Summertime is a picnic with tasty ideas for casual meals

REVIEWS BY SYBIL PRATT

There was a time this spring when I thought summer would never happen—but now it has, and with it comes the urge to bask in the balmy weather and to spend as much time outside as possible. To me, a picnic is the essence of summer, of casual cooking and of carefree living. But even the casual and carefree can benefit from a little planning. Here to help are a duo of cookbooks that celebrate alfresco eating. Small and lusciously illustrated, Robin Vitetta-Miller's Picnics: Easy Recipes for the Best Alfresco Foods focuses on food that's fresh and served cold, mostly. Smoky Chicken Fingers made to dip in a creamy, sour cream-based honey-mustard sauce and Mini Crab Cakes with Wasabi Mayonnaise are among the starters, followed by Robin's take on "wrapture" (from Tangy Tuna in a spinach tortilla to Roast Beef with Asian Slaw), super salads, savory baked concoctions to toast, twist or slice, and packable sweets. Robin adds picnic theme-party ideas to spice up your summer get-togethers.


Jeremy Jackson, a wonderfully chatty food writer, begins Good Day for a Picnic: Simple Food That Travels Well, his ode to outdoor dining, with a brief but intriguing look at where the concept of the modern picnic came from and then goes on to the substance of picnic fare. Though all of Jeremy's recipes can be packed in a basket and spread out on a blanket, many may make it into your year-round repertoire. Among the more unusual, now part of my usual, are supremely simple Pine Nut Butter; Roasted Grapes (great with the pine nut butter); Fig Pāté; Noodles with Walnut and Blue Cheese Pesto; Tuna Cakes served hot or cold; elegant, easy to transport Phyllo-Crusted Pork and Leek Pie; pale pink Strawberry Cupcakes and Cherry-Berry Pickled Pineapple. Jeremy Jackson is a pleasure to cook with and a picnic partner par excellence.


The minimalist and the maximalists

How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes on America's Chefs, the companion to Mark Bittman's new TV series, might have been subtitled "High-Style vs. My-Style." The "high" is made up of 13 well-known American chefs, who cook in their fabulously outfitted restaurant kitchens with lavishly loaded larders and minions to mince and mop up. The "my" is Mark the Minimalist, the quintessential home cook, who toils without benefit of a long apprenticeship, a cooking school degree or helping hands. If you're familiar with Bittman's exemplary cookbooks and his New York Times column, you'll have an idea of what happens when he challenges these culinary giants to a cook-off. It's not a question of who wins—we all do; the fun and the benefit are in the getting there, in the back and forth between pro and non, and, of course, in the end results.

For example, the esteemed Jean-Georges cooks Sea Bass Fillets with Mushroom Beurre Noisette that involves making a vegetarian mushroom jus and a toasted nut and seed powder. Mark does Sesame-Crusted Fish with Soy, Butter and Ginger that's a breeze to put together. Along the way you get sidebars with Jean-Georges' take on seasoning fish and Mark's take on fusion cooking. In other exchanges you'll learn about piment—n, rice noodles, Indian breads, making shrimp shell stock, "un-American" apple pies and roasting beets. Bittman maintains that "most recipes are guides" and here, in dishes that run the gamut from starters to sweet endings, you'll see how this concept works. This is another must-have Bittman book.


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