cover image Reading Between the Recipes: A Year's Worth of Inspired, Innovative, Often Outrageous Ideas on New England Food and Cooking

Reading Between the Recipes: A Year's Worth of Inspired, Innovative, Often Outrageous Ideas on New England Food and Cooking

Leslie Land. Yankee Publishing, Inc., $15.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-89909-143-3

Veteran food writer Land offers an eminently readable, friendly and knowledgeable cookbook. Hers is a thorough and sensible approach to New England cuisine. The book is divided into seasonal chapters, and particular attention is paid to local produce at its most advantageous. April heralds sweet-and-sour green cabbage with ham and pecans and ""Damn Fancy'' chocolate pie, and winter brings stuffed meat loaf and East-West tempura pancakes. Maine shrimp, blueberries and lobster are rhapsodized, and winter tomatoes abominated. The refreshing chapter entitled ``The Salmon in the Bathtub,'' which instructs how to poach large fish in the family bathtub, is entertaining in a way that cut-and-dry recipes usually aren't. And it's a daring writer, indeed, who proudly asserts her hatred for rutabagas while defending the lowly and oft-misunderstood oatmeal. Land simply loves food, and she expresses her passion eloquently. Illustrations not seen by PW. (August)