Cookbooks A Gour-Maybe Can't Live Without: The Balthazar Cookbook

love the look of this book - beautifully done from cover to cover

The Balthazar Cookbook by Keith McNally, Riad Nasr, and Lee Hanson is a more recent addition to my collection. Most of my cookbooks tend to not focus on a particular type of food: in this case, French. Balthazar is a brasserie, not a bistro located in the SoHo area of Manhattan. They cook 750 pounds of fries (frites) a day according to the book's introduction. This in itself made me want to own the book - no place that cooks 750 pounds of peanut oil frites can be bad, right? However, what REALLY made me want to own the book is the collection of delicious brasserie recipes: from Roasted Beet Salad to Duck A L'Orange, to Spaetzle and Halibut a la Barigoule (you'll see the Halibut in an upcoming post). They work perfectly the gour-maybe philosophy - great results, doable steps (some recipes more challenging than others) and recipes that you can make your own to a large extent, once you have mastered them. Yes, please!