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Home, home at the range
REVIEWS BY SYBIL PRATT
By Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven Houghton Mifflin, $27 ISBN 0618171495 Start with a tart
By Jerome Audureau and Frank Mentesana Knopf, $27.50 384 pages, ISBN 0375413162 Small is beautiful
By Diane Kochilas Morrow, $24.95 208 pages, ISBN 0688175112
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Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven have been kitchen colleagues and co-authors of a popular weekly cooking column
in the Boston Globe for 20 years. The Way We Cook: Recipes from the
New American Kitchen is their first cookbook, and I wish
they hadn't waited so long. Sheryl and Julie are home cooks who write for home cooks. They don't have the time
to recreate rarefied restaurant recipes, and they know you don't either. They aim for pared-down, everyday elegance,
for family-style meals that give you the most for your time and effort—and they really hit the mark. Their new
cookbook includes recipes for everything from appetizers (including GougËres, Tuna PatÈ with Capers and other golden
oldies) to desserts (with inviting standards such as Pumpkin Chiffon Pie and real Hot Fudge Sauce). A melange of
marvelous main courses, the meat, as it were, has been sliced into savory sections offering practical, plausible solutions
to the eternal question of what to serve when. You'll find some one-pot wonders you can get on the table fast in
"When You're in a Rush"; welcome weekday regulars like Shrimp with Spanish Rice and other non-fussy favorites in
"Dishes We Make All the Time"; modernized mainstays in "New Classics"; dishes with extra pizzazz in "Good Enough for
Company" and much more. Hope volume two is in the works!
That's just what two talented, enterprising guys did. Jerome Audureau had run his own small tart shop in Provence as a
summer "externship" and detected, after a few years in New York, a definite tart deficit in the diverse, ever-developing
food scene of that diverse, ever-developing city—no savory tarts at all and only a few sweet ones. So, he and Frank
Mentesana, a hotel management colleague, decided to tart it up. They started by selling wholesale only, doing everything
themselves and doing quite well. A year later, they felt it was time to expand their repertoire and open a café.
Once Upon a Tart has delighted customers for a decade and become an established SoHo destination. Now, Frank and
Jerome make the café's delicious offerings available to an even wider audience with a cookbook called (no surprise)
Once Upon a Tart. They started as novices—
neither was professionally trained—and learned as they cooked, making the things they loved to eat. There is, of
course, a treasure trove of tarts, both savory and sweet, with detailed "dough lessons" and the necessary equipment info.
A solid sampling of super soups (don't miss the Curried Corn Chowder with Coconut Milk), sandwiches and salads is
complemented with recipes for condiments, cookies, scones, quick breads, and down-to-earth discussions of ingredients.
Simple stuff that's simply grand.
First, let me admit that I'm a confirmed grazer (read, I prefer to pick at lots of little dishes rather than sit
down to a full meal). Grazing gives you so many more chances to sample new tastes and indulge old favorites. Greece,
Turkey, Lebanon and other countries of the eastern Mediterranean are a grazer's paradise. There, socializing over a
glass of wine or raki and a plenitude of small plates is as ever-present as the starched blue sky and the wine-dark
sea, and the art of making meze, as these satisfying savories are called, is a time-honored tradition.
Diane Kochilas, the award-winning author of The Glorious Foods of Greece, has now turned her full attention
to Meze: Small Plates to Savor and Share from the Mediterranean Table.
Its 80 recipes and 35 lush color photos offer up a splendid spread of lighthearted dishes, wonderfully suited to warm
weather eating when an array of salads, cool dips, vegetable fritters and grilled kebabs is especially appetizing.
Try Tangy Yogurt with Sautéed Carrots and Mint, Bread Salad with Watermelon, Feta and Red Onion, golden Greek Fish
Croquettes with garlicky Skordalia and Cinnamon-Scented Lamb cubes with Tomatoes and Onions. Serve a few for lunch,
make a batch for dinner or just gather friends for drinks, dialogue and delicious meze.