cover image Fiery Appetizers: Seventy Spicy Hot Hors D'Oeuvres: A ""Fiery Cuisines"" Cookbook

Fiery Appetizers: Seventy Spicy Hot Hors D'Oeuvres: A ""Fiery Cuisines"" Cookbook

Dave Dewitt, Nancy Gerlach. St. Martin's Press, $6.95 (87pp) ISBN 978-0-312-28853-2

The authors of The Fiery Cuisines, DeWitt and Gerlach present a slim (80-page) volume that is also short on creativity. The authors repeat themselves and utter many culinary cliches in the 70 recipes. For example, chilies and cheese, chilies and cream cheese, and chilies and cream cheese and avocado go into various kinds of housingcucumbers, bread, won tons, phyllo. Shrimp, crabmeat and canned salmon get repeated use as well. Mexican styles predominate, though there are nods to peanut- and coconut-laden sauces, curry powder and horseradish. Of greater interest are the clever red-hot trivia items on most pages. (March)