The Best American Recipes: The Year's Top Picks from Books, Magazines, Newspapers, and the Internet

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 Sauteed 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.