Microwave Gourmet - Hardcover

Kafka focuses here on producing interesting, pleasing dishes rather than on teaching readers how to operate their new microwave ovens. Microwaved classics like sauce espagnole may raise conservative eyebrows, but she is, by and large, successful in her attempt. Swordfish with tomato and basil, truite au bleu and catfish fillet with cornbread stuffing make much of the oven's capacity for cooking fish. Recipes range from family dishes, such as chunky beef chili and pork chops with sauerkraut, to company fare, including pheasant with currant cream, squab with seasoned butter under the skin and shad roe with sorrel sauce. Ingredients emphasize fresh items rather than prepackaged shortcuts; in fact, recipes for such pantry items as peach chutney and cranberry sauce are included. Unfortunately, the concluding reference "dictionary" is of uneven quality. Vogue food editor Kafka is the Tastemaker Award-winning author of American Food and California Wines and Food for Friends. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kafka's fans have been reading her recipes and instructions for the microwave oven in bits and pieces in the New York Times and elsewhere, and will surely welcome this book. Her thorough and creative approach is simply the best in the field. She's "finicky about weghts, measures, size of dishes and kinds of coverings," and has become a convert to the "virtues of microwave cookingrapidity, simplicity and perfect results." The scores of recipes include classic preparations such as sauce espagnole, tuiles, various risottos, borscht, and beignets. Kafka's culinary ingenuity is displayed, for example, in her instructions for coconut milk and for shrimp butter. There are really two books in one here: the recipes and a "Dictionary of Foods and Techniques," wonderfully useful. A new standard, well-priced and highly recommended. SP
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.