Product Description

A culinary genius who helped change the way America eats, Sheila Lukins is the cook behind the phenomenal success of The Silver Palate Cookbooks and The New Basics Cookbook, with over 5 million copies in print. Now Sheila embarks on her first solo journey, visiting 33 countries on a cooks tour of cuisines, ingredients, and tastes. The result is pure alchemy--a new kind of American cookbook that reinterprets the best of the worlds food in 450 dazzling, original recipes. In addition, there are new wines to discover, menus to experiment with, ingredients to learn, spice cabinets to raid--and travelogues to savor. Main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club's HomeStyle Books and Better Homes & Gardens Family Book Service; and selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club. 444,000 copies in print.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197755 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 591 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Turn the more than 500 pages of this latest cookbook by Lukins ( The Silver Palate Cookbook ), and one grows almost giddy. From Argentinian barbecue to Mexican zarzuela, she includes nearly every incarnation of the international and edible. True, many cookbook writers are well-traveled, but few set out, as Lukins did, to create a cookbook with the feel of a travel album: illustrations and sidebars along make the volume a fascinating jaunt. Through conversations with home cooks and professional chefs in 33 countries, Lukins researched the ways that people cook and eat abroad, adapting cross-cultural recipes to American kitchens with flair. The table of contents clues us in to the breezy, chatty style of its author: breakfast foods are clustered under "Room Service," while appetizers and aperitifs fall under "Wish You Were Here." No attempt is made to cluster all the recipes from a region together, which helps to give the text its considerable charms. Chicken soup, for example, is presented in a chart, tabulating 22 countries' versions of this classic. 350,000 first printing ; BOMC Home Style main selection, QPB alternate.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover
ONE OF AMERCA'S BEST-LOVED COOKS COOKS THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS Introducing global cuisine, one-world cuisine, fusion cuisine-Sheila cuisine. In a work of pure alchemy, Sheila Lukins helps set a dazzling new course for American cooking in 450 recipes that marry the best of the world's tastes, techniques, and ingredients.

"In my mind, Sheila Lukins is one of the most important people in the food world. She's passionate...she's caring...she's dynamic...and she's made an enormous contribution to the way we eat today." -Paula Wolfert author of The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean

"Sheila Lukins is one of the most delightful and generous people, and creative and discerning cooks. I would follow her anywhere, as well as through a recipes." -Barbara Kafka author of Party Food

About the Author
Sheila Lukins is the cook and co-author of The Silver Palate Cookbook, The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook, and The New Basics Cookbook, among the most popular cookbooks ever published. She is also the food editor of Parade Magazine.

Customer Reviews

Watered down originals
Being a great fan of the Silver Palate cookbooks, I lunged for the lone copy at my local bookstore. It is truly a might volume of international culinary delights and chock full of information.

However, as I am Asian and have traveled to several of the countries written about in the book, I find most of the recipes watered down versions of the originals. These recipes are also lengthy and call for ingredients that you'd have to make a special trip to the market or deli for.

No offense meant to anyone, but I find that the recipes here have also been tailored for American tastes. I've always thought that the point in trying out new cuisines was to appreciate and understand the uniqueness of them, and not try to make localized copycat versions.

Somewhat of a disappointment
Following the success of the New Basics and her other books with Julie Rosso, I was frankly disappointed by this book. Many of the recipes are pretty anemic, watered down versions of the real McCoys. I would have liked to see more intense spices and flavors, and less "Americanized" versions of what should have been intriguing international cuisine. I expected more from Sheila Luckens.

Great results every time
Oh come on! This is in no way a terrible book, i agree that the way it is layed out can be a little confusing but cook books should be merited on their recipies and not really on the design aspect. Every meal I have cooked out of this book has been absolutely gorgeous and my wife and I keep returning to it again and again. Every time we entertain and cook from this book all our guests comment on the quality of the food and several have bought this book after sampling one of its recipies. As a previous reviewer remarked you could (probably) pick a recipie at random and use it to entertain with knowing it would be a great meal. To 'a reader from Eugene' please get past the layout and try the coq au vin, chicken and date tagine or the velvety curried shrimp and then tell us you paid too much.