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The Buffet Book
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Excerpt from a review accompanying the first edition published by Viking Press:
With The Buffet Book, every cook can please a crowd: Carole Peck shows us a fresh and flexible way to entertain today so people who want to give a party can enjoy it as much as their guests.
Celebrity chef Carole Peck really loves a party. So much so that she's put on close to 2,000 of them in her 28 years as a professional chef, caterer, and owner of The Good News Cafe in Connecticut. Weddings, New Year's Eve parties, summer cookouts, spring garden parties, family reunions, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. She's done it all and finds that, if you're entertaining more than a few guests, buffets beat sit-down dinners every time.
In The Buffet Book, Peck and coauthor Carolyn Hart Bryant have pulled together many of Peck's best menus and decorative suggestions from hundreds of buffet parties and transformed them into a guide to creating festive occasions all year round. Beautiful photographs by Alex McLean illustrate the ideas, and show how anyone can pump extra sparkle into a party inexpensively, with whimsical party favors and table decorations made of baskets of heirloom fruits and vegetables, edible flowers and herbs, and simple bouquets of flowers from the host's garden.
Buffets are in tune with the way people eat and entertain today. Formal sit-down dinners where the hosts have to jump up and down between each course mean the hosts can't enjoy their own party. Buffets have a lovely informality that makes guests feel more relaxed, too. From the beautiful array of foods before them, they serve themselves the dishes they prefer in the portions they choose. There's something for everyone. Guests who love cilantro, salsa and shiitake mushrooms happily co-exist with guests who don't.
As both a chef and a party planner, Peck believes the only way to cook is to choose foods at their most flavorful peak. That means cooking with an eye to the seasons rather than trying to have blueberries in January or asparagus in August. The Buffet Book showcases twelve menus containing 175 recipes. The menus reflect not only seasonal foods, but the changes in our preferences as the year unfolds. The refreshment and stimulus we seek in spring and summer differs from the warmth and comfort of a successful fall or winter party. Thus, the Spring/Summer section sees a "Flower Garden Party" and a "Summer Cookout," while Fall/Winter brings a "Harvest Moonfest" and an "All-Through-the-House" holiday buffet.
At her Good News Cafe in Connecticut, Peck serves a global cuisine, and her delight in the world's melange of tastes materializes throughout this book. Her menus draw inspirations from Asia, the Mediterranean, India, even the All-American backyard cookout for dishes that sit happily alongside French-and Italian-style fare. Salmon and two-potato hash on Portobello mushrooms, Artichoke pasta and wheat berry salad, and Carrot and fig muffins are just a few of the recipes that combine ingredients in new but deliciously logical ways.
Though professional chefs and caterers will find The Buffet Book inspiring, Peck has created these menus for the time-pressed home cook. The emphasis is on simplicity of preparation. Those with a taste for sophistication and contemporary dishes will find their palates pleased by recipes such as Cherry soup, Harvest layered potato cake, Grilled swordfish with fresh tomato vinaigrette or Double berry cobbler. Each of these dishes takes only a few steps to prepare. In fact, the only recipe with more than a half-dozen steps is the elaborate "Queen of Hearts" chocolate buttermilk wedding cake -- and if you can't pull out all the stops for a wedding, when can you?
Especially valuable are two sections at the end of the individual recipes: "Notes" and "Planning Ahead." In the "Notes," we get a professional chef's inside tips on little touches that make a big difference in flavor. For example, one tip talks about using the various kinds of Asian fish sauces to give a dish authentic taste. Another discusses a successful method for precooking pasta, and a third discusses which vegetable water to save for stock. There are also tips on ways to simplify preparation or vary the recipes to suit individual tastes.
Because much of the appeal of a buffet meal stems from the feeling of bounty, each menu has several dishes, often with multiple appetizers and desserts. However, every dish can be prepared ahead of time, and the "Planning Ahead" tips tell exactly how and when, which goes a long way toward relieving the stress so many people feel about entertaining. And, with so many dishes to choose from, each menu can be tailored to the event, the number of guests, and the cook's own preferences.
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