Christmas Cooking: Holiday Recipes, Menus, and Gifts

Jordan's good-natured cookbook provides 56 do-ahead recipes for holiday entertaining and gift-giving. The recipes are not particularly inspiring (curried chicken on Bibb lettuce boats, stuffed cherry tomatoes) and bespeak of the '50s and '60s rather than 1987 (chutney almond cheese mold, marinated avocado balls), but the general spirit of the book is festive and encouraging. The seven brief chapters encompass hors d'oeuvres, gifts, cookies, desserts, and special menus for open house, Christmas Eve supper and Christmas dinner. Party fare includes: fireside port stew, oyster-spinach bisque, honey-raisin meatballs, crab and shrimp mousses, chocolate pate with raspberry sauce, rum-flavored chocolate truffles and Christmas whiskey cake. The slim book may make a suitable stocking-stuffer for the less experienced home entertainer. Bibb Jordan is a pseudonym. a (October 31)