Good Friends Great Dinners

Costner (Gifts of Food) offers 32 seasonal menus, each designed for six diners. Suggestions for organizing dinner preparations are provided at the beginning of each menu, but these are not detailed enough for inexperienced cooks. The recipes themselves comprise tempting party fare, as the lush, decorative, color photographs attest. Fresh coconut cake with raspberry puree, rolled and stuffed veal medallions with lemon-basil sauce, and Belgian endive and tomato au gratin evoke the fresh flavors of spring. Summer is represented by steamed blackberry pudding with cold custard sauce, fresh uncooked tomato sauce with three pastas and mushrooms cooked in grape leaves. The warm colors of fall appear in black beans with pecans, cornmeal calzone filled with olives and cheese, and roasted eggplant-and-red pepper soup. Winter calls for such substantial fare as sweet-potato biscuits with Smithfield ham, chicken breasts with cumin cream and wild-mushroom lasagne. Echtermeyer is a California-based photographer. First serial to House Beautiful; BOMC/Cooking & Crafts Club main selection; author tour. (September 4)