittatas, the astounding variety of vegetable dishes Italians eat including, fried zucchini blossoms, artichokes, and fava beans, and so much more.  We learned about pancetta, dried mushrooms, Italian rice used for risotto, semolina and other Italian products.  She talks about olive oil without reference to extra virgin olive oil and there is no mention of balsamic vinegar, both of which would become widely available in the U.S. in the decade following THE CLASSICAL ITALIAN COOKBOOK's publication.


Another great recipe from this book was the pork loin braised in milk. The first time I read this recipe I was intrigued.  It made no sense in relation to anything I'd cooked up to that point. You brown a small boneless pork loin in butter and olive oil, and then you add nearly three cups of whole milk, salt and pepper and gently braised the pork on top the of the stove in a small, heavy Dutch oven with the lid ajar for a few hours.  When the meat is tender, you pull it out of its milk bath and keep it warm.  What you are left with in the pot are these beige milk curds that have the consistency of custard.  You spoon off most of the fat and add a few tablespoons of hot water to the pan and vigorously stir the sauce which breaks up the larger curds.  The sauce doesn't smooth out--it still looks a bit curdled.  No problem.  You thinly slice the meat and pour the sauce over the slices and scatter freshly chopped parsley over all, before you serve.  It's divine--the loin is fork tender, its sauce is creamy in texture but subtle tasting and quite substantial.   I've seen many variations of this recipe since but it is the simplicity of Hazan's creation that draws me back to this wonderful dish again and again.


A third recipe that I've made over and over again is a Meat Loaf Braised in White Wine with Dried Wild Mushrooms.  This elegant, compact meat loaf is nothing you've ever seen before.  Lean ground beef is combined with a classic panade of white bread and milk, with the addition of onion, salt and pepper, chopped pancetta or prosciutto, Parmesan cheese, garlic, egg, and bread crumbs and rolled into a large salami-shaped loaf and braised in a sauce of tomato paste, reconstituted wild mushrooms, and white wine. It's a spectacular and simple entree from Tuscany.  Every recipe in this superb book is set out with Hazan's combination of specificity of technique and her wonderful, no-nonsense personality (that sometimes borders on the brusque).


Hazan offers five different tomato sauces here.  Why five?  Because some are more appropriate with dried pasta, one is particularly fine for gnocchi, another is recommended for use when summer tomatoes are in season.  It is these distinctions which elevate her work so much, and help in our understanding of this very great cuisine.


I've cooked from Hazan's other fine cookbooks, including a second volume of Classic Italian recipes,  and four other volumes. I'm devoted to the Italian cookbooks of Lidia Bastianich and Michele Scicolone, and Mario Batali.  Yet it is THE CLASSIC ITALIAN COOKBOOK, and its companion, MORE CLASSIC ITALIAN COOKING, both published more than thirty years ago, that I return to over and over again.


In 1992, Knopf, Hazan's long-time publisher brought out ESSENTIALS OF CLASSIC ITALIAN COOKING, which brought together both volumes with updated and new material and that is the book you'll find most easily today.  I often saw copies of both originals at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, and I'm sure a local purveyor of old cookbooks will surely have them.  They are worth searching out.


Marcella Hazan is a culinary heroine to her many followers and is revered for introducing the joys of the Italian kitchen, much as Julia Child did with French cuisine.

Blender Pesto ready when I need it

BLENDER PESTO

Enough for a bout 6 servings of pasta

2 cups fresh basil leaves (see note below)

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons pine nuts

2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed with a heavy knife handle and peeled

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons freshly grated Roman pecorino cheese

3 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature

1. Put the basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic cloves, and salt in the blender and mix at high speed.  Stop from time to time and scrape the ingredients down toward the bottom of the blender cup with a rubber spatula.  

2.  When the ingredients are evenly blended, pour into a bowl and beat in the two grated cheeses by hand. (This is not much work, and it results in more interesting texture and better flavor than you get when you mix in the cheese in the blender.) When the cheese has been evenly incorporated into the ingredients, beat in the softened butter.  

3. Before spooning the pesto over the pasta, add to it a tablespoon or so of the hot water in which the pasta has boiled.  

NOTE: The quantity of basil in most recipes in given in terms of whole leaves. American basil, however, varies greatly in leaf sizes. There are small, medium, and very large leaves, and they all pack differently in the measuring cup. For the sake of accurate measurement, I suggest that you tear all but the tiniest leaves into two or more small pieces.  Be gentle, so as not to crush the basil. This would discolor it and waste the first, fresh droplets of juice.

In re-reading Hazan's original recipe, I couldn't find information about freezing, but I do recall somewhere that butter and cheese are added after defrosting the pesto, though I cannot remember why this was so.  In any event, I usually freeze four batches to enjoy in the winter months.  

AMANDA HESSER’S NEW COOKBOOK TRULY IS ESSENTIAL

I've been searching for a way to convey my profound enthusiasm for THE ESSENTIAL NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK (W.W. Norton; $40.00; ISBN: 978-0-393-06103-1), but the book's heft, scope and sheer readability have until recently, given me writer's bloc. Amanda Hesser, a Times food editor and columnist, spent six years pouring through 150 years of recipes in the paper's archives, testing her way through 1,400 recipes before settling on the final selection of 1,000 recipes. This could have been a dull-dog of curatorial scholarship. Instead, Ms. Hesser has given us one of the best cookbooks of 2010, an entertaining, valuable and irreplaceable repository for some of the best recipes from the likes of James Beard, Maida Heatter, Craig Claiborne, Nigella Lawson, Eric Ripert, Lidia Bastianich, Rose Levy Bernabaum, Julia Child, Mark Bittman, Lindsey Shere, Marcella Hazan, David Chang, Thomas Keller, Dorie Greenspan, Tom Colicchio, Daniel Boulud, and Jamie Oliver.  And this is just for starters.  As the premier food section in the country, The New York Times food department has sought out and nurtured the work of so many significant and outstanding culinary talents. This new cookbook celebrates the best in food and can now be enjoyed over and over again by home cooks everywhere.

For nearly four decades, I was a witness to this culinary excellence. My kitchen overflowed with recipes clipped from the Times' food pages.  The paper’s food section influenced my cooking, my love of cookbooks, as well as my thoughts about food and entertaining. My refrigerator still sports a thick sheaf of Times recipes. I remember the impact of Mark Bittman's feature on Jim Lahey's famous No-Knead Bread, which Hesser writes, "is easily the most famous recipe ever to run in the Times.  Le Cirque's Spaghetti Primavera, spawned a trend (mostly bad), which was widely imitated in restaurants all over the country in the 1970s. There were recipes that readers loved, such as Teddie's Apple Cake or David Eyre's Pancake.  The paper was famous for picking culinary talent and printing their latest recipes. Hesser got readers involved by asking them for their favorite recipes from the paper.  The response was enormous and Hesser got busy testing and retesting recipes for the book.

I often remark about headers on recipes.  I think they set the tone for a recipe, offer insight and certainly are a reflection of the writer's personality.  Hesser's voice shines in THE ESSENTIAL NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK.  She is at turns funny, puckish, tongue-in-cheek, providing plenty of good, sensible advice.  "I'm not going to lie--this pizza is a project," she writes about Franny's Clam Pizza.  "And by the time it's done, it's like childbirth: you won't regret the effort."  Or "I included this cheese ball for its kitsch value," she justifies about The Spice Boys' Cheese Ball, which "looks like a tropical sea creature with a fuchsia skin and glowing greens scales." Of Crisp Potato Crowns she bluntly states, "The original recipe came with a forgettable salad, so I've forgotten it." Not however, before rescuing the part she liked best.  These are just a few examples.  Generously cheerful, Hesser is rarely out of sorts, so I was surprised and more than a bit impressed when she lets it rip in a recipe for Caramelized Bacon "The craft of recipe writing isn't a hot topic, even in food circles...That said, the current trend toward pared-down, robotic instructions is abominable.  Recipes should be more like a letter from your mother--somewhere between an instruction manual and a personal note. A good recipe will guide you with specifics and help you understand what the results should be.  Which is why I like this recipe by Patricia Marx, a novelist, so much." Through nearly 900 pages, Hesser kept this reader rapt and attentive.  

The first recipe I made was out of necessity.  Portland's awful summer produced a bumper crop of green tomatoes in my garden and by this book's publication date, I had to do something with them. The recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes is a marvel of simplicity. Dusted lightly with flour with only sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, they had the taste of "good jammy lemons, tart but not painfully so."  They were delicious.  I turned to the frying pan yet again when I prepared Latkes for Hanukkah.  These tasty, crunchy and almost pretty potato pancakes gave me everything I want in this traditional holiday treat.  She relates that Mimi Sheraton in her original recipe said applesauce was fine, but she was rather grumpy over the addition of sour cream, a habit I couldn't abandon, even for the fearsome Ms. Sheraton. Of course there are many recipes far more complex (or not) than the two I've sampled thus far. 

There are however, many more on my list, beginning with Chicken Canzanese, a recipe from Ed Giobbi (a talented and highly regarded amateur cook who often contributed recipes to the food pages of  the Times during Craig Claiborne's era).  I slobbered over this recipe, which is one of those magical one-pot meals where everything goes in at once, and is pretty much done in 30-minutes. Its original source led Hesser on an amusing, unexpected, and ultimately fruitless search for its creator.  Her investigation inspired her to sum it up:  "One thing is clear, though:  a good recipe has a thousand fathers, but a bad one is an orphan." She includes two versions of the classic Boeuf Bourguignon, both intriguing. Calamari Ripieni looks like a swell version of stuffed squid and a good candidate for Christmas Eve.  And how lovely to find a Calzone (or Pizza) Dough recipe that makes a manageable portion (almost every recipe I've read yields far more than I want at once).  And if I get a good bill of health from my next visit to the doctor, I'm definitely throwing caution to the wind and make The Most Voluptuous Cauliflower ("Any recipe that contains butter, cream, Gruyere, mascarpone, and Parmesan had better be voluptuous!").  I've been making Monte's Ham for years.  It feeds a small army of guests, who are always grateful you prepared it for them.  Maida's Blueberry Crumb Cake is a favored recipe from this beloved dessert icon, both are worth returning to over and over again.  The book is stuffed with recipes that have become classics. 

Ms. Hesser delivers plenty of reasons to consider this book essential, including an index in each chapter's beginning listing recipes for that category, a section time-line offering fascinating historical information about each category (i.e., for the Beef, Veal, Lamb and Pork chapter she writes that in 2002, “Michael Pollan buys a steer. Things don’t end well for the steer or us.”), as well as plenty of cooking notes with excellent tips and ideas as well as serving suggestions from accompanying dishes and desserts to beverages. This hefty cookbook is well illustrated with vintage black and white photos from the Times' food pages of the past. 

Who would have thought a cookbook from the Gray Lady weighing in at just under five pounds would be charming?  Yet that is exactly what Amanda Hesser has accomplished here. The book currently is one of the bestselling cookbooks of this holiday season and has been selected by most food writers as one of the best cookbook of the year.  This may be the most important cookbook to be published under the the Times imprimatur since Craig Claiborne's classic work. For my money, THE ESSENTIAL NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK attains instant classic status. Big snaps to Ms. Hesser and the folks who helped her deliver this wonderful cookbook to us.

Full disclosure:  I previewed this book without having seen a word of it last summer.  I got it all wrong.  It wasn’t a reworking of  Craig Claiborne’s classic cookbook of 1961, or any other number of mistakes I wrote, prompting Amanda Hesser to write me the gentlest of correction letters.  Red-faced, I fixed the glaring errors.

A JAMIE OLIVER MASTERWORK: Start of a New Series

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of reviews of cookbooks by authors I have long admired.  I have favorite cookbook authors well represented in my extensive library, and it's not unusual to see multiple works by Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Lee Bailey, Patricia Wells, Lidia Bastianich, Deborah Madison, Mario Batali, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Martha Stewart, Maida Heatter, Jacques Pepin, Barbara Kafka, Michele Scicolone, Diane Rossen Worthington, Susan Wyler, Jamie Oliver, and many others.  While I love all their books, each has one book that is very special to me.  I'm kicking off this series with COOK WITH JAMIE:  My Guide to Making You A Better Cook.  

Last night I made chicken with dumplings.  And not just any old chicken and dumplings.  This recipe was a loose adaptation of a version that I found in Jamie Oliver's superb COOK WITH JAMIE: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook (Hyperion)--a book that I consider his very best (it belongs in any serious collection of cookbooks just for the vegetable recipes alone). Jamie's original creation is called rather charmingly, Tender-as-You-Like Rabbit Stew with the Best Dumplings Ever.  Let's not get into the "Thumper" issue of rabbit.  I've tried to get friends to eat it over the years and have failed miserably.  I ate it as a kid (my mother's superb fried rabbit with mashed potatoes and milk gravy is still a vivid childhood memory) and loved it, Disney animation be damned. The recipe also calls for "a bunch of fresh tarragon," and while I happily follow Jamie recipes, tarragon for me is one of those herbs that needs restraint.  But what made me drool over the recipe was the photo of the dumplings.  They were brown and they were brown because they were baked in the oven without a lid on the pot like classic  steamed dumplings on top of the stove.  I had some chicken thighs in my freezer just begging to be used instead of the rabbit.  I figured I could cut the recipe (which serves 6-8) in half.  Here might be a perfect Sunday supper on a blustery Pacific-Northwest evening.

The recipe calls for the dumplings to be made first and when formed into balls, placed on a cookie sheet and refrigerated until you need them. The dumplings are a simple combination of self-rising flour, butter, salt and pepper, with some milk to bind them into a dough, which is then formed into a rope and cut into large pieces and shaped into round dumplings.  Instead of the tarragon, I used finely chopped Italian parsley and about five green scallions, also finely chopped. You add a small dusting of freshly grated nutmeg over the tops of the dumplings before chilling them.

I proceeded with the rest of the recipe.  Four large chicken thighs were dredged in flour and then browned in a combination of butter and olive oil in a four-quart cast iron enamelware Dutch oven.  Next I finely chopped three strips of bacon and browned that while moving the thighs around the pot until crisp.  I spooned off much of the fat and dropped in a little more than a quarter pound of quartered cremini mushrooms, to which I added a sprig of fresh rosemary, salt and freshly ground pepper, and "a large handful of baby onions," and a tablespoon of flour.  A quick stir and then the recipe required 12-oz of dark beer.  I had some and along with 3/4 of a pint of recently made turkey stock, and with the addition of the dumplings spaced evenly on top of the chicken and vegetables, the recipe was complete.  You place the heavy pot, sans lid, into a 375-degree oven for 45 minutes.

I faced a bubbling, aromatic stew with plumped and browned dumplings on top.  Comfort food in excelsis.  The thing about these dumplings is they are crunchy on the outside, and indescribably tender inside.  This is the kind of unfussy, and imaginatively flavorful food for which Jamie Oliver is famous.  Other favorite recipes in the book include Creamy Butternut Squash (a sublime sort of steamed-baked casserole of sliced butternut squash, with cream, white wine and Parmesan cheese, with crumbled red chilies, fresh thyme, crushed coriander seeds), and a magnificent Whole Baked Cauliflower with Tomato and Olive Sauce.  By far the creative recipe I've ever encountered for cauliflower, I practically OD'd on this delicious creation when I first read this book.

Throughout his by now quite lengthy career, Jamie Oliver has grown from London Lad to one of the most admirable cookbook authors, chef and culinary citizen of the world. He's given young and disadvantaged kids an opportunity to become restaurant professionals in his wildly popular 15 Restaurants, and last year introduced his successful school lunches program to the United States, via his short TV series on raising the nutritional consciousness of parents and school-aged children.  I have many of his cookbooks in my collection, but COOK WITH JAMIE seems to me to be his culinary masterwork.  

STOVETOPREADINGS' BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR

In cookbooks this was the year of the TOME.  Publishers issued huge, thick and densely photographed and illustrated books including The Essential New York Times Cookbook, The Sunset Cookbook, Bon Appétit Desserts, Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade: The Complete Cookbook, a new edition of Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, Williams-Sonoma Cooking at Home; Molly O’Neill’s One Big Table, and Pushpesh Pant's wildly exotic India Cookbook.  Even Jane Hornsby’s What to Cook & How to Cook It feels big because while it contains only 100 recipes, each recipe has photos of various stages of a recipe’s progression, making for a larger book.  Plus Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson delivered two “large” cookbooks this season. Rachel Saunders’ The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook feels big, and so does Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. Fortunately most of them added substantially to our cooking pleasure. 

When selecting my list of top cookbooks of the year, I noticed an interesting development: none of my choices involves either a restaurant celebrity chef (a category of cookbook that I rarely find useful to home cooks), or a current TV personality. While most of the writers here are well-known, few are household names. What they tend to share in common is the ability to produce outstanding and reliable cookbooks year-in and year-out, and most of them are women. This is worth crowing about. 

I’ve been hearing dire predictions that cookbooks are a dying genre.  Not so if one were to count the number that made it to my door this year, and we’re still in the midst of a difficult economy.  It was nearly impossible to whittle down so many cookbooks (I review on average four cookbooks a month, or about 50 books per year). I’ve selected a few more worthy titles—in other words, my top ten list blew up a little.  

In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark (Hyperion)

Reading Melissa Clark makes me smile.  Cooking any recipe by Melissa Clark makes me swoon.  Her food is so delicious, so personal and so good.  There’s nothing complicated here—nor is it dumbed-down, quick-cook short cuts (and those that are quick delight us in their brevity).  This is food you can get on the table every day and creative enough to lay out on a tablecloth with candles and cloth napkins and a good bottle of wine for company. Clark creates great home cooking, and finds inspiration everywhere.  Whether she’s creating recipes by the seasons, or discovering a new ingredient, finding something special at her local farmer’s market, or recalling a culinary memory from childhood, Melissa Clark is welcoming to good food ideas wherever she finds them.  A Good Appetite is a column that I read without fail every Wednesday in The New York Times.  I’ve already raved about My Mother’s Garlic and Thyme-Roasted Chicken Parts with Mustard Croutons.  But you have to make Spaghetti with Spicy Tomato, Clams, and Bacon, Pesto Scrambled Eggs with Fresh Ricotta, and Karen’s Chorizo Corn Dog Bites—you really have to. Here’s a book that is guaranteed to be  splattered with overuse and read over and over again for her warmth, humor, generosity, and scrumptious food.

Pig by James Villas (Wiley)

If you are going to publish a big survey about my favorite meat, then commit to finding the right guy to do the job.  James Villas, who spent a long period of his life as food and wine editor for Town & Country magazine) is just the writer for this delightful exploration. Despite his many years in New York, this North Carolina native has never abandoned his southern roots and gives us lots of a tasty recipes for all parts of the pig plus all the hoglore you’ll ever need to know. I loved his rant about breakfast sausage, which southerners take far more seriously than the rest of us Yankees.  He abhors the bland stuff in supermarkets above the Mason-Dixon line (and of course he's right).  This is a book that will remind us that southerners use all parts of the pig, much like the French and Italians.  I was over the moon about Carolina Pork and Sweet Potato Pie with Biscuit Batter Crust, Ham Croquettes with Parsley Sauce, and Bacon Cheddar Biscuits. Pork is the most flavorful of all meat, and whether you’re looking for “cue”, ham, sausage, roasts, chops, casseroles (or those items that make today’s bland supermarket shoppers squirm:  Deviled Pig’s Feet, Hog’s Head Stew, Mississippi Crusted Pigs’ Ears, etc.), and so much more, James Villas delivers tasty recipes and strong opinions in equal measure.

The Book of Tapas by Simone & Ines Ortega (Phaidon)

One of the most pleasurable aspects of visiting Spain is to go to a local bar or pub, order a glass of wine or beer or sherry, and indulge in the little plates of food that are available to accompany the aperitif.  These creative little snacks will keep you satisfied until dinner.  It’s a wonderful social ritual, but all too often tapas bars in the U.S. have blown the concept up.  Instead of a little bite of this or that, we get groaning plates of abundance that all but overwhelm the appetite.  The Book of Tapas is steeped in authenticity—it’s creator is Simone Ortega, author of the much admired 1080 recipes, Spain’s version of Joy of Cooking (an co-written with her daughter Inés Ortega). I often go crazy about the production of cookbooks.  But The Book of Tapas is truly one of the most gorgeous books you’ll ever hold in your hands.  It’s distinctive yellow paper with red type for the headnotes and black type for the recipes is eye-catching. There are five generous color photo inserts of hunger-inducing tapas, lavish even by today's standards for a cookbook. 

And the food?  Ranging from easy to a little more complicated, wouldn’t it be nice to eat your throughout the categories (but not in one seating!) beginning with vegetables.  How about Mushroom and Olive Salad or Prunes with Roquefort, Raisins and Pine Nuts?  For eggs and cheese there’s a classic Spanish Tortilla, or Cheese Fritters with Tomato Sauce. For fish and seafood there is Saffron Rice with Clams or Salt Cod and Potato Croquettes. Bite-sized Melon Balls with Ham, show off the country’s justly prized Serrano ham, and Chicken and Bell Pepper Empanadas is an excellent example of Spain’s pocket-sized snack in a crust.  The book showcases traditional tapas, but the authors also include updated tapas recipes from celebrated international chefs.  A striking-looking and useful cookbook.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook by Amanda Hesser (Norton)

In a year of big, ungainly cookbooks, this might have ended up as just another massive doorstop corporate cookbook.  The great recipes she has culled from the Times’ archives over the past 150 years instead, are framed by Hesser’s witty, engaging (and sometimes bracingly peckish) headnotes.  Hesser is full of good advice and history in this big survey. She has tested every one of the more than 1,000 recipes often providing tips and ideas that improve on the originals.  While respectful of the great food icons, she doesn’t stick them on a pedestal. Intriguingly Hesser selects a recipe for Maida Heatter’s Cuban Black Beans and Rice while passing over her famous East 62^nd Street Lemon Cake (opting for another cake she thinks is even more lemony and moist).  As someone who religiously cooked from the NYTimes food pages for nearly four decades, I can assure you that all the famous recipes are here from  Le Cirque’s iconic Spaghetti Primavera and James Beard’s Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, to Monte’s Ham and the wildly absurd Bacon Explosion (a frat-house inspired recipe of sausage stuffed in a bacon lattice wrap and basted in barbecue sauce) and No-Knead Bread (“easily the most famous recipe ever to run in the Times.”). But there are plenty of little known recipes published in the paper over the years. While reading the book, I ran across a recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes, and was struck by Hesser’s description:  “The strange thing about fried green tomatoes is that if you close your eyes, you might think you were eating fried lemons—good jammy lemons, tart but not painfully so.”  I tried them that night and the simplicity of preparation (a light dusting of flour, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and a quick frying in canola oil, produced lovely, tart, jammy, green tomato slices). The range from simple to fancy is vast and the vintage photographs are a nice touch. This is a cookbook I’ll dip into regularly and use often. When you consider that not only did Amanda Hesser take on this heroic assignment and pulled it off magnificently, she did it with her food partner, Merrill Stubbs, while they launched their popular Food52 website.  Impressive indeed. 

Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Yes, I worked on the publicity for this book (I actually previewed it on my blog before the publisher hired me), but the avalanche of press this superb collection received couldn’t have been achieved unless the writer didn’t already have a mountain of good will from her readers and the food press.  The best cookbook of the year, and I got to work on it.  It doesn’t get better than that. For details do a Google search, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about that avalanche. 

Insalata by Heidi Insalata Krahling (self published)

This stunningly beautiful, self-published cookbook comes from a chef in Marin County whose popular Insalata restaurant in San Anselmo, California has been packing them in for more than thirteen years.  Krahling’s excellent Mediterranean recipes, are set off by Laura Parker’s magical color illustrations of fruits and vegetables. I made her recipe for Preserved Lemons and more importantly Fattoush Salad, a Middle Eastern bread salad with black olives, red onion, cherry tomatoes, cumber slices, feta cheese, romaine lettuce, cilantro and mint. What a combination of superb flavors. I served it to a friend, and we consumed a large salad for four very easily. The Cataplana with its mix of clams, chorizo sausage and tomatoes is fabulous. Krahling told me she self-published in order to produce the book she had in her head.  What a fine imagination she has on the plate and off.  This book amply demonstrates that vision isn’t always with the big publishers. And my thanks to Elizabeth at Ste. Maine, a gorgeous shop in Portland that sells amongst other things really nice cookbooks, for bringing this lovely book to my attention. 

Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners (Simon & Schuster)

If there is a less pretentious, more accessible, and creative cookbook that gets great food on the table in good time with the least amount of fuss, I haven’t seen it this year.  Sara puts convenience foods and salad bars, and takeout to shame, where it belongs. Just try the Creamy Garlic Dressing Two Ways: Rich and Slim.  Whether you use yogurt or heavy cream, you’ll be pouring this wonderful emulsion with glee over everything, salad greens, asparagus, green beans, cold meats or fish.  She loves Kimchi, the Korean cabbage pickle full of garlic, and uses it in at least four recipes (including a breakfast dish).  I’ve already eaten three of the sandwiches (a substantial and creative chapter), including “Fried” Catfish BLTs, which really elevates that classic.  There’s an attractive assortment of whole grain entrees, and the vegetarian chapter is really creative (the Rustic Potato and Greens Pie is a delicious example).  But the reason this book has stuck in my head is the Butterscotch Pudding Cake—easy, few ingredients, and really wonderful.  For the moment, Sara doesn’t have her own TV show, but if anyone can teach America to cook at home, it is Sara and this new book belongs in every family kitchen.

The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

I was skeptical.  The slow cooker is not my favorite kitchen appliance.  But I’ve cooked my way through at least six of her other fine books on Italian food, so Michele has instant credibility with me.  That credibility was put to the test with Beef in Barolo, a rich braise of boneless beef chuck with Barolo wine, tomatoes, carrots, celery, onions and pancetta.  I served it with gnocchi as a first course. The kitchen locusts descended and not a scrap of food remained on the platter. So now I’m a semi-believer.  Certainly the slow-cooker lends itself easily to adapting Italian food, such as soups, stews, and pasta sauces, all of which Scicolone delivers with low-key expertise. We all need first rate convenience cookbooks such as this in our collections. 

The Gourmet Cookie Book: The Single Best Recipe from Each Year 1941-2009 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

In music there are collections of Elvis’s #1 hits, the Beatles #1 hits, and Michael Jackson’s #1 hits. How about a cookbook of #1 cookie recipes? The fabled and now sadly shuttered magazine offers more than 60 years of sensational cookies, one for every year the magazine was published. I’ve baked many of these cookies over the years and its wonderful to have this collection in one convenient volume.   

The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders (Andrews McMeel)

Another one of the most beautiful cookbooks of the year is from the San Francisco-based purveyor of artisanal jams.  Rachel Saunders has assembled a stunning collection of fruit jams and marmalades that updates this popular and homey method of preservation in a very sophisticated way. While there are fine recipes for simple orange marmalade, plum, strawberry and other preserves, Saunders has concocted outstanding combinations that just beg for a piece of toast. Virtually pectin free recipes emphasizes the ripeness of the fruit with their jewel-like colors  and sheer spreadability.  Showtime Plum Jam with Rhubarb and Sour Cherries, Black Fig and Tempranillo Grape Jam, and Citron Shred are just three intriguing possibilities.  This is a serious book for jam-makers wanting to expand their repertoires and understand the techniques of the jam-maker’s art. And the delightfully vintage look of the book is very special.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People who Cook by Anthony Bourdain (Ecco)

Not a cookbook, but a rangy, often bracing, not always respectful and always intriguing look at today’s food scene.  Bourdain deflates a lot of big food egos out there and not a moment too soon.  I love the fact that he is worried about being a sellout.  He knows his life became something else entirely with the publication of Kitchen Confidential. And he’s used his success to create really interesting TV programming that you won’t see on the Food Network, which often deserves the kick in the ass he gives it.  Bourdain cares and has the writer’s chops to deliver one helluva an entertaining rant. Because he loves food, writes so imaginatively about it and takes no prisoners, Bourdain easily made this list. No other book I read this year was as much fun to read as Medium Raw.

A Newly Discovered Classic

Arabesque by Claudia Roden (Knopf)

I don’t know how I the world my radar managed to ignore the work of Claudia Roden, a London-based specialist in Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern cooking. I discovered Arabesque (published in 2005) on a friend’s coffee table and became immediately smitten.  The jacket of the book is Mediterranean blue with gold and features a pretty dish of raw ingredients such as eggplant artichokes, cinnamon, pine nuts, saffron and peppercorns—pretty but not very revealing.  Inside however, Roden conjures up the intoxicating flavors of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, giving them an urgency and relevance to American cooks, they’ve rarely received in the past.  And the food is as flavorful as it is gorgeous to look at.  In the chapter on Moroccan food, Skate with Preserved Lemon and Green Olives, is a perfect example.  The skate-wing fillets (a favorite fish in my house) with their distinctive corduroy-like ridges, are seared first with the addition of chopped preserved lemon, green olives and parsley. The dish is so easy to put together, utterly delicious and very handsome on the plate.  The tagines with their combinations of lamb and other meats, fruit, nuts and aromatics are great entrees for a dinner party.  Peppery Bulgar Salad in Baby Romaine Lettuce, Zucchini Fritters, and Chicken Pilaf in a Pie are three fine examples of dishes from Turkey.  Lebanese cuisine, may be my favorite of the three.  The sweet/sour combination found in Eggplant Slices with Pomegranate, Yogurt and Tahini make for a distinctive starter, and Grilled Poussins with Sumac just hits all my favorite flavor combinations.  So does Spinach and Beans with Caramelized Onions.  Food this good deserves further investigation, and I’ll be investigating more of Ms. Roden's cookbooks. 

OOPS--I CAN'T LIMIT MYSELF TO ONLY A FEW GOOD COOKBOOKS! 

I told you it was hard to limit myself to only a few favorites this year.  So here a small and equally select group of cookbooks ALSO worth considering for the gift-giving season.


INDIA COOKBOOK by Pushpesh Pant (Phaidon):  An exhaustive, handsome survey of Indian cooking with 1000 recipes from India's renowned culinary expert.


FALLING OFF THE BONE by Jean Anderson (Wiley):  The award-winning author of many cookbooks (and a cookbook writer I've long admired), turns her attention to those tougher cuts of meat that when cooked correctly, yield tender results, savory results. A timely book to savor in this recessionary era. 


MY CALABRIA: Rustic Family CooKing from Italy's Undiscovered South by Rosetta Costantino with Janet Fletcher (Norton):  The first important cookbook to explore this little known culinary region.  Costantino was born in Calabria and continues the family tradition of teaching, food preservation and gardening in Oakland, California where she also teaches and writes a popular website (www.cookingwithrosetta.com).


HIGH FLAVOR LOW LABOR by J.M. Hirsch (Ballantine Books): The food editor of the Associated Press is also a busy father who by necessity has become a master of flavorful kitchen shortcuts. There are 150 fine recipes here, all worth your attention.


BAKED EXPLORATIONS: Classic American Desserts Reinvented by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito (Stewart Tabori & Chang). The popular owners of Baked in Brooklyn, New York, offer heavenly fresh new takes on the baked goods we love to eat. Try Nutella Scones or Caramel Apple Cake. 


SEASONAL FRUIT DESSERTS: From Orchard, Farm, and Market by Deoborah Madison (Broadway):  Deborah Madison is a master recipe writer and turns her affection for these rustic and refined sweets into sweet inspiration.


GIFTS COOKS LOVE: Recipes for Giving by Diane Morgan (Sur La Table/Andrews McMeel):  Into this awful economy steps the gifted Portland-based food writer with great gift ideas from your kitchen just when we need it most.


READY FOR DESSERT: My Best Recipes by David Lebovitz (10 Speed Press):  The Paris-based expat baking master and blogger delivers a new collection of his most sinful creations.


AS ALWAYS, JULIA: The Letters of Julia Child & Avis DeVoto (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt):  A chance letter launches a critical friendship between an unknown Julia Child, co-writing her magnum opus (Mastering the Art of French Cooking), and Agnes De Voto, who would not only recognized the quality of the work itself, but also acted as a broker in its long and tortured route to publishing glory. The letters are an intimate window into the minds of two fascinating American women who played an important part in America's modern food revolution.