The Best of Gourmet: The World at Your Table

`The Best of Gourmet 2006' by the editors and writing staff of `Gourmet' Magazine appears better to me than I was expecting, especially if you are fond of entertaining between 8 and 12 people at a clip. If you are a regular subscriber to `Gourmet', I guess this book can be something of a tough decision, as virtually all the material herein is from the magazine. In fact, I would be willing to bet that practically all the recipes from the magazine in the last year are in this volume. I suspect it should be labelled `Everything but the Duds'. The book has three main sections. The first, `The World at Your Table' is a collection of nine (9) menus based on specific themes from around the world such as `A Tapas Dinner Party' and `Al Fresco Dining Sicilian Style'. Two things which immediately appeal to me about these menus aside from the excellent selection of themes is the large number of recipes per menu and the fact that the recipes are written to serve up to 12, rather than the usual 4 to 6. The second, `The Menu Collection' is also recipes organized by sixteen (16) different themes conceived by season and occasion rather than by international location. Samples are `An Early Spring Dinner' and `Relaxed Holiday Buffet'. These recipe are scaled more to the typical family rather than for a party with guests, as most are written for the usual six (6) servings. The third section, `The Recipe Compendium' is organized like a conventional cookbook, except that it covers some topics such as breads, breakfast, and sandwiches which is not usually covered in conventional cookbooks. Although I subscribe to `Gourmet', I have never found it as good a source on general cooking as `Cooks Illustrated', `Saveur', or `Fine Cooking', but it is a very good alternative to, for example `Cooks Illustrated' in that its recipes are created more to impress than to be practical for the amateur cook. Like all recipes published in periodicals, they have the advantage over individual authors in that they are reviewed by a standardized vetting process carried on by both culinary and literary (copy) editors, and I happen to know the `Gourmet' copy editor is very, very good. If you reallylike `Gourmet' and you don't have a lot of cookbooks, this is an excellent `value added' collection of their recipes, which takes up less space than 12 issues. If you already own 500 cookbooks, it still has value in that it has some of the best entertaining material I have seen this side of Martha Stewart. Better than I expected!