The 175-plus recipes in The Great Chefs of America Cook Kosher prove that a kosher kitchen can provide food lovers with a wealth of creative contemporary pleasures. There are earthy dishes such as the Warm Leek and Potato Soup from Campanile in Los Angeles and Sweet Potato Salad from Chris Schlesinger's East Coast Grill in Boston, and more elegant flavors such as Dover Sole Poached in Vermouth from Georges Perrier's Le Bec Fin in Philadelphia. Mostly, this is flavorful, satisfying food for both family and company meals. The value of some recipes in this book is that they come from chefs whose restaurants are now closed or who have moved on to other work. For example, there are entries by Joyce Goldstein, formerly of Square One, Barbara Tropp of the China Moon Cafe, whose San Francisco restaurants are now closed, and by Deborah Madison, from her time spent cooking at Cafe Escalera in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The sections on salads and side dishes and on desserts include particularly unexpected choices, such as Grilled Onion Salad with Shaved Parmigian, Sweet Potato Salad, Cranberry Linzertorte, and Nectarine Blueberry Blintzes. Each recipe in the book is marked to indicate if it is dairy, meat, or parve. The spiral binding makes this handsome book easy to use. Its sales benefit the Jewish National Fund. --Dana Jacobi
