A Well-Seasoned Appetite: Recipes for Eating With the Seasons, the Senses, and the Soul

Rating:
Summary: Fresh, fun and sophisticated
Review: Organized by season, O'Neill's book pairs seasonal ingredients with appropriate food techniques, sparking the appetite with seductive writing and succulent recipes.

For spring there's steaming with exotic liquids and the sizzle of quick saute to bring out the fresh subtleties of lamb, asparagus, fiddleheads, morels and more.

On to summer where grilling, juicing and make-ahead salads minimize kitchen time and maximize the flavors of garden vegetables, fresh seafood and cold soups. How about scallops poached in fresh tomato juice with orzo salad? Or Korean Barbecue for pork chops, steak or chicken wings?

Autumn and Winter get equally luscious treatment with concentrations on quail, nuts, apples, brussels sprouts and root vegetables, stewing, braising, baking and roasting. There's veal shanks with preserved lemon, chicken stuffed with mashed turnips, braised escarole.

A book that's as much fun in the kitchen as it is under the reading lamp.

Rating:
Summary: Molly loves food and cooking - this book will make you, too!
Review: This is a cookbook for gourmands, epicurians, foodies. Divided into four sections, Well-Seasoned takes an ingredient-based view of the seasons, celebrating the best produce and game the season offers. This is the approach to cooking that brought fame to the likes of Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, and for good reason: seasonal foods are at their best at a given time, and that is precisely the time to enjoy them to their fullest.

The sections are thus arranged around a series of central theme ingredients, with a couple of pages of prose concerning the subject at hand, be it morel, lobster, fiddlehead, shell bean, or shank.

Each ingredient (or cooking method) is explored with respect and wonder at food, and (although some may find it a little breathless) instills one with the joy that cooking can bring.

This is a book that makes you want to grab a saute pan and get busy.

Rating:
Summary: Molly loves food and cooking - this book will make you, too!
Review: This is a cookbook for gourmands, epicurians, foodies. Divided into four sections, Well-Seasoned takes an ingredient-based view of the seasons, celebrating the best produce and game the season offers. This is the approach to cooking that brought fame to the likes of Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, and for good reason: seasonal foods are at their best at a given time, and that is precisely the time to enjoy them to their fullest.

The sections are thus arranged around a series of central theme ingredients, with a couple of pages of prose concerning the subject at hand, be it morel, lobster, fiddlehead, shell bean, or shank.

Each ingredient (or cooking method) is explored with respect and wonder at food, and (although some may find it a little breathless) instills one with the joy that cooking can bring.

This is a book that makes you want to grab a saute pan and get busy.