A Table for Friends

May 18, 2020
Based in London and Venice, McAlpine (A Table in Venice) brings a British sensibility to Italian cuisine with more than 100 recipes geared toward both small and large dinner gatherings. The first 30 pages delve into the author’s strategies for menu planning while offering tips on table settings. Clever flavor combinations highlight the opening chapter of main courses, including sausages with grapes, and roast pork with honey-roasted persimmons. A section of simple and visually appealing sides features a carrot, cumin, and mint salad and roast plums. And an extensive collection of desserts puts an emphasis on fruit in choices like frozen berries with saffron white chocolate sauce, plus three different types of panna cotta—­vanilla, lavender honey, and salted caramel. Home cooks will want a conversion chart at the ready as the recipes are offered only in grams and liters, and perhaps a calculator for those wanting to reduce the portions for the many dishes designed to feed eight or more diners. A handier tool included with each recipe are the “hands on” and “hands off” times, which indicate how many minutes are involved in preparation and how many to bake, simmer, or freeze. This elegant and delicious collection is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

June 1, 2020
English food writer McAlpine (A Table in Venice, 2018) shares her simple philosophy in ultimate, easy-breezy entertaining: pick a star dish, wrap some sides and a pudding / sweet thing around it, make, and serve. Her guiding principles will have home cooks nodding in agreement: select seasonally available foods, avoid fiddly dishes, calculate timing, and kill starters?unless they're as uncomplicated as radishes, whole green olives, or salty crisps. Her star dishes may surprise, though, and not all are heavy protein. Chilled almond soup, couscous salad, poulet Anglais, and torta di maccheroni are just a few examples. Assisted by elegant color photographs throughout, home chefs will find a well-carved-out path to hosting a crowd-pleasing meal for friends and family. Appendixes list nearly 100 menus arranged by season, groups of recipe collections based on number of guests, and, perhaps most usefully, recipes grouped by how far ahead they can be made (from last minute to days in advance). She just might be a Martha Stewart successor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)