Culinary Masterpieces

This beautiful book is for the serious chef/foodie and cookbook lover/collecter. The recipes and imagery are gorgeous. You will not be disapointed in this book in any way. The pages are a superb paper quality. A museum piece.

Art, pomp and repast meet in this volume dedicated to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. Though chapters take on the courses of a meal in sequence, conventionally, from appetizers to desserts, the book opens by marking special occasions with splashy thematic preparations: in the Main Chinese Gallery, a cocktail buffet is suggested, offering Korean and Chinese specialties (the museum is known partly for its Asian art collection); in the Cloisters, it's time for springerle bird cookies and herbed apple cider. Lavish, oversized and elegantly institutional, the compilation of recipes crosses continents (shrimp vindaloo, biscotti, catfish) with clear-headed directives and tiers of committed contributors. (They are mainly the museum's volunteers, celebrating its sixtieth anniversary.) The goal was "to create culinary equivalents to the Nelson's outstanding works of art"; this seems unnecessarily grandiose, and the general drift is rather yuppie. But the cause is good, and so are many recipes. When appropriate, recipes are accompanied by wine recommendations. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.