Cooking for a Crowd

Great menu ideas, good recipes. This cookbook is a gem! A lot of quantity-cooking cookbooks have recipes for things like slop and canned-cream-of-whatever-soup special. This book has simple, classy recipes along with strategies for serving a crowd of people. All of the recipes I have tried from this book have been great. Once you see her proportions and suggested quantities, it is also easy to scale other favorite recipes to serve a larger group of people. This contains recipes and menus for different-sized crowds and for different occasions (from elegent dinners to picnics). Excellent resource. Highly recommended.

This is a very practical book, fool of wonderful recipes. Very well written, simple to follow. I've only had a chance to try a couple so far, but with great success. Black and Orange Halloween Party for 24 was simple enough to do, and an instant hit. The Chocolate Chili with Beef, Pork, and Black Beans was to die for. I can't wait to try other dishes from this book. Highly recommend this cookbook.

`Cooking for a Crowd' by Susan Wyler has come out in a new, substantially larger edition, based on a volume originally published in 1988, and I, for one, am really happy to see it. Among all the various genres of cookbooks, those dedicated to cooking for large numbers of people are very difficult to find. Even many works on meals for entertaining only cover recipes for six to twelve. Of those books I have reviewed, the most notable exception is Martha Stewart's now classic original book, `Entertaining' which gives us recipes for 25 or more. As a dedicated viewer of the Food Network, I can also say with some authority that in all their programming for the last four years, I have seen but one show done on Tyler Florence's `Food 911' show which gives recipes for feeding a large crowd. Even otherwise excellent cookbooks such as David Waltuck's `Staffmeals' doesn't give us recipes for serving a large group of people, and I am sure he feeds a lot more than eight or twelve people at his restaurant's staff dinner. And, the only other book I have seen (the name escapes me, as I have not yet reviewed it) costs a whopping $60 retail for something no larger than the usual $35 Culinary Institute of America or `Cooks Illustrated' volume. I have to believe there is no great market for this subject, although I am amazed that I can find more books on the cooking of Tuscany than I can on cooking for a church fundraising dinner. This, of course, is not true of baking, especially bread baking, as there are many books that deal seriously with professional bread baking and techniques for multiplying recipes by relatively large amounts. Cookbook publishing executives must simply never hear of any crying need for these kinds of books, or, cookbook authors simply have little interest in writing them. Before exploring Ms. Wyler's book, lets think out loud a bit on what it takes to make four to six interesting dishes for fifty (50) people. I have some grounds for doing this, as I have been a sous chef in a church kitchen where we have done exactly this for the last several years. First, you need dishes that can be made ahead, refrigerated for a day or two, and heated up at the last minute. Second, you need some dishes such as salads that do not require reheating, and will also not wilt down overnight in the refrigerator, in order to not overload your ovens. Third, dishes with relatively inexpensive and common ingredients are best. You do not want to price your macaroni salad to $5 a portion by adding 100-year-old balsamic vinegar. Fourth, you probably want ingredients that are available the year around, and are of reasonable quality the year around. Thus, apples, white mushrooms, broccoli, dried pasta, and ground beef are excellent ingredients while asparagus, dandelion greens, peaches, and grapefruit may not be good the year around. Fifth, you want recipes where amateurs can do the prep work, and I don't mean dedicated amateur foodies. Sixth, you need dishes that

This is a cookbook where the directions are clear, the results sophisticated and delicious and the cook still able to enjoy the party when the festivities begin. Whether the crowd in question fits around the dining room table or spreads out to the backyard patio, the menu suggestions in COOKING FOR A CROWD are imaginative, mouth-watering and fail-proof. This is the kind of cookbook written by someone you wish would invite you over to her own home. Or someone you could---with the help of this book---happily entertain at yours!