From Publishers Weekly
Thoughtfully put together but sadly lacking in colorful visuals, this collection features a diverse range of recipes that are certain to excite the palates of those who are skilled enough to make them. Series editors McCullough and Stevens, both food writers, include personal notes at the end of each recipe, offering helpful tips on where to buy ghee for Corn Cooked in Milk with Chiles and Coconut or black mustard seeds for Sautéed Swordfish with Fresh Tomato Chutney. The recipes incorporate spices from around the world and extol techniques for getting the most flavor out of every ingredient, but herein lies the problem. Many of the recipes (like Grapefruit and Star Anise Granita or the Potato and Haricot Vert Salad ) require exotic ingredients and time-consuming preparations, making them less than user friendly. Vanilla "Creamed" Corn, for instance, requires pureeing corn kernels, freshly scraped from the cob, to create homemade corn starch, and the Cardamom Swirl Coffee Cake recipe instructs the reader to extract cardamom seeds from their pods and pulverize them into a fine powder. The editors do include a few fun and easy dishes—the Spinach and Artichoke Casserole can be prepared quickly using frozen spinach, cream cheese, canned artichoke hearts and Ritz crackers, and Easy Biscuits live up to their name, requiring only 2 ingredients—but the majority of these meals are not for the average, always-on-the-go individual. Seasoned foodies, however, will relish the challenge they present. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
150 recipes that scream, "Try Me!"

Book Description
You love to cook, and you're always looking for great new recipes. But who on earth has time to search out the very best recipes among the thousands in the latest food magazines, new cookbooks, food-related Web sites, and local and national newspapers? Now two seasoned professionals have done all the work for you. Acclaimed by reviewers from the New York Times to People as the only collection of its kind, The Best American Recipes offers a dazzlingly diverse selection. To create this year's edition -- the most exciting ever -- Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens combed through hundreds of sources, from the most talked about to the most obscure, tracking down thousands of recipes. They thoroughly home-tested each dish so you can be sure that every one is foolproof. Variety is the key. You'll find inspiration for every meal and every occasion, with rediscovered classics as well as brilliantly simple dishes from the nation's top chefs. The more than 150 recipes include • a terrific starter you can make in minutes: Minted Pea Soup, from the British cooking sensation Jamie Oliver• an elegant breakfast: Baked Eggs in Maple Toast Cups, from a small Vermont food company• a quick weeknight supper: Chicken Saltimbocca, from a supermarket flyer• a fresh and versatile vegetarian main dish that's great for a party: Cremini Mushrooms with Chive Pasta, from a celebrated New York chef• a truly memorable holiday side dish: Mashed Potatoes with Sage and White Cheddar Cheese, from a major food magazine• the perfect snack: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters, from a soon-to-be-published cookbook by a baking expertEvery recipe comes with tips and suggestions from the editors' home kitchens, which expand your cooking and serving options and give you sterling results the first time, every time.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In t r o d u c t i o nWe never quite know what we"regoing to find when we begin combingthrough hundreds of cookbooks, magazines,and newspapers looking for the best recipesof the year — which is a good part of why thisis such an exciting enterprise. It"s not unlike amassive culinary treasure hunt. Sometimesthe treasures are anything but obvious, suchas the Manhattan chef Waldy Malouf"s pastawith mushrooms and chives — a recipe thatlooks so plain-Jane on paper that we almostpassed it by. Yet as soon as we tested this easyrecipe, we immediately fell for its clean butcomplex flavors. It"s one of those can"t-stop-eating-it dishes that we make again and again— a definite "best."One of the most intriguing aspects ofour search is recognizing the hot dishes of theyear that seem to pop up everywhere. Once weidentify these, we take it upon ourselves totest our way through as many versions as ittakes to find the very best one out there. Forinstance, we knew early on that good old-fashionedcrispy fried chicken was a big passionthis year, partly because the food writer JeffreySteingarten fried his way through some twohundred chickens and devoted an entire columnin Vogue to his findings. After testingplenty of different recipes, the one that stoleour hearts was Fried Chicken Littles—crunchy, tender morsels served with a zingy,eye-opening dipping sauce.It also didn"t take us long to notice thatgranita, the sparkling Italian ice that up untilnow seems to have been waiting in the wings,was suddenly everywhere and in every imaginableflavor. This super-simple frozen dessert easily displaced sorbet and even icecream this year. Taste the grapefruit and staranise granita in the dessert chapter, and you"llknow why.These are, of course, very homey dishes.And without a doubt, "homey" is the watchwordthis year. But that doesn"t mean plain,and it certainly doesn"t mean boring. Fromshrimp cocktail and chicken noodle soup, toburgers and meatballs, to crisps and crumbles,the recipes that delight us may be familiar,but each has a sophisticated global twist.Shrimp cocktail comes glazed with a spicy-sweetjalapeño-lime sauce, green chiles showup in macaroni and cheese, burgers are madefrom fresh salmon and dolloped with asnappy aïoli, and old-fashioned chiffon layercake is flavored with ginger and mango.We also were struck by a correspondingand equally unmistakable trend: the revival ofold recipes that had been forgotten or hadfallen out of favor. We freely admit to having ahuge preservationist streak, and we werethrilled to find others sharing the same passion.Resurrecting old recipes is not just anexercise in historic preservation; some arejust too good to do without, including themild southern curry called Country Captain.We tested several and chose a particularly elegantversion.You probably won"t find a trifle on yourfavorite restaurant menu, but this big holidaytreat from England has been gathering a lot ofinterest on this side of the ocean. The one welove most is Nigella Lawson"s summer blackberrytrifle, which brilliantly simplifies thisgorgeous, impressive dessert.Not that every standout recipe of the yearfalls into the old-fashioned, homey category.There are plenty of thrilling new recipes aswell, such as Paula Wolfert"s ethereal asparagus,cooked slowly in its own delectable juiceswith a touch of fresh tarragon.A quick scan through the recipes thatmade their way into this collection reveals animpressive facility with global flavors that isno longer limited to chefs or hard-core foodies.We were happily surprised to see howmainstream several cuisines have become:Spanish and Mexican, in particular, but alsoWest Indian (one reason ginger beer is turningup everywhere). Possibly the most exoticcuisine we encountered is Scandinavian,which brings its own refined excitement to ourtables. These influences are changing the contentsof our pantries, where you"re now likelyto encounter pimentón (Spanish smoked paprika),chipotles (smoked jalapeños) in adobosauce, chorizo, pancetta (the unsmoked baconof Italy), and panko (wonderfully crisp Japanesebread crumbs). Tomatillos, exotic mushrooms,and an assortment of fresh and driedchiles have entered the everyday realm and arenow available in supermarkets almost everywhere.Americans have been slow to recognizethe charms of pecorino Romano, theearthier cousin of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Butthis year we"re making up for lost time —pecorino turns up everywhere.At the same time, once-unfamiliar techniquesare becoming commonplace. For instance,five years ago only the most dedicatedcooks would undertake grinding their ownspices to season a dish. Today a mortar andpestle or a little electric spice grinder (or a coffeegrinder) is standard equipment in anywell-appointed kitchen. The flavor dividendsfor the moments it takes to grind your ownare simply amazing.Even after compiling this book for sixyears in a row, we are seduced (a lot more oftenthan we should be) by recipes that lookgood on the page but simply don"t deliver inthe kitchen. The proof really is in the pudding.We can assure you that all of the recipesin this collection have not only been kitchen-testedbut meet our standards for dishes wewant to make again and again. For thoserecipes that made the cut, we"ve added ourown notes from the testing, to give you anidea of what to expect and offer suggestionsabout how you can play with them. And onceagain we present our favorite ten recipes fromthe book, so you won"t miss them.— Fr a n Mc C u l l o u g hand M o l ly St e v e n sCopyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin. Introduction copyright © 2004 by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

You love to cook, and you're always looking for great new recipes. But who on earth has time to search out the very best recipes among the thousands in the latest food magazines, new cookbooks, food-related Web sites, and local and national newspapers? Now two seasoned professionals have done all the work for you. Acclaimed by reviewers from the New York Times to People magazine as the only collection of its kind, The Best American Recipes offers a dazzlingly diverse selection. To create this year's edition -- the most exciting ever -- Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens combed through hundreds of sources, from the most talked about to the most obscure, tracking down thousands of recipes. They thoroughly home-tested each dish so you can be sure that every one is foolproof. Variety is the key. You'll find inspiration for every meal and every occasion, with rediscovered classics as well as brilliantly simple dishes from the nation's top chefs.

SYNOPSIS