Piret's: The George and Piret Munger Cookbook

Californians know Piret's as a chain of gourmet take-out shops and bistros run by the Mungers, who also teach cooking. This fine cookbook re-creates many specialties available in their shops as well as offers basic recipes for stocks, sauces and doughs used in the French country cooking that grounds the authors' style. The result falls somewhere between the Silver Palate and Julia Child cookbooks. Dishes range from rack of lamb to Mexican chili, but there is a decided elegance to all selections and an unusual precision and complexity in some recipes. The Mungers dutifully nod at many California food fashionssun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese, pizza, unusual sorbets and saucesbut their hearts, it seems, belong to France. October