Simple American Cooking

This offering from the copublisher of Peter Pauper Press and editor of Early American Cooking: Recipes from America's Historic Sites delivers what its title promises: simple cooking. The slim volume contains 67 standard American recipes, divided into New England, Southern, Midwestern, Southwestern and Western menus. New England boiled dinner, Boston baked beans and brown bread, apple pie, Irish stew (which falls here under Midwestern, not New England cuisine), cole slaw, chili con carne and peach cobbler all receive the usual treatment. To the editor's credit, the old chestnuts are prepared with real ingredients, nothing condensed or pre-packaged, and what the recipes lack in imagination is made up for in practicality. Necessary ingredients are readily available at the neighborhood grocery store, and methods and techniques are facile and straightforward. Pigs' feet stew with dumplings, avocado curry soup, fried abalone, pork with cellophane noodles will seem tame to sophisticated palates but may shake up average taste buds. Illustrations not seen by PW. (October)