A selection of menus and recipes for evening cocktails and buffet dinners providing instructions for preparing hors d'oeuvres, casseroles, salads and desserts.

A completely revised and updated edition of the cookbook that set the standard for entertaining, featuring new recipes and old favorites with all the great taste, convenience, and ease of preparation that has made it the entertaining bible for more than 500,000 cooks. We all know that stirring risotto in the kitchen while your guests are gossiping in the living room is no fun. That's why the recipes in The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook can be prepared in advance and refrigerated or frozen until your party. While sharing all-new recipes for delectable dishes like Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Mediterranean Couscous Salad, Michele's Corn Pudding, or an astonishing Prepare-Ahead Chocolate Soufflé, Burros and Levine have also included fifty favorites from the original cookbook, like Sherley's Parmesan Puffs, Baked Imperial Chicken, Green and Gold Squash, and Lois's Original Plum Torte (the most requested recipe ever reprinted in The New York Times). To make your life even easier, the book has an ingredients list with mail-order sources and lists of recipes for specific needs and occasions. Best of all, there are ten foolproof menus, from an Old-Fashioned Casual Dinner for 6 to a Brunch for 16 to a Cocktail Party for 24, each with a shopping list and a two-week "countdown game plan" that will take the fear out of entertaining for even the first-time host.

"We want to go back to a time when life was not so complicated -- or, at least, when we look at it from a distance, it was one that seemed much simpler. One ofthe few ways most of us can get there together is through our food." -- from the Introduction In these turbulent times, bestselling author and acclaimed New York Times columnist Marian Burros felt the change in America's eating habits. More and more, Burros noticed that people were setting aside their salads and instead reaching for foods like meat loaf and mashed potatoes, while others longed for the cookies, cakes, and pies their moms used to bake. In Cooking for Comfort, Burros shares more than 100 recipes for comfort food. Some are classics, some are streamlined for modern tastes, some have a contemporary twist, and some are unabashedly indulgent. But all are stuff from which taste memories are made. Known for her ability to create deeply flavorful food and foolproof recipes, Burros shares mouthwatering recipes for dishes like classic Maryland Crab Cakes, Cream of Tomato Soup, the ultimate Toasted Cheese Sandwich, the Perfect BLT, Picnic Fried Chicken, Meat Loaf and Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, and Great Roast Chicken. They will soothe your mood and satisfy any craving. To calm that sweet tooth, Burros has included more than forty recipes for delectable sweets. Among them are rich and creamy Michael's Chocolate Pudding; no-fail Lemon Meringue Pie; luscious Coconut Cake; and Giant Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Ganache, all of which will feed your soul as well as your stomach. The recipes are as stress-free and enjoyable to prepare as they are to eat, and they will appeal to any level of home cook. Burros has also provided wine suggestions and special notes on ordering specific ingredients, as well as extensive cook's notes that offer helpful hints and variations on recipes. With Cooking for Comfort, Marian Burros has turned out yet another cookbook that is destined to become a classic.

Southern humorist Julia Reed celebrates Southern food, Southern women, and the Southern penchant for enjoying good times in this collection of her food writing. Julia Reed spends a lot of time thinking about ham biscuits. And cornbread and casseroles and the surprisingly modern ease of donning a hostess gown for one's own party. In Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties Julia Reed collects her thoughts on good cooking and the lessons of gracious entertaining that pass from one woman to another, and takes the reader on a lively and very personal tour of the culinary -- and social -- South. In essays on everything from pork chops to the perfect picnic Julia Reed revels in the simple good qualities that make the Southern table the best possible place to pull up a chair. She expounds on: the Southerner's relentless penchant for using gelatin why most things taste better with homemade mayonnaise the necessity of a holiday milk punch (and, possibly, a Santa hat) how best to "cook for compliments" (at least one squash casserole and Lee Bailey's barbequed veal are key). She provides recipes for some of the region's best-loved dishes (cheese straws, red velvet cake, breakfast shrimp), along with her own variations on the classics, including Fried Oysters Rockefeller Salad and Creole Crab Soup. She also elaborates on worthwhile information every hostess would do well to learn: the icebreaking qualities of a Ramos gin fizz and a hot crabmeat canapé, for example; the "wow factor" intrinsic in a platter of devilled eggs or a giant silver punchbowl filled with scoops of homemade ice cream. There is guidance on everything from the best possible way to "eat" your luck on New Year's Day to composing a menu in honor of someone you love. Grace and hilarity under gastronomic pressure suffuse these essays, along with remembrances of her gastronomic heroes including Richard Olney, Mary Cantwell, and M.F.K. Fisher. Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties is another great book about the South from Julia Reed, a writer who makes her experiences in—and out of—the kitchen a joy to read.

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A hip, elegant, and completely irresistible guide to throwing (or attending) that most American of institutions--the cocktail party. With informative lists and sidebars, quotations from celebrated wits, and more than 135 whimsical yet instructive illustrations, The Art of the Cocktail Party will turn any host or hostess into the talk of the town. Illustrated.