Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining, Hors d'Oeuvres and Appetizers (Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining, 1) - Hardcover

Vakhrenova, Elena

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0972242201 ISBN 13: 9780972242202

Publisher: Cruising Cuisine, 2003

Synopsis

Cruising Cuisine for Home Entertaining Volume I, may be the first cookbook that combines exciting recipes for home entertaining with an attractive recipe for cruise discounts.

Written by Elena Vakhrenova, a former cruise line manager with experience in food and beverage, the book features hors d’oeuvres and appetizers selected for their interesting presentation and easy preparation. Elena has added personal stories and impressions to help the reader experience how the recipe was first discovered and what makes it special.

The hard-bound, full color 136-page book features more than 50 recipes with final photographs of the dishes organized into chapters similar to how cruise lines are categorized by passengers and industry insiders. Moving from contemporary cruise lines to premium and luxury lines, the book is filled with garnishing and serving suggestions, cooking tips, and preparation times. It also features an extensive cross-referenced index and a list of mail order sources.

Designed to appeal to a wide audience of people who cruise, cook and entertain at home as well as those who entertain and think about cruising "someday", the book brings everyone one-step closer to their next – or first – cruise by including coupons worth hundreds of dollars for discounts, upgrades and shipboard spending credits on Carnival Cruise Lines, Star Clippers and Cunard Line. At a retail price of $29.95, the coupons alone are worth 10 times the price of the book!

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Elena Vakhrenova is a freelance cook and food writer who began her cooking career on board a cruise ship. With eight years experience working with several international cruise lines in food, beverage and hotel management positions, she developed a personal knowledge of both the destinations and the cuisine that attracts visitors from many walks of life.

It is this ‘recipe’ for combining destinations with a cuisine that is at the heart of fabulous at-home entertaining. And it is hors d’oeuvres and appetizers that begin any great evening, whether on board cruise ship or at home. As Elena takes the reader through contemporary, premium and luxury standards of cruising, she seamlessly relates each level to help you find the right recipe and mood to make any party a special occasion.

You’ll quickly relate to a dining style based on cruise and travel experience as you follow the stories that make the recipes even more enjoyable. Soon, you will learn to bring those special touches to the next meal that you share with the people that you love. Unique presentations, accessible ingredients and easy preparation does it all. Your guests will think they are cruising with you at the helm!

About the Author:

Raised on the Black Sea in Odessa, Elena led a life that revolved around the experiences of cruise ships and cooking.

Elena’s father, a cruise ship chef, used to take his young family on several "working" trips each year. Hardly tall enough to see the ovens, Elena learned how to cook Russian blini at her father’s side at an age when most young girls learn how to dress their dolls. As she grew, she collected numerous experiences aboard her father’s ships, several hotels and, eventually, as a chef at his five-star restaurant in her native Odessa, Ukraine.

With a desire to further develop her culinary skills, she boarded her first ship at age 22. Over the next four years, she refined both her skills in the kitchen and her knowledge of hospitality while carrying Americans to Europe, the Caribbean and the Far East. Later, with language skills in English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch adding to her impressive resume, she brought those skills to European rivers as assistant hotel manager and cruise director aboard upscale river ships that emulated the high food-service standards she learned to admire on cruise liners.

In 2001, Elena immigrated to the United States where, in addition to writing the recipes and creating the stories that add meaning to each recipe, she also photographed the completed dishes and their ingredients. Her unique and colorful style has been described by international photographer Larry Fink as having a "wonderfully playful sense of composition . . .[with] . . . a certain sensual immediacy which I suggest is radical in food photography. She is unbelievably ambitious and gifted."

Elena is already at work researching two new cookbooks. She and her husband, David Gevanthor, reside in Plantation, Florida.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cruising Cuisine
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0972242201
• ISBN 13: 9780972242202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140