The Dean and DeLuca Cookbook

Salad Nicoise with Seared Fresh Tuna. Pad Thai. Tuscan Bread Soup. Quesadillas. Couscous with Lamb. Authentic Italian Risotto. Good old American Shrimp Gumbo. These are dishes that Americans have learned to love over the last twenty years, a time of extraordinary culinary expansion. And Dean & Deluca, the great innovative food store in New York's SoHo district, was there.

Now, together with a team from Dean & Deluca, renowned food writer and TV chef David Rosengarten has compiled an encyclopedic collection of recipes for these new classics, presented for home cooks in the clearest, simplest, and liveliest possible way. Drawing upon his vast culinary wisdom, Rosengarten explains everything from how to make the best green salad or a perfect pizza to how to choose your Chinese noodles, know your Indian spices, and serve your bouillabaisse. Here are two Thai methods for fluffy rice and seven steps to great French fries (and fifteen other potato recipes, from baked and mashed to Gaufrettes and Gratin Dauphinoise). Rosengarten's epic compendium is spiced with delightful information--from the etymology of "squash" to the history of bisques, from cassoulet controversies and gazpacho wars to trends in miniature corn.

You'll find here definitive recipes for such traditional European classics as Cassoulet, Paella, and Pesto Genovese, alongside "new" favorites such as Frisée aux Lardons and Panzanella. Here too are Middle Eastern classics--Tabouli, Persian Rice Pilaf, and Lahmajun (Turkish pizza); Asian classics--Tom Yung Kung, Chicken Tandoori, and Tempura; and classics from the New World--from crab cakes to Posole Verde. You will also find old comfort foods, from clam chowder to meat loaf, as well as the latest innovations from our country's most innovative chefs. Along the way you'll learn how to feel for fresh fish, how to recognize wild mushrooms, and how to approach a chicken.

If you learned to love it in the last twenty years, it's here--and now you can cook it brilliantly at home. Thanks to Rosengarten's enthusiasm, knowledge, and wit, The Dean & Deluca Cookbook is a delectable, delightful, friendly, and comprehensive guide to the new joy of cooking.

David Rosengarten is the host of Taste, on the TV Food Network, one of four James Beard Award nominees in 1996 for the best national TV cooking show of the year. The New York Times remarked that  with Taste Rosengarten "reconceived the idea of what a cooking show could be. . . . He explores his subjects so thoughtfully that he makes instant experts of his viewers." He has contributed hundreds of recipes to many publications over the last fifteen years, including The New York Times, Food & Wine, and Bon Appetit. His restaurant column, "Specialities de la Maison--New York," appears every month in Gourmet magazine.

Joel Dean and Giorgio DeLuca co-founded Dean & Deluca in 1977 and continue to oversee their expanding empire.