THE SCARLET PUMPERNICKEL

Good Books For Cooks

by Fred Thomas

Four Good Little Books

This Month's Recipe: Citrus-Grilled Chicken Thighs

THIS MONTH WE TASTE four small books, each one as satisfying as mom's cornbread. All weigh in at under 180 pages, but the recipes they purvey are intense, the very essence of the cook's art.

Fondue
[ Great Food To Dip, Dunk, Savor, and Swirl ]
by Rick Rodgers

Rodgers, with grand-maternal roots in Liechtenstein, a half-hour from Zurich and the credited birthplace of the fondue, has put down a nice small book on this '60s craze. Funny thing is that recently I've seen the fondue pot pop up at cocktail parties here and there, not as the star of the groaning board, mind you, but sharing top billing with the carpaccio nonetheless. The reaction to the goofy little pot heated by Sterno has been nothing short of "Why Miss Merriweather, when you remove your glasses, you're beautiful!"

One suspects writer Rodgers has picked up and capitalized on this trend just in time for a fondue and hot pot renaissance. Good for him, and good for us readers who need assistance navigating through these murky and uncharted waters. Rodgers assumes that you haven't a clue. He gently explains the dos and don'ts, and kicks in some really swell trivia that the budding fondue epicure needs to know. For example:

Tell your guests to give the fondue a good "figure eight" swirl with their forks as they dip (to discourage the fondue separating) and to occasionally scrape the bottom of the pot with their bread (to keep the bottom from burning). In Switzerland, there are "punishments" for the careless guests who lose their bread in fondue: a man has to buy the next pot of fondue or a bottle of wine (assuming the dining is in a restaurant), and a woman is supposed to kiss a man of her choice.

Resist the temptation to wipe every last drop of fondue out of the pot, and leave a thin film in the bottom to cook into a golden brown crust. Let the crust cool, then pry it out of the pot and divide among the participants. This morsel is called la religieuse or la croute, and while not a religious experience, it is pretty darned close.

Rodgers' 152-page book is divided into four basic sections, all stunningly precise: cheese fondue, hot oil fried fondue, the Asian hot-pot fondue (instead of dipping raw morsels in hot oil, they are dipped, with chopsticks, in a hot broth), and the famous dessert fondue. For a bantam of a book that almost fits in one's hip pocket at 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches, it packs a heavyweight wallop.

Sunday Dinner
[ Seasonal Menus To Enjoy With Family And Friends ]
by Barbara Scott-Goodman with Mary Goodbody

Oh, Sunday dinner. What are your memories? Are they as fresh and vivid as mine? I recall the fine dinners of my youth with the full family, including two beautiful sisters and their menagerie of dachshunds and stray kittens, as well as those of my daughter's youth, enjoying the end of the week, in style and relaxed (to pull this off, the children's homework must be done before the table is set). As a bachelor, Sunday dinner is a much-missed celebration, although a table at Joe's Stone Crab does help take the edge off misty-eyed nostalgia.

My curiosity naturally was aroused when the newly published Sunday Dinner came to my attention. Be forewarned: roast beef with egg noodles and other standards of the American table aren't in this book; risotto with porcini and portobello mushrooms and red wine and penne with grilled shrimp, asparagus and pine nuts are.

The authors organize the book by seasons, each with a handful of menus followed by recipes. A case in point is this tasty little summer feast:

Yellow Tomato Salsa
Citrus-Grilled Chicken Thighs
Black Bean Salad with Toasted Cumin Vinaigrette
Tomato, Avocado and Corn Salad
Peach-Raspberry Cobbler

The citrus-grilled chicken is an outstanding plate, and is marvelous cold.

Overall, this is a nice little book, full of mix-and-match ideas for tailoring to your taste; side dishes seem interchangeable if one stays within the season. I like this book a lot.

Rao's Cookbook
[ Over 100 Years of Italian Home Cooking ]
by Frank Pellegrino

When one thinks of New York restaurants worth the long wait for a table, one probably thinks of Lutece (whose cookbook is a Pumpernickel favorite), Le Cirque, the Quilted Giraffe. Big restaurants, lots of stars. One rarely thinks of a 10-table joint in East Harlem called Rao's, where waits are measured not in months but in years. Ten tables, two seatings per night, no menu, closed weekends (!). And this isn't Maxim's; that barbican of haute cuisine would never have a jukebox. A jukebox. (The music at Rao's is quite impressive: Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and the Drifters, to name a few, and has been compiled and released on CD.)

This is no pasta palace. The 102-year-old dining room long ago captured -- and has held -- the fascination of the city's movers and shakers. Dick Schaap, the celebrated sportswriter, has had a Monday night table at Rao's for years. He's missed only two sittings -- once when the kitchen caught fire and another time when he was on the road. To get a reservation at Rao's, one must know one of the regulars. Writes Schaap in the foreword:

Everyone wanted to share my table at Rao's. Many offered to buy it from me ... I couldn't do that, so I did the next best thing. People said, "Let me eat dinner with you, and I'll pick up the tab," and I let them.

The recipes offered for are those you've read elsewhere -- risotto with asparagus, manicotti, tomato and red onion salad, that sort of thing -- but reading from the Rao's recipe book will still add a bit of sparkle to your next dinner party.

As history -- and a devilishly good read; plenty of names are dropped -- the book rates a 10; as a cookbook, well, let's just say it's a terrific treasury of gossip and anecdote. And the color photographs throughout make this book worthy of your cocktail table or nightstand.

Cooking From Scratch
[ One-Dish Meals ]
by The Editors of Food & Wine Magazine

Food & Wine Books, published by American Express Publishing, has a new series under the general title Cooking from Scratch. Each of the three books in the series thus far has a cover as hard as mahogany, reinforced with cloth tape at the spine, making this a sturdy, lasting piece of publishing. Indeed, one suspects this is how Mercedes-Benz engineers would design a book. Each recipe fits on the right-hand page; the left is a full-color photo of the finished article. For every recipe, a wine is proposed.

One-Dish Meals embodies series editor Judith Hill's premise that the combination of entree, starch and vegetable isn't the only definition of a nicely rounded dinner.

Hill's books aren't the exercises in weird creativity that so many cookbooks wallow in to demonstrate their chops; no salad here of, say, arugula, periwinkles and sea urchins. Most of these recipes are made with things you've not only heard of, but probably have in your kitchen.

As odd as Hill gets -- maybe it's her signature -- is the use of couscous and polenta, two delightful starches available in even the feeblest supermarket. Most dishes are straightforward ditties, like the hearty pork paprikash or lamb chops with potato and tomato gratin.

It should be noted, as the title states, that the presentations are one-dish meals -- not one-pot. Some recipes will require all four burners, although Editor Hill keeps the preparation simple and fool-proof.

Books reviewed in The Scarlet Pumpernickel
may be purchased at a discount from The Bookstall.

Fred Thomas has been a writer and editor for more than two decades, as a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, as tabloid editor at The Tampa Tribune, as group editor for a chain of Florida magazines, and as founding editor of Southern Homes. Now at home on the beach in West Central Florida, he specializes in writing about food and architecture. He knows the secret of perfect French fries.