Your Place Or Mine?: Cooking At Home With Restaurant Style (SCARCE FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR)

The text opens with a section called "Jean-Christophe's Box of Tricks." These include various flavor-infused oils, dressings, reductions, and powders of such ingredients as orange peel, carrots, and cèpes. There's nothing revolutionary about these tricks--they have been knocking around restaurants for the last decade. But Chef Novelli encourages the reader to take them home, stand back, and enjoy the results.

As for building a dish, Chef Novelli will take a core ingredient and build with it, like using blocks. The construction changes according to mood and whimsy. Confit of Rabbit Leg with Vanilla-Seed Risotto, for example, moves right along to the more elaborate Rabbit and Vanilla-Seed Risotto with Confit of Rabbit Leg, Rabbit Loin, and Vanilla Sauce. The initial dish demonstrates the basic technique. The second dish shows the reader how to take that technique on up to the restaurant production level.

Chapters follow a traditional path: Fish and Shellfish, Poultry and Game, Meat, Vegetables, and Desserts. Chef Novelli moves from Pan-Fried Scallops with Orange, Vanilla, and Cardamom to Broiled Lemon Sole with Bibb Lettuce and Ginger Sauce, from Roast Quail with Broiled Pancetta to Sweet Glazed Onion Stuffed with Beef Daube, from Spicy Eggplant Salad with Parmesan Crackling to Coconut Crème Brûlée. Not only will a home cook who tackles these recipes put stunning meals on the table, that same cook will also be sure to view the world of food a little differently as a result. "Suivant son humeur" may well become such a cook's catchword. --Schuyler Ingle