THE NEW NEW YORK TIMES COOKBOOK

by Craig with Pierre Franey Claiborne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 1979

Signs of the times or The Times. The first New York Times Cookbook (published in 1961 and still going strong) ministered about equally to neophytes looking for blueberry-muffin recipes and ambitious cooks looking for a spot of kitchen globe-trotting. This new work is quite frankly aimed at an affluent urban audience to whom the fashionable pastime of cooking spells prestige and excitement--an audience which the first book incidentally helped bring into being. The thousand-odd recipes are preceded by a section of photographs, dinner menus, and souvenirs recording Claiborne's East Hampton kitchen and the many meals that have come out of it; selections from his ""De Gustibus"" and Wednesday question-and-answer columns are also included. The selection of recipes (in the familiar Times numbered-step format, this time with ingredients listed in boldface in the margin), is mostly though not exclusively geared to opulent tastes. There are many mousses and creamy-textured pat‚s, complicated desserts, and lavish combinations like veal scaloppine with Scotch, avocado, melted cheese, and cream sauce. The range is even more cosmopolitan than that of the original Times Cookbook, with chicken Albuf‚ra (studded with truffles and stuffed with a foie gras mixture) cheerfully elbowing a pungent and inexpensive Moroccan chicken dish with preserved lemons. There are some very good vegetable dishes and salads, and the bread section far eclipses that in the first book. Nor have such homely offerings as Indian pudding and chili con carne entirely vanished among the Vietnamese lettuce-wrapped pork patties and the chicken-liver mousse with lobster sauce. Nonetheless, the emphasis is on food as elaborate hobby. A few production errors mar this handsome volume; there are quite a number of misspellings and errors of non-culinary fact, and the index is neither adequately cross-referenced nor typographically well-designed. Those who own the Craig Claiborne's Favorites collections should know that a good many recipes are repeated from those works--though there is certainly enough new material to make the new book more than worthwhile to the audience it is intended for.

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Times Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION