The New Indian Cuisine for Fearless Cooks and Adventurous Eaters Ismail Merchantýs Indian Cuisine, the celebrated producerýs first collection of recipes, was hailed by the New York Times as one of the ten best cookbooks of the year. Now, in Ismail Merchantýs Passionate Meals, the author leads fellow cooks further along on his odyssey, offering over a hundred new, tantalizing recipes. The collection opens with a series of delicious appetizers to whet dinersý appetites, from refreshing lassi to spicy vegetable fritters. Main courses, including meat, poultry, or seafood, represent the author at his most creative, lending American staples like veal, turkey, and even hamburgers exciting new dimensions. Passionate Meals closes with a selection of Indiaýs superb breads, pickles, chutneys and sweets, which Merchant, following Indian custom, shares as a gesture of goodwill and friendship. For grand entertaining, as well as for casual and delicious cooking out of the ordinary, Ismail Merchantýs Passionate Meals is a welcome reminder that food still has the capacity to nourish and be an adventure.

His partnership with director James Ivory has yielded a succession of acclaimed and award-winning films, including A Room with a View, Howard's End and The Remains of the Day. But Merchant's talents extend into the culinary world as well, as evidenced by this exquisite collection of over 100 recipes from his native India.

Ismail Merchant's account of the filming of A Room with a View is really a song in praise of the Tuscan table. For while Merchant recounts the problems - both hilarious and daunting - in trying to shoot a movie in the crowded tourist mecca of Florence, his most passionate prose is reserved for those moments - and there were many of them - when he and his cast and crew stopped to sample the bounty of the Tuscan countryside and the world-famous creations of the Florentine kitchen. Accompanied by production shots and stunning still life photographs by Derrick Santini, Ismail Merchant's text lets the reader wander behind the scenes in the shooting of a major motion picture. We learn how, for example, a "view" was created from a room that, in fact, had no view, and how, amid angry demonstrators and hungry pigeons, fully dressed stars and extras managed successfully to complete the famous scene in the Piazza Signoria. But between takes, Ismail Merchant always returns to the table, whether it is set at Florence's famous Il Cavallino restaurant or in the stately Villa Maiano, whether it is really only a picnic spread out on a hillside or tripe eaten on the street. And, when not at the table, Merchant is in the markets, sampling the fruit and vegetables fresh from the farm that give Tuscan cooking its unique character. When the tale has been told, and the last meal eaten, to satisfy the reader's inevitable hunger, Merchant provides seventy recipes from antipasti to desserts that can be successfully prepared in any kitchen.

Interviews with the team that created the films Howard's End, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, The Remains of the Day, The White Countess, and The City of Your Final Destination, among many others

A KCRW Top 10 Food Book of 2021 A Minnesota Star Tribune Top 15 Cookbook of 2021 A WBUR Here & Now Favorite Cookbook of 2021 The James Beard Award–winning and New York Times best-selling compendium of the paper’s best recipes, revised and updated. Ten years after the phenomenal success of her once-in-a-generation cookbook, former New York Times food editor Amanda Hesser returns with an updated edition for a new wave of home cooks. She has added 120 new but instantly iconic dishes to her mother lode of more than a thousand recipes, including Samin Nosrat’s Sabzi Polo (Herbed Rice with Tahdig), Todd Richards’s Fried Catfish with Hot Sauce, and J. Kenji López-Alt’s Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin. Devoted Times subscribers as well as newcomers to the paper’s culinary trove will also find scores of timeless gems such as Purple Plum Torte, David Eyre’s Pancake, Pamela Sherrid’s Summer Pasta, and classics ranging from 1940s Caesar Salad to modern No-Knead Bread. Hesser has tested and adapted each of the recipes, and she highlights her go-to favorites with wit and warmth. As Saveur declared, this is a “tremendously appealing collection of recipes that tells the story of American cooking.”