The Best of Gourmet: The World at Your Table - Hardcover

Gourmet Magazine Editors

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400065194 ISBN 13: 9781400065196

Publisher: Random House, 2006

Synopsis

Nowadays, everyone who entertains is looking for outstanding casual fare that will allow them to spend more time with their guests. Dishes must be quick and easy to prepare (or able to be made ahead) and filled with the purest ingredients for optimum flavor. The Best of Gourmet, Featuring the Flavors of Thailand is filled with twenty-eight such menus-most are very relaxed, all are absolutely delicious.

For example, after a chilly day on the slopes, you may want to treat your houseguests to A Ski House Dinner. Begin the evening around the fire with champagne and a large platter of ever-so-tender smoked salmon with cilantro cream. Later, roasted veal chops with shallots, tomatoes, and olive jus nestled on pillows of soft polenta make a rich, indulgent entrée. And before everyone retires, a heavenly warm chocolate raspberry pudding cake, made the day before and reheated, is served with a glass of cognac.

When the summer heats up, why not spend A Weekend at the Shore with friends? You'll have three clever menus in hand that take advantage of the season's abundant fresh produce, include plenty of make-ahead dishes, and satisfy hearty seaside appetites. On Saturday morning you can serve Breakfast on the Beach with buttery-rich baked blueberry-pecan French toast. Lunch Indoors includes a serve-yourself composed salad of classic favorites and a lovely rhubarb rice pudding. Then, after a long day in the sun, Dinner on the Deck promises a seafood meal to remember with curry-marinated mussels, followed by grilled lobster with Southeast Asian dipping sauce.

Or perhaps a last-minute Beyond Backyard Basics dinner is closer to what you had in mind? This little gem of a menu features ratatouille with penne-a heavenly jumble of roasted eggplants, onions, yellow squash, and red bell peppers, with plum tomatoes, garlic, thyme, parsley, and basil. For dessert, multicolored grapes perched atop pastry cream in puff pastry shells make a scrumptious and ever-so-pretty choice.

So which menu will you try first? You'll find more than eighty pages of exquisite full-color photographs to help you decide. Altogether, this volume holds more than 350 recipes-including the very best recipes that appeared in Gourmet's food columns during 1999. There are hundreds of dishes that can be made in forty-five minutes or less (look for the clock symbol ð); plenty of leaner and lighter selections (look for the feather symbol F); seasonal ideas for everything from apples to zucchini; and an impressive array of tempting sweets and snacks.

This year's Cuisines of the World section turns to the intriguing flavors of Thailand with a traditional dinner for eight and a collection of Thai snacks. Dishes such as steamed red snapper with ginger, grilled beef salad, fish cakes, and coconut ice cream demonstrate the sweet, sour, hot, and salty tastes of this fascinating country. Informative primers and exquisite full-color photos add further insight.

Twenty-four more brand-new recipes appear in a special section featuring Unusual Pastas and Grains. From fresh rice noodles to Israeli couscous to wheat berries, and much more, these unique pantry items will undoubtedly expand your palette of flavors.

Just when you thought you had tasted it all, along comes a cookbook that opens up a world of new possibilities-The Best of Gourmet

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Best of Gourmet, Volume VII is the largest volume ever! Filled with more than 500 recipes and over 80 pages of magnificent full-color photography, this edition offers 26 inspired menus for the way we live today.

This volume introduces Cuisines of the World, a new section to The Best of Gourmet that will unlock the mysteries of a different cuisine each year. This year, the Flavors of France captures the glories of this exceptional country with full-color photographs, basic recipes, tips, and all-new menus. Plus, A Gourmet Addendum on spices proves that these little flavor enhancers can make a big difference in your cooking, with 24 enticing new recipes.

Upholding the Gourmet tradition of timeliness, quality, and style, The Best of Gourmet, Volume VII is a must for the cook of the nineties.

From the Inside Flap

Gourmet's food editors travel to Paris to taste, learn, and be inspired to create recipes for this edition's Cuisines of the World section. But first they offer three menus once served in the Parisian homes of expatriates Picasso, Brancusi, and Man Ray during the 1900s. The focus then shifts to Paris at the turn of the twenty-first century, with a cutting-edge Gourmet menu and dozens of new recipes. The Menu Collection offers several additional choices: an Intimate Valentine's Day Dinner, a Springtime Dinner in County Cork, and an Open-House Vegetarian Feast, among others.

This newest collection features 32 menus, more than 350 recipes, and 100 page of full-color photographs.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400065194
• ISBN 13: 9781400065196
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304