Product Description

What is a best American recipe?
It's simple but sophisticated.
It tastes exceptional.
It's one you want to make again and are dying to share with your friends.
It introduces a surprisingly easy technique or gives you a new way to use a favorite ingredient.
It produces the best possible version of a dish.

For this edition, Fran McCullough, one of the nation's most respected cookbook editors, and Molly Stevens, a cookbook author and contributing editor for Fine Cooking, searched through hundreds of sources and then selected the very best -- 150 recipes in all.

You'll find recipes from the biggest names in food, such as the celebrity chefs Mario Batali and Bobby Flay; from esteemed cookbook authors, including Marion Cunningham and Deborah Madison; and from renowned food journalists, like Gourmet's Ruth Reichl and the New York Times's Amanda Hesser. You'll also get superlative recipes from home cooks, such as a scene-stealing side dish and an heirloom holiday dessert.

The Best American Recipes includes notes on the most popular ingredients, time-saving techniques, and the most useful kitchen tools. With crowd-pleasing recipes like Party Cheese Crackers, such weeknight suppers as Simple Salmon, and special-occasion dishes including Spice-Rubbed Turkey and Chocolate Truffle Cake, The Best American Recipes equips you with everything you need to be the most confident cook on the block.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #353749 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.com
Since 1999, the Best American Recipe series has offered top yearly formulas from books, magazines, the Internet, and even product labels. The Best American Recipes 2002-2003, edited by series founder Fran McCullough with Molly Stevens, offers 150 doable recipes that range from starters to desserts and drinks. The selection embraces both the dressy and the down-home, ranging from, say, Porcini Mushroom and Red Onion Tart to Shrimp with Garlic and Toasted Bread Crumbs. Dessert stopovers include Butter Toffee Crunch Shortbread and Valentino's not-to-be missed Chocolate Truffle Cake.

Are these the year's best recipes? It doesn't really matter, as McCullough has cast her net wide and drawn in a diversely appetizing selection. With a section on the year in food (sage, for example, is dubbed the herb cooks wanted "more than a little of lately"); headnotes that put the recipes in context ("New riffs on guacamole seems to spring up every year," say the authors in respect to Guacamole with Lemon and Roasted Corn); and Cook's Notes that make the recipes even more useful ("you can extend the marinating ... it will only add to the flavor," advise the authors of Pork Stew with Leeks, Orange, and Mint), the book is a something-for-everyone addition to a welcome tradition. Readers will also enjoy the foreword from Kitchen Confidential author Anthony Bourdain, which ends with a characteristic injunction to "cook free or die." --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
The latest volume in this annual series, with a foreword from enfant terrible culinaire Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential; A Cook's Tour) that concludes "Cook free or die," strives to be of-the-moment, but sometimes feels generic. The recipes collected from books, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet are perfectly serviceable and occasionally truly innovative (Grape Salsa from the San Francisco Chronicle). Each recipe appears with a source, a cook and a header from the editors, as well as helpful cook's notes derived from the testing of approximately 700 recipes during the process of compiling the book. For example, a recipe for Laksa (Malaysian Noodle Soup) from a handout at Ramekins, a California cooking school, has a header that offers an aromatic description of the finished product, as well as notes on variations, a recommendation for buying laksa paste and suggestions for leftovers. Certain recipes are notable for their techniques: Chickpea Salad with Four-minute Eggs from Food & Wine includes a reliable method for soft-cooking an egg so that it coats a salad like a dressing. McCullough (Low-Carb Cookbook) and Stevens (One Potato, Two Potato) produce a list of top-10 trends, and while some observations may seem stale (the return of butter, the popularity of grilling and the national obsession with chocolate) others (bread as an ingredient rather than on its own, "eggs over everything," and cabbage) do surprise.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

BOSTON GLOBE
"Suzanne Hamlin, co-editor with Fran McCullough of 'The Best American Recipes 1999,' has culled through thousands of recipes and has an astute awareness of what's hot." --

Customer Reviews

McCullough and Hamlin triumph in 1999 and 2000!
This review refers to "Best American Recipes 2000." I noticed that Amazon hasn't always segregated these reviews by year, so I include this information. The review for the 1999 edition is at the bottom, due to Amazon's silliness with this.

I have trusted Fran McCullough ever since she co-authored "Great Food Without Fuss," another book full of easy-but-perfect and unusual recipes. I also loved McCullough and Hamlin's "Best American Recipes 1999," so I bought this for my birthday. WOW. I have had it for 2 weeks, and I cannot stop cooking from it. Just from browsing all the books in "Best American Recipes" series so far, I get the feeling that McCullough/Hamlin is the best co-author team in the series, but I haven't had the others as long, so I'll report back when I've cooked my way through the later ones.

So far, I have made:

Stuffed French Toast with Lemon-Cheese Filling and Blueberries: impressed even the most jaded of palates
Puffy Maine Pancakes: the classic Dutch baby pancake
Fresh Fig, Gorgonzola, and Walnut Salad with Warm Port Vinaigrette: worth the price of the book for the salad dressing alone (requires reducing 1 cup of nonvintage port)
Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce: so easy, creamy, and lovely, but without any cream
Watermelon Salsa: a salad, actually. My husband and I devoured the recipe that "serves 4," and not because the recipe was skimpy!
Wine Grapes, Walnuts, and Olives: a magical transformation of basic high-quality ingredients. Great as a side dish, or on pasta.

All have perfect directions, incredible flavor, and helpful notes. Main dishes come with a "serve with" menu, with all the recipes included in the book. I love that! Who can resist a foolproof, perfect dinner party menu?

Both this book and the 1999 book have a whole menu for Thanksgiving dinner, including the turkey. Most years, I scour my hundreds of cookbooks and cooking magazines for the perfect menu, never trusting that a particular side dish or dessert will come out as promised. This Thanksgiving, the only hard thing will be deciding between the 1999 and the 2000 menus from the "Best American Recipes" series. From me, this is strong praise, as I have never in my 30+ years of cooking made a whole menu as written from a book or magazine.

Enjoy!

1999:

This review refers to "Best American Recipes 1999." Amazon sometimes prints a copy of the review under a different edition.

McCullough and Hamlin are a great team. They went to great lengths emailing everyone in the food world asking for the best recipes published in the preceding year. They came up with some real winners.

Lately, I'm addicted to the Watermelon Milkshake (yes, where else would you get a recipe that sounds so bad and tastes so good?) I have been freezing the watermelon so I can use Greek (drained) nonfat yogurt and still get that thick and frosty, made-with-ice-cream mouth feel. Lest you think I only like the book for inspiration and doctor/change the recipes, this is not true. I'm sure the vanilla ice cream version would blow my mind (and my diet!).

The Blueberry Lemonade is wonderful, and again, I never would have thought of it. Why not make a lighter, fresher version of blueberry pie in a glass? It's hot today, so I made mine in the blender with ice cubes instead of water.

Obviously, I really appreciate that every year of this series includes some non-alcoholic beverages that delight the taste buds. Enough of sickly-sweet punches!

Actually, clear and consistent goals are things that make this series great. Clearly, there is a Thanksgiving menu. Clearly, there are the nonalcoholic drinks. Clearly, there are summer salads and winter sides. Consistently, there are lovely brunch/breakfast specialties, often with the comment that one is perfect for the morning after Christmas. McCullough and Hamlin know how real people cook, what recipes they need, and they deliver!

Butter and Egg Soup For Newlyweds was as good as any "amuse buche" at a fancy restaurant, and I made it at the last minute on my own birthday!

This book has enticing recipe after recipe, with clear descriptions, clear directions, and perfect results. The "cook's note" next to each recipe helps, as does the suggested "serve with" menu and wine selection.

The suggested menus and wines disappear starting in 2003. I DO hope they are back for 2005!

Great Techniques -- Great Recipes
I am one of those cooks that has never had any formal training (beyond my mother/grandmother) -- so I appreciate the teaching and conversation beyond the recipe. For example, the book details homemade chicken soup and the technique for making an excellent base. This lets me experiment and expand on the ingredients that I like -- so that I can build my "perfect" recipe.

The recipes have all turned out well and at the same time, have taught me a lot about cooking. This is an excellent book for an aspiring home cook.

Great recipes
Now that I have gone through this cookbook, I need to go back and find the similar recipe books McCullough has done for the last four years. If this one is any indication, I predict that I will think I died and went to heaven.

I cannot wait to try some of the recipes that I earmarked in this book--including some unusual soups, the Garlicky Sun-Dried Tomato Spread (looks good AND easy!), a salad made with prosciutto and sugar snap peas, an Italian beef stew, and more desserts than I have any right to want to taste!

I especially liked the conversational tone of the book, the way the recipes are introduced and the tips that accompany them. It's kind of quirky, and I liked that!