A Return to Cooking

Description

This practical and very spirited cookbook, with nearly 150 recipes, covers subjects as diverse as making pancakes and assembling picnics; shows you how to slow-cook White and Black Bean Ragout with Sausages in your fireplace, cure your own duck ham, and make simple, impeccable last-minute desserts. From spring's Rhubarb Puree to fall's Pumpkin, Acorn, and Butternut Squash Soup with Walnut Oil, here are four seasons of great meals to enjoy with friends. Readers will love Eric's total lack of pretense (to wit his fondness for alphabet soup, bottled mayonnaise, and Tabasco) as well as his insights into what makes a meal a success.

Michael Ruhlman is the author of The Elements of Cooking, The Soul of a Chef, and The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America, among others. Eric Ripert is the co-author of the recently published On the Line: Inside the World of Le Bernardin, and chef and part-owner of Le Bernardin, awarded four stars by The New York Times, three stars by the Michelin Guide, and rated best restaurant in New York by Zagat. He is a frequent guest on such national shows as Bravo's Top Chef, Today, Charlie Rose, Martha, and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. He has opened two new restaurants, 10 Arts in the Philadelphia Ritz-Carlton and Westend Bistro in Washington, D.C. You can watch Eric Ripert in action on his forthcoming television show Avec Eric and on his Web site, www.aveceric.com.