cover image Starting with Ingredients: Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Cook

Starting with Ingredients: Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Cook

Aliza Green, . . Running Press, $39.95 (1056pp) ISBN 978-0-7624-2747-5

Four-time coauthor Green (including the James Beard Award–winning Cocktails with a Latino Twist with Chef Guillermo Perriot) has aimed for the stratosphere with her first solo book. Green is a chatty expert who makes you feel she's in your kitchen; unfortunately, pedestrian prose mutes her apparent enthusiasms. Still, the book is a dazzling compendium of food history, food safety tips (don't keep garlic in oil unless you add acid to cut the risk of botulism) and resources. The book offers a hundred chapters in alphabetical order, Almonds through Zucchini and Other Summer Squashes: some categories are wide-ranging (Beans: Dried and Fresh-Shelled) while others narrow (Ugli and Other Unusual Fruits—seemingly chosen to fill a gap in the alphabet). Bakers will appreciate recipes that offer both scratch and shortcut versions, but perhaps best of all, the book reflects perceptive appreciation of cooking the world over; in its broad embrace, it evokes the hopeful ethos of using food to open doors and build bridges. (Nov.)