'Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Appetizers'
Edited by Chuck Williams
Recipes by Amy Sherman
Photos by Tucker + Hossler
Oxmoor House -- 2009 (hardback)
Buy it at Amazon

Ready to move beyond dips and carrot sticks for your soirees, but not ready to face the Full Martha? This is the guide for you. The book is divvied into sections highlighting each season's freshest ingredients and simple, elegant ways to show 'em off. Bonus -- a goodly bit of space is devoted to party planning tips, basic recipes (mayo, risotto, pizza dough), a glossary, techniques for handling veggies and a guide to what is freshest when.

Takeaway tips: Freshness is your best ingredient. Using seasonal ingredients means you'll need to do little to adorn them -- just make sure to use cooking methods, seasonings and pairings that show them off to their best advantage, and add flavor in layers. Specific methodologies are generously shared throughout the book.

Quality of pictures: Appetizing -- if a little washed out by the matte paper. Not step-by-step instructive, but oriented toward the finished product.

We tested: Pan-Seared Spring Lamb Chops with Mint-Pistachio Pesto and Olives and Feta Marinated with Lemon and Ouzo
Recipes were incredibly easy to follow, accessible, thorough and aided by sidebars offering further explanations of ingredients' flavor profiles and best methods for use. Lovely balance of veggie-friendly dishes and slightly heartier fare.

Worth the investment: Would make a great hostess or shower gift, or smart inspiration for anyone who's ready to bump their parties' sophistication level up a notch or two.

Really -- when the heck else are you going to give yourself permission to invest in an igloo cake pan and festive sugar snow for yourself or your favorite cook or eater? I've got my eye on the Dorset cocktail shaker, Shun Ken Onion boning knife and a new mandoline. Dare to dream.

Williams-Sonoma:
Friends and Family Event
Saturday December 20th through Wednesday December 24th Williams-Sonoma is having a Friends and Family Event at retail stores only. We will offer 20% off all merchandise in the store. See stores for details and visit www.williams-sonoma.com to find a location near you.

Pottery Barn:
Spend $100 and get $20 back
Friday, December 19th through Sunday, December 21st spend $100 at a Pottery Barn store and get a $20 gift card that can be used from 12/26/2008 – 01/31/2009. See store for details and visit www.potterybarn.com to find a location near you.

Know of a super kitchen-centric holiday sale? Share it in the comments below.

For some reason, my extended family likes to get together on Friday for the big Thanksgiving dinner. I think this practice dates back to when there were a lot of doctors in the family who always had to work the holiday but could more easily get the Friday after off. However, for several years, a smaller group of us would also gather on Thanksgiving day to gorge ourselves on smoked turkey.

This wasn't just any smoked turkey either. It was the Willie Bird from Williams-Sonoma. I tend to be skeptical of gourmet foods purchased from spendy, trendy stores, but let me tell you, this particular turkey is worth the price. We would stand around as my cousin Melissa carved up that bird, all hungrily waiting for our first taste. If I was lucky, after we had eaten more than our fill, there would be a few scraps leftover for sandwiches (this turkey is a revelation when paired with brie).

If you are still looking for a Thanksgiving turkey and considering buying a pre-cooked one instead of roasting your own, the Willie Bird is an excellent way to go. Just make up your mind soon, as this turkey needs to be ordered by noon on Sunday to arrive in time for the big day.

Speaking of Dean & Deluca...lately I've been on a bit of a kitchen spending spree. Not only have I been going to the regular grocery store to buy basic things like eggs and milk to force myself to cook and eat at home, but I have been shopping for gourmet food stuff as well as kitchen utensils, gadgets, and equipment.

For the most part I have been loyal to...no one! Because I do a lot of the shopping online, I skip from Crate and Barrel for ice cream bowls to Dean & Deluca for pretty little things like spice tins to Williams-Sonoma for a pepper mill. I even found myself hoarding all those 20% and $5 off coupons to Bed, Bath and Beyond and getting Brita filters there. In other words, I have no favorite.

However, I know that many people do. At the very least, people have favorites for certain types of things, and might include small local stores. Where are your favorite places to shop?

Here's an interesting item for the next time all you hepcats and kittens host a dinner party: retro plastic dinnerware emblazoned with carcass maps. For the noncarnivores out there, a carcass map is one of those endlessy fascinating diagrams that hangs in butcher shops.

My meat and fire-loving alter ego Joey Deckle tipped me off to Food for Thought plates, which are the brainchild of designer Charles S. Anderson. You probably can't read the text, but the piggy plate shown here is labeled swine.

If you have an inkling that the word "swine" implies some sort of tongue-in-cheek value judgment about meat eaters you're not far off the mark. The other three plates in the set are steer, lamb and mutt, which in this case is not short for mutton, but simply denotes dog. Sure they're a far cry from Williams-Sonoma's elegant Je demande du boeuf carcass map platter, but I still wouldn't mine having a set in my cupboard.

I think that a lot of parents like the idea of having their kids help them in the kitchen. Not only can it be good, fun "family time," but it is more educational and more stimulating than sitting in front of the TV. Williams-Sonoma Kids in the Kitchen: Fun Food is a cookbook with 25 kid-friendly recipes for ages 8 and up, though the recipes and text are easy enough for younger kids to understand as long as there is a parent around share some of the workload.

The primary goal of the book is to use step-by-step photos to teach kids some popular, basic recipes and the culinary skills needed to make the dishes. Most of the recipes have variations suggested, which will give kids a chance to be a little more creative once they get the hand of cooking. The six chapters cover "kid classics," noodles/pasta, roasting/baking, vegetable sides, sandwiches and after-school snacks. Each chapter is peppered with tips and alerts, which will both help to prevent mishaps in the kitchen and to clean them up if they do occur.

Williams-Sonoma has some of the recipes online, including Sesame Fish Sticks, Lasagna, Sautéed Green Beans, Turkey Wrap and a Strawberry Smoothie,

The first things that will attract you to the books in the Williams-Sonoma collection are the mouthwatering photographs of the dishes. They've probably caught your eye in their stores. But beyond the eye candy, their books usually have good recipes and, in their Essentials series, a lot of useful information about the topic at hand. Williams-Sonoma Essentials Of Roasting is their definitive guide to roasting and probably a good reference to have on hand if you're thinking of starting up the tradition of the Sunday (or Monday, as tomorrow is Christmas) roast in your home.

The book begins, as do others in this series, by covering the basic techniques of oven roasting and the equipment that you'll probably need to be successful, like a good roasting pan. It has over 130 recipes for both traditional and updated dishes, including meats, vegetables, fish and fruits, as well as a variety of sides to complement them.

If you haven't already seen your local market transform into a haunted castle and pumpkins falling all over themselves in giant displays, well, you must not be living in the US. Halloween is upon us, and technically, it's still September.

Nonetheless, I fell in love with these adorable pumpkin-shaped cakes, which are turned out of a mini pumpkin pan from Williams-Sonoma, and had a burning desire to bake pumpkin bread this instant. Whatever cake or bread batter you put in there comes out looking like the top (or bottom) half of a pumpkin. You can decorate and serve just the halves, or put two together to make a whole pumpkin.

However, I did realize, of course, that if you were to buy this pan just to make mini pumpkins, that would be a waste of $32. Why not get the mini brownie bundt pan instead and use it every season? They are the exact same product.

Oh, those tricky product marketers at Williams-Sonoma! They almost had us!

Williams-Sonoma cookbooks are excellent. The recipes are always beautifully presented, with mouthwatering pictures to illustrate each dish and clear, precise instructions. Some of their books are small, in the one or two subject genre, but not only are they fairly comprehensive, but there are so many of them that just about every subject is covered. Williams Sonoma's Essentials of Baking is not one of those small volumes, however.

The book is more than 300 pages and covers everything from yeast breads to pies to cookies, in addition to including a number of sauces, custards and frostings that complement the baked goods. The recipes are beautifully photographed and well-written, complete with a number of substitution suggestions and alternative preparations (food processor vs stand mixer, for example). The best part is the introduction of basic techniques. It covers equipment, ingredients and a few techniques/skills that every baker needs to know (creaming butter and sugar, zesting oranges, checking yeast), all very precisely and without getting too pedantic; the section is limited to a perfect 20 pages. If you use the book as a guide, you won't make a misstep when you bake Potato Rolls, Tarte Tatin, Shortbread or Pain au Chocolat.

Food bloggers are fans of this book, too. Check out the recipes for Oatmeal Crunch Squares, Rhubarb Cobbler, Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies and Cream Puffs, complete with tempting photos.

I've completely given up on the commercial diet ice cream sandwiches because I've come across the cutest way to make ice cream sandwiches at home. Williams-Sonoma has ice cream sandiwch molds in the shape of a star, a pig, and cow, available as a set of three for $14. You use soft cookies, cake, heck, even a chewy brownie to for the bottom and top, and layer ice cream or frozen yogurt in the middle.

So maybe they'll never be homemade "diet" ice cream sandwiches if you use a brownie and deliciously creamy ice cream, but at least they're small. And though the catalog suggests you get your kids to make them, make them for yourself and burn the calories while doing it.

I'm not a fan of kitchen "gadgets" beyond a very good knife and maybe a melon baller when necessary (but then, when is a melon baller every necessary?), but this avocado slicer from Williams-Sonoma really piques my interest.

I always just do the old wrenching-out of the pit, making longitudinal slices, then scooping out the flesh with a large spoon, but this might be helpful for those of us who want to make pretty, presentable uniform slices or dices of avocado. The tool also pits the avocado, but I can't tell how it does it from the picture.

It's $15.

Recipes for home cooks tend to be formulated for a specific numbers of diners, usually 2, 4 or 6, which are all fairly common family numbers. Most recipes are easy to double, so you can turn a chicken dinner for four into a meal for eight quite easily. Recipes for entertaining and parties, however, are different. You generally want small or bite-sized portions and need a single recipe that will feed a house or yard full of people. Fortunately, there are several cookbooks on the market that can help you out here by providing you with lots of recipes that a specifically geared towards pleasing crowds. These are some of my favorites. Some are more traditional and some are more current, but all are great additions to home libraries.

• Party Food by Barbara Kafka
• Entertaining by Donna Hay
• Williams-Sonoma Entertaining
• Joy of Cooking: Party Foods and Drinks
• Just a Bite by Gale Gand

This isn't a complete list, by the way. What are your favorite entertaining cookbooks?

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

 
Williams-Sonoma circulated a recipe this week for Goat Cheese Crepes with Fig Jam, and just the photo alone is making a bunch of us drool. And it's making a splash around the blogs, too – The Expatriate Chef, for instance, ponders the thyme folded into the crepe batter and wonders aloud about the various possibilities of using fresh herbs in desserts. I say, if you can make pesto out of mint (and believe me, you can), there's more than enough room in the cookie n' cake world for parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.