Roger Verge's New Entertaining in the French Style

Monet's Palate - A Gastronomic View from the Gardens of Giverny

This book is an abreviated version of Entertaining in the French Style. This is its only fault. I bought the original edition out of curiosity since the recipes in the New Entertaining were so good. It turns out that some of the easier dishes in Entertaining were thrown out for the sake of brevity. These recipes are also very good and worthy of the attention of all lovers of the New entertaining. With Verge's recipes more is always merrier.

Not only does Verge offer some very easy to accomplish recipes, (I say easy, I am an experienced cook)) but he also offers wine suggestions which I really found helpful. The entire tone of this book is helpful, he will section off the book as to an entire meal, including wine and dessert. Mostly his style of eating the food, savoring the wine and dessert (all complimenting each other) makes it simple. Most of the ingredients are found by anyone who is proficient in the kitchen. He captures the spirit of enjoyment in fine dining...something Americans need desperately!!! We have lost the art of food.... that's why we are all shoveling fast food and horrible stuff from these "fusion chains" in. Viva la Roger!!!! Slow down, take pride in the food you have so beautifully created and sip your wine.

I bought this book some time ago and it is my favorite - notice that i have a lot of cooking books. Every recipe out of this book is well explained, easy to follow and turns out great. Every dish I tried out of this book was a success and earned many compliments by my guests who tried them. I don't at all agree with the above reviewer re. Verge's ingredients. All ingredients are available at a normal well-equipped grocery store and we live in the Mid-West not in NY or CA...But lets say you can't find one of the ingredients then just replace it with a similar item that tastes similar - it works fine. In sum, if you plan to bring a little more variety onto the table and your taste buds can handle more than the standard foods (pizza, hotdogs, hamburgers) then stick to this book. I hope I will not run out of Verge's recipes and am looking forward to add more of his cookbooks to my library.

This is a wonderful cookbook that not only delivers wonderful recipes but looks good at the same time. Roger Verge is informative and entertaining as he walks you through numerous planned meals. I have tried many of the recipes in this book and found all of them to be excellent.