Cookbooks To Give Thanks For

By Mimi Sheraton

With restaurant fever still epidemic in the U.S. and the national passion for "take-out" almost as strong, it is a bit surprising -- and heartwarming -- that publishers keep investing in cookbooks. Clearly, they believe there are plenty of old-fashioned souls who persist in doing their own cooking, if not for workaday meals, then at least on weekends and for guests. In fact, that is the tone of this year's better cookbooks. They tend to emphasize dishes that are stylish and special, though without the fussiness seen in recent years.

American regional cooking remains well represented on the nation's bookshelves. But now, as palates tire of the green chili, blue cornmeal and black beans of the Southwest, attention is turning to the vivid and ethnically mixed cuisine of the Pacific Northwest -- with its salmon and oysters, wild berries and herbs, tree fruits and game. The best culinary guide to the region is Northwest Bounty by Schuyler Ingle and Sharon Kramis (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). The enticing recipes should inspire Americans across the country to try piquant specialties like pickled Walla Walla sweet onions and such cross- cultural inventions as Sichuan pepper-broiled salmon with cilantro sour- cream sauce.

New American cooking is the theme of The Trellis Cookbook by Marcel Desaulniers (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; $25). Unlike most recipes from restaurant chefs, these from the Trellis Restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg can be managed by mere mortals with only two hands. Some dishes have many steps (grilled smoked lamb with artichokes and slab bacon on fresh-thyme fettuccine), but Desaulniers outlines how to organize ahead. Corn and tomato fritters, roast loin of pork with walnut butter and a chocolate-praline ice cream terrine are winners.

If you think you've heard the last word on pasta, then you have not read Giuliano Bugialli's new work, Bugialli on Pasta (Simon & Schuster; $24.95). This time the exacting cooking teacher presents a magnificently clear illustrated work not only on the rolling and shaping of pasta but also on the preparing of artichokes, squid and other ingredients that go into sauces. In time for winter entertaining are such irresistibles as the pappardelle (wide noodles) with duck or lamb and cannelloni plump with a wild-mushroom stuffing.

Paula Wolfert's World of Food (Harper & Row; $25) is a solid, serious and sensuous collection of her favorite recipes, sprinkled liberally with her usual didactic asides. A specialist in the cuisines of Morocco, southwest France and the Mediterranean, Wolfert wanders afield and offers up not only caponata, the Sicilian vegetable appetizer, and the fragrant tagine stews of Morocco but also the lusty Alsatian casserole of meat, onions and potatoes known as backeoffe.

An even more individualized approach to food can be found in Sylvia Thompson's Feasts and Friends (North Point Press; $21.95), a beautifully evocative memoir recounting the author's dining adventures in California and Europe. The daughter of actress Gloria Stuart, Thompson learned good cooking at home in Hollywood, where dinner guests included Groucho Marx and Robert Benchley. Traveling around Europe, cooking while in and out of love, she developed an eclectic repertoire: from Russian fish soup to French vegetable soup with white wine, from Southern "transparent pie" -- made with quince jelly -- to an opaque Dutch apple pudding. The icing on the cake is a foreword by the incomparable food writer M.F.K. Fisher, the author's godmother.

The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum (Morrow; $25) is not for fair-weather bakers but an exhaustive scripture on lavish baking. If the recipes are brilliantly explicit, it is because Beranbaum has spent years teaching, and knows where amateurs usually go wrong. Basic cakes and fillings are included, along with how-to's on decoration. Among her creations are cakes that look like pinecones, forests and dotted Swiss cascades. There are even a few low- cholesterol recipes.

With Eastern influences on Western food still growing, curious cooks should welcome Bruce Cost's Asian Ingredients (Morrow; $22.95). It provides a clear delineation of the spices, herbs, fruits, vegetables, oils, vinegars and soy sauces that so many chefs are now using to accent European dishes. Cost offers sketches to help readers recognize exotic ingredients, along with shopping guidance.

Eastern sensibilities -- specifically the delicate seasonings of Japan -- also float through Elizabeth Andoh's An Ocean of Flavor (Morrow; $20.95). Andoh, an American who is married to a Japanese and has spent many years in Japan, makes a fine guide to that country's methods of enhancing the flavor of seafood without obliterating it. She explains as well the techniques of frying, poaching, grilling and cutting raw fish for the right textural contrasts and warns about pollutants and parasites. Fried soft-shell crabs in a spicy sauce, cold poached tilefish with mustard-miso sauce and fiddlehead ferns, and a careful, simple tempura recipe are among the enticements.

Those who have had their fill of the light and the lean may be ready for the solid fare of the Balkans. The Balkan Cookbook by Radojko Mrljes (Hippocrene; $24.95) is aglow with the juicy, garlic-perfumed grilled meats, winter-warm soups and aromatic oregano- and onion-flavored stews. From Greece, Turkey, Rumania, Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria come such delights as baked corn bread with pungent Serbian cheese, seductively oily stuffed vegetable dolmas and appetizers enriched with the region's classic mixture of dill, cucumber and yogurt.

The Metropolitan Opera Cookbook (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $30), edited by Jules Bond, features recipes from the stars of the great opera house. At first glance, it would seem a gimmicky celebrity come-on, short on substance. Not so. Opera folk tend to love food, and since they hail from so many countries, the collection is rich and varied. Like many Met productions, the book is visually gorgeous; in fact, it is too pretty to cook by. It would be nice to have a recipes-only version for the kitchen. With luck it would still include Sherill Milne's Hungarian goulash soup, Regina Resnik's cold stuffed veal roast and Placido Domingo's opulent zarzuela de mariscos, a symphony of shellfish, wine, saffron, olive oil, peppers and garlic.

Inevitably, there is culinary madness this season, with no fewer than three astrological cookbooks -- perhaps the perfect gifts for Nancy Reagan's new Bel Air kitchen. With such loony titles as Cosmic Cuisine (Harper & Row; $19.95), they stress the importance of choosing foods to suit one's sun sign. But while one claims that Cancers prefer a dish of spaghetti with a strong taste of the Mediterranean, another says they're inclined toward turnips. Alas, those looking for clear celestial guidance will find that their stars are crossed.