New York Cookbook: From Pelham Bay to Park Avenue, Firehouses to Four-Star Restaurants

Love this book. I've found the recipies easy to follow and oh so tasty. I'm getting more as presents.

Cooks Magazine recommended this cookbook as being very authentic. I bought it because of their review. They were absolutely right. The recipes are original/authentic New York complete with history and original photos. It's a great read even if you never make any of the recipes. I highly recommend this book.

For years, Molly O'Neill wrote the food page of the New York Times Magazine, and this book is essentially her collected wisdom, a valuable addition indeed to any culinary shelf.The cookbook looks and feels like it should be a more modern version of an American staple-food cookbook such as The Joy Of Cooking. It isn't glossy or elaborately photographed, but once you open it up, you realize you're in a different league of cuisine. Thanks to New York's immigrant traditions it doesn't focus on any particular national cuisine - instead giving recipes for the food you find in the City; everything from latkes to jerk chicken to asian-influenced noodle dishes. Every recipe I've tried has worked marvelously, and few of them are terribly difficult. The recipes are broken down by course/type of food (e.g. pasta) rather than region of origin.She's included little anecdotes about food, life in New York, and the lives of some of the chefs whose recipes she's included in the book. Unlike many, this cookbook is actually amusing to read.On a side note, the cookbook had a cameo in the recent movie "Proof of Life."

My wife and I have numerous cookbooks and we often are forced to season everything "to taste". When cooking from this book the food comes out with flavor. Along with flavor the book also provides recipes that other cookbooks would not advertise because they are too intense. One such recipe is a cake that requires 4 blocks of chocolate and 16 eggs. This recipe would not rank high on the health rating scale but is delicious. My recomendation is if you think the recipes from Better Homes & Gardens are "sinful" or "spicy" stay away from the New York Cookbook but you are looking for something more....enjoy.

I haven't always been impressed with Molly O'Neill's food column in the New York Times magazine: while it's always interesting, the food is frequently complicated and relies heavily on expensive, obscure ingredients. This book came as a pleasant surprise, therefore. This is one of those rare cookbooks that is both a joy to read and a genuine source of recipes. I'm a pretty novice cook, and everything I've cooked from this book has been a success. This is also one of the few all-purpose cookbooks I've encountered that's genuinely international. And Katherine Hepburn supplied O'Neill with the best brownie recipe I've ever encountered. I keep this cookbook on my kitchen counter, and I've given a copy to my mother. I can't think of higher praise than that.

I have cooked many of the recipes in this book, and they all turned out great! It's the cookbook I look at first when I want to cook something interesting. You have got to try the Tuna Rockefeller -- superb!