I'm falling in love again

REVIEWS BY SYBILL PRATT

Culinary love, that is, and the recipient of my adulation will come as no surprise to the cooks who use his many wonderful cookbooks and to the food aficionados who are instructed and inspired by his many PBS series. Nobody does it better than Jacques Pépin: he's a master chef and a master at conveying his love of food to others. The recipes in Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way are easy and elegant dishes you'll want to add to your everyday repertoire and to your canon of dinner party classics. It's not a big book, but there are more keepers here than I've found in a long time. I made the Chicken Tonnato (poached chicken breasts coated with a velvety tuna/anchovy sauce) first and knew immediately that, after making this dish for years from lots of different recipes, I'd found the finest—and the fastest. Then I tried the Oven-Baked Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato and Salsa Mayonnaise—divine and divinely easy (you cook the fish on its serving plate in a slow oven and can make the sauce well in advance). Pork chops in a zesty tomato-olive sauce is a winning dish, as is Broccoli Rabe and Pea Fricassee, Pumpkin Soup with Toasted Walnuts and bubbling Egg and Tomato Gratin. There are appetizers, salads and desserts, menus, make-ahead tips and extra ideas for quick dishes so uncomplicated that recipes are unnecessary. This "tribute to very simple food" is simply sensational.


Back to the balancing act

It's that time again: back to school, back to work, back to time-challenged reality while summer slips into sun-drenched memory. To make your cooking life a little easier and to encourage mealtime togetherness, Jeff and Jodie Morgan serve up The Working Parents Cookbook, their practical paean to the family dinner, dedicated to "all parents who balance work and family on a daily basis." The Morgans have been there; they've lived with busy work days, finite budgets, children who always need to be picked up, dropped off and eventually fed—and lived to tell the tale. It's a tale worth listening to, filled with fast-prep dishes that are also healthy alternatives to processed foods. They begin with "reasonably healthy" breakfasts, go on to sandwiches and appetizers and then get into the basic parts of the sit-down-together dinner. You'll find Easy Onion Soup with goopy, kid-enticing melted cheese, Moroccan Spiced Carrot and Raisin Salad, One-Pot Broccoli Pasta, quick Baked Salmon Fillets, a bevy of non-beef burgers and sweet treats that are (mostly) wholesome. The Morgans' focus is on food that's simple, healthy and quick. The recipes are time- and kid-tested and sure to produce dinners that are winners—even when the children are tired and you're not inspired.


Time-honored tradition

The Jewish Holiday Kitchen, Joan Nathan's classic, was originally published 25 years ago. Now, to mark its silver anniversary, which happily coincides with the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first Jews in America, there's Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook, a treasure-trove of tradition that combines the original Jewish Holiday Kitchen and The Jewish Holiday Baker with extras from her syndicated TV show and New York Times articles. The nearly 400 recipes are fully updated, revised and re-tested and come from Jewish cuisine that took root around the world—in Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Yemen, Bulgaria, Poland, Russia and beyond. Some of the recipes are vestiges of what families have lost, but all celebrate the importance of the traditional food, in all its wonderful regional variation, that has become the culinary mortar binding the culture together. Following the Jewish holiday calendar, Nathan starts with the Sabbath meal, then moves from Rosh Hashanah to Shavuot. Mazel tov, Joan! You've given us a new, very usable family heirloom.


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