The Best American Recipes: The Year's Top Picks from Books, Magazines, Newspapers, and the Internet

BLB's Mini Blts, the one recipe I've tried from this book, is a great hors d'oeuvres. I am intending to try Pomegranate-braised Brisket with Onion Confit at the earliest appropriate opportunity. As an earlier reviewer noted, this collection is fun and useful because it is compiled from so many different sources. Sophistication is here. Earthy simplicity is here. Funky quirkiness is here. Ethnic diversity is here. Buying the current edition of this series every year is an efficient and economical way of updating my culinary skills.

This series is the absolute best. I have them all. Recipes are reasonably easy, creative, and meal menu suggestions are a big help. For those cooks who need pictures to tell them what the heck they are eating, this probably isn't for you. But if you are into any sort of forward meal menu planning, then pick this and the other years' editions up. An experienced palate also helps so that room temperature dishes are not a shock, but a style to which the Italians and French have become accustomed.

Fran McCullough is well known in the food bood business and I've come to trust her taste. I'm automatically favorably inclined towards any book she's associated with.This series started out strong and has only gotten better over the years. I love the editors comments in the headnotes and they are great at discerning trends.Also there are lots of really simple but very tasty dishes here, along with a few real challenges.