Cookbook Profile: The Gourmet Cookbook

The Gourmet Cookbook
More Than 1000 Recipes

by Ruth Reichl

The Gourmet Cookbook: More Than 1000 Recipes, edited by Ruth Reichl, is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative cookbooks ever produced. It is a landmark culinary reference with unparalleled variety, which belongs on the kitchen counter of anyone who cares about food. This is a book to have and to use for years to come.

Under the passionate direction of the renowned food authority Ruth Reichl (Gourmet's editor in chief and the best-selling author of Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples), the editors of America's premier food magazine went back through the more than 60,000 recipes that Gourmet has published over the past six decades. They then reworked, retested, and retasted them to arrive at the very best—1200 in all.

This extraordinary collection of exciting recipes for virtually everything includes all the great American foods and the best dishes from around the world. Baked Cheddar Olives. Asian Pear and Watercress Salad with Sesame Dressing. Classic French Onion Soup. Korean-Style Grilled Steaks with Spicy Cilantro Sauce. Fresh Ham with Cracklings and Pan Gravy. Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Crust. Panfried Trout with Spinach and Pine Nuts. Fettuccine Alfredo. Classic Crème Brulee. Whether you are a dedicated cook or just starting out, whether you're making a simple supper for two or throwing a cocktail party for fifty, you'll do it with more flavor and flair with The Gourmet Cookbook.

To create The Gourmet Cookbook, the editors drew from sixty-two years of recipes taken from a wealth of sources. Many were created in the magazine's own test kitchens. Others came from readers, chefs, and Gourmet's vast network of correspondents—the foremost food experts and authorities on world cuisines.

Determining the final recipe choices for The Gourmet Cookbook was a monumental feat. The Gourmet test kitchens went into overdrive as the editorial staff worked their way through the archives, debating which version of a recipe was the best. "Sometimes a recipe we would remember as being absolute perfection twenty years ago just didn't hold up to current scrutiny," says Zanne Stewart, the executive food editor, who has thirty-two years of experience at Gourmet and who oversaw the meticulous testing process.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before," says editor in chief Ruth Reichl. "For this book we went back to the very beginning, retesting all of our favorite recipes. We even had cook-offs between various versions of each dish, just to make sure the one we chose was the very best. The chocolate cakes alone took weeks."

In addition to offering the ultimate recipe selection for home cooks, The Gourmet Cookbook is filled with hundreds of useful sidebars and tips on everything from how to shuck an oyster to how to throw a cocktail party. This is a book that every cook will want—and want to give.

Buy the Book!

The Gourmet Cookbook
More Than 1000 Recipes
by Ruth Reichl (Editor)
John Willoughby and Zanne Early Stewart (Coeditors)
Houghton Mifflin
$40.00/Hardcover: 1056 pages
ISBN: 0618374086
Information provided by the publisher.