Now You're Cooking for Company: Everything a Beginner Needs to Know to Have People over

Features recipes and menu ideas for special occasions ranging from Thanksgiving to wedding shower luncheons with practical instructions to prepare for every celebration

In this sequel to Now You're Cooking (a 1994 winner of both the Julia Child and James Beard awards), Corn calls upon Southern hospitality and candor to transform novice cooks into fearless hosts and hostesses. Clear, step-by-step directions and special workshop sessions on basic equipment and techniques (e.g., roasting and carving) complement more than 100 recipes for party snacks, beverages, holiday gatherings, dinner parties and breakfasts. Corn arms home cooks with a repertoire of easy, upscale fare. Creative but not too demanding, the recipes include Stuffed Artichokes, Winter Squash Soup, Grilled Coconut Chicken, Yucatan-Flavor Roast Pork and October Cider Cake. First-time hosts (and/or apartment dwellers), however, might wait to tackle the more ambitious instructions for Country Ham, a feast for 30 people that calls for marinating the meat in a five-gallon plastic bucket filled with 10 bottles of cider vinegar, two fifths of Bourbon and three liters of Coke (not diet) for three days. Nevertheless, amateur cooks are well served by Corn's guide, which also includes before- and after-party cleaning tips, menu suggestions, a bartending guide and a generous and helpful "Let's Talk" feature that offers such extra information as what the veining is in blue cheese and how to use paper towels as a sieve.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the follow-up to her award-winning Now You're Cooking (LJ 10/15/94), Corn assumes that the readers she led through the pitfalls of the kitchen in that book are ready to tackle entertaining. She explains "What You'll Need More Of" if company's coming, demystifies gravy-making and carving, and provides a game plan for making Thanksgiving dinner (some once-a-year-cooks would want the book for this alone). Once again, the recipes are really "step-by-step" (Do This First, Do This Second), but they are slightly more sophisticated or demanding. There are lots of useful lists and information-packed sidebars (Let's Talk) on almost every page. With Corn's help, fans of her last book?and other beyond beginner-cooks?may find themselves cooking food that is, as she says, "pretty high up there on finesse." Recommended for most libraries.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.