Caveat: Having pored over this excellent window into a tempting way of life (and cooking), the urge to entertain may be...
With Celenza's trusty menu log, you could easily host a year's worth of weekly dinner parties.
Designed for the "professional home chef" (the author expects readers to know how to boil water and whip an egg white), Celenza has assembled 52 complete dinners with coordinated menus for six–-from appetizers to desserts. A practical cookbook on slick paper (with smallish print and eight pages of photos tucked in the middle), it features an excellent index, sorted according to ingredients, name of the dish, main ingredient, and occasion. It's easy to linger over these social dinners created for people who enjoy cooking (and eating) in the relaxed style one sees in Italy–-indeed, the meal is the whole evening's entertainment. This explains the enormous menus–-this one, for example: cock-a-leekie soup, rice pilaf with skillet chicken, scallops in garlic sauce, Caesar salad, toasted cheese shrimp boat with deviled egg, and cranberry meringue cake. One might quibble with suggestions such as roast chicken for summer kitchens, but overall, the choices seem tempting: comfort foods (potato croquette and veal cordon bleu with mushroom gravy) in the fall and winter and fresh fruits and vegetables (bacon-wrapped lamb chops and asparagus with lemon) in the spring and summer. Many À la carte dishes would also make excellent lunch fare. Bonus sections include three lavish party menus, plus recipes for brunch, sandwiches, buffets, hor d'oeuvres, cakes, pies, and cookies. Celenza makes no concession to popular diets, but the foods suggested are wholesome and healthfully prepared.
Caveat: Having pored over this excellent window into a tempting way of life (and cooking), the urge to entertain may be overwhelming.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-928782-55-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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