California Cooking and Southern Style

November 1, 2019
House Beautiful contributor and memoirist Schultz (The Bee Cottage Story, 2015) worked with her top-notch personal chef, Stephanie Valentine, for this ode to combining Southern and Californian menus and hospitality that calls to mind a Martha Stewart entertaining tome. Together, they provide menus and decoration for 18 occasions that span the familiar and novel: Thanksgiving feast (with duck lasagna!), ladies' lunch, night at the opera, and shooting party picnic (complete with shooting clays), among others. (Of course, not everyone has access to an expansive Los Olivos, California ranch as a staging site.) Interspersed with the 100 recipes and color photographs of dishes and celebrations are cooking tips like preheat cast-iron cookware in advance (it doesn't preheat evenly) and select caviar with firm eggs and no liquid. Then there's always the choice to mix and match among the foodstuffs: Jambalaya, potatoes au gratin, Chicago slides, fattoush, sausage biscuit bites, and brown sugar tart. Explaining a very personal ethos on the art of entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)