cover image Best of the Book and the Cook: Great Menus and Recipes by America's Most Talented Cookbook Authors

Best of the Book and the Cook: Great Menus and Recipes by America's Most Talented Cookbook Authors

Phyllis Stein-Novack. Camino Books, $12.95 (186pp) ISBN 978-0-940159-07-5

Text by Phyllis Stein-Novack, foreword by Julie Dannenbaum. Camino Books,in BIP/stet Books to avoid confusion with another company with similar name/rl $12.95 * ISBN 0-940159-07-4 Forty accomplished contributors make this memento of Philadelphia's annual cooking festival (which pairs famous chefs with local restaurants) a solid and extremely varied collection, although it contains little original material. Cooking enthusiasts will immediately recognize most of the chefs, among them Jacques Pepin, Alice Waters and Louis Szathmary. Each offers a menu of three to five recipes, and every menu has a distinct character. While Vertamae Grosvenor prefers ``pure Southern soul food'' with chitterlings and black-eyed peas, former White House chef Rene Verdon serves up quail with cracked coriander and wilted spinach salad, and Pierre Franey creates a seafood feast that includes cream of mussel soup with saffron. Many of the recipes here are borrowed from other cookbooks: all four of Margaret and Franco Romagnoli's dishes are reprinted from The New Italian Cooking ; Maida Heatter bakes cookies and brownies from Great American Desserts and a cake from Great Desserts. Stein-Novack writes the Tasting column for Mid Atlantic Country magazine. (Aug.)