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Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks
 
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Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks [Hardcover]

Craig Claiborne (Author, Introduction), Pierce Franey (Author), Joan Whitman (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 12, 1999
The Best of Craig Claiborne is the very best, indeed.

From the master chef who first brought the flavors of the world home to the American table comes the signature collection sure to surprise and delight every kind of palate. With 1,000 delicious recipes covering everything from regional and ethnic dishes to haute cuisine, Craig Claiborne's magnum opus is an essential cookbook for every kitchen.

As food editor of The New York Times from the late fifties to the late eighties, Craig Claiborne has shared his passion for food with readers through his columns and more than twenty cookbooks. For this new collection, Claiborne's longtime editor, Joan Whitman, has selected the best recipes from Craig Claiborne's The New New York Times Cookbook (co-authored with Pierre Franey) and three other classic cookbooks, Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking, and Craig Claiborne's Gourmet Diet.

Among the distinguishing features of Craig Claiborne's culinary genius is the inspired way he marries flavors from all corners of the globe. As a gregarious host with a voracious curiosity, he has welcomed the world's finest chefs into his kitchen and has devoted himself to exploring authentic combinations of exquisite flavors. The result is the diverse repertoire that helped to revolutionize American cuisine.

The delicious recipes in this peerless collection range from classic American regional dishes like Southern Fried Chicken, Jambalaya, and New England Boiled Dinner to international delights such as the Mediterranean fish soup Bourride, Vietnamese Grilled Lemon Duck, Curried Thai Shrimp, Yakitori (Japanese Skewered Chicken), Cassoulet from France, Paella from Spain, Tangy Chinese Noodles, Ossobuco Milanese, Indian Keema with Peas, and Caribbean-Style Stuffed Crabs. These dishes represent the creative contributions of renowned chefs and gifted home cooks with whom Claiborne has maintained an active culinary correspondence for many years.

Particularly noteworthy here are the immeasurable contributions of the late Pierre Franey. The former chef of the acclaimed Pavillon restaurant in New York and author of the New York Times 60-Minute Gourmet series, Franey collaborated with Claiborne to expand the frontiers of fine cooking. Working as a brilliant team for more than twenty years, the two master chefs developed a culinary repertoire that rivals any in the world.

Cooks everywhere will be delighted to find the most sophisticated recipes, from the ethereal coulibiac of salmon to traditional chocolate truffles. How- ever, as Claiborne himself says, "It is certainly not all foie gras and truffles." The recipes range from simple to stunning, with flavors both robust and delicate, and are never beyond the grasp of most home cooks. The Best of Craig Claiborne contains an abundance of practical and enlightening advice and down-to-earth meals that often make use of leftovers and less expensive ingredients. In addition, many of the recipes have been updated to include low-fat alternatives.

The Best of Craig Claiborne is a celebration of the world's culinary masterpieces that belongs in every cook's library.


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the late 1950s through the '80s, Craig Claiborne was the food editor of The New York Times. As such, he was instrumental in acquainting Americans with the world's great dishes in recipes that worked. These appeared not only in his columns but also in the landmark cookbooks he authored, including The New York Times Cook Book and the Craig Claiborne's Favorites series. The Best of Craig Claiborne, written with longtime collaborator Pierre Franey, culls more than 1,000 of these recipes--dishes created by celebrated chefs and accomplished amateurs who famously trekked to Claiborne's home to share their cooking expertise. Claiborne fans and cooks wanting a globe-spanning selection of outstanding recipes will welcome the book.

The remarkable recipe range touches all menu bases--from appetizers, soups, luncheon dishes, and pastas, to entrees of all kinds, breads, sauces, and of course, desserts. Exemplary versions of traditional favorites such as roast chicken with mustard sauce, southern biscuits, chili, and linguine with clam sauce are presented alongside newer culinary canon members, such as Vietnamese grilled pork patties in lettuce leaves, braised Chinese mushrooms, pozole, poori, and sushi, among similar specialties. With signature dishes from Alice Waters (her goat cheese and prosciutto calzone recipe is a standout), Jacques Pépin, and Bernard Clayton (among others), and Claiborne's anecdotal sketches of dishes and their cooks, tips, and--above all--precise yet accessible recipes, the book should work for all palates and for cooks at all levels of expertise. --Arthur Boehm

From Library Journal

Through his columns and feature articles, Claiborne, food editor of the New York Times for more than three decades, taught hundreds of devoted readers how to cook. His longtime editor Whitman has compiled 1000 recipes from the wide-ranging New York Times Cookbook and several other of Claiborne's more than 20 cookbooks. Some of them may seem dated now, but it's amazing how far ahead of his time Claiborne often was: there's a whole section on making sushi from the New New York Times, for exampleAand that book was published in 1979! There's a Vietnamese soup, a shrimp dish made with coconut milk and tamarind (ingredients even most sophisticated cooks discovered only a few years ago), and bisteeya (the Moroccan squab pie now turning up on fusion restaurant menus). And there are also biscuits and other recipes from Claiborne's Southern heritage, French classics like Celeri Remoulade, and all-American dishes such as New England Boiled Dinner. Essential.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 960 pages
  • Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (October 12, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0812930894
  • ISBN-13: 978-0812930894
  • Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 2.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #377,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Average Customer Review
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of High Quality Bang for Your Buck in this Book, March 8, 2004
This review is from: Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks (Hardcover)
This book belongs to a special class of cookbooks where you get a whole lot of recipes for a low price per recipe. These books are not like `The Joy of Cooking' or `James Beard's American Cookery' where you get a lot of advice on cuts of meat, types of potatoes, and techniques for making an especially good pie crust. This type of book contains mostly bare bones recipes. They are one of the most common to find on the discount pile in the Borders foyer.

But, this book is a little different from most books of this class.

First, it is a collection of recipes from Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, and that is something special. As Paul Prudhomme states in his introduction, Craig Claiborne is one of the three most influential figures in American culinary writing in the last fifty years, along with James Beard and Julia Child. I suspect Claiborne's influence worked as much or more behind the scenes and may be less durable than the works of Beard and Child. What was public was almost entirely done in daily newspaper columns and reviews. Much of his other work was in the support of charity events and in the support of the careers of up and coming journalists such as Jim Villas and chefs such as Jeremiah Tower.

Second, this collection gains cachet by being the best of newspaper columns in the New York Times. Some very discerning editors picked them over at least twice. First, they were selected to appear in the paper. Then, they were selected from the best of these to appear in this book.

Third, the variety of dishes in this book is outstanding. The range of dishes is far better than, for example, a collection of 1000 Chinese dishes or the best 800 Jewish recipes. These come from around the world, from some of the best chefs in the world. My favorite finds are recipes culled from Danny Kaye, who has the reputation of being quite literally one of the finest Chinese cooks in the world, in his time. The sad fact is that the only remains of that talent are in the occasional recipe in collections such as this.

Fourth, unlike earlier large `New York Times' cookbooks edited by Claiborne, these recipes contain headnotes citing the source of the recipe and tips on their execution. The book also gives an excellent index of recipes by contributor, which is the way in which I was able to locate the recipes from Mr. Kaye. I'm certain these headnotes came from the newspaper articles in which the recipes were embedded.

If you like to have access to a large variety of dishes but do not wish to have a large cookbook library, this is the book for you. The closest competitor to this book may be `The New New York Times Cookbook' that has even more recipes, but no headnotes. This was my first cookbook and I believe every recipe I made from it was sound.

Highly recommended for all, especially those with a budget.

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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Best Of Craig Claiborne: 1000 Recipes from his New York Time, May 12, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks (Hardcover)
The recipes in this book are easy to use and wonderful. They cover every topic, as a basic cookbook, without going into technique. I had been hoping to have the same format as the columns had been; a complete menu idea, but that is the only disappointment in the book. It is "one more" basic cookbook for my shelf, but certainly a good o ne.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Must have cookbook, June 13, 2003
By 
Steve Snyder (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Best of Craig Claiborne: 1,000 Recipes from His New York Times Food Columns and Four of His Classic Cookbooks (Hardcover)
When in doubt about a particular recipe, I always turn to this book. Litterally a thousand classic recipes that always turn out to perfection. A must have.
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