cover image The Best from Libby Hillman's Kitchen: Treasured Recipes from 50 Years of Cooking and Teaching

The Best from Libby Hillman's Kitchen: Treasured Recipes from 50 Years of Cooking and Teaching

Libby Hillman. Countryman Press, $25 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-88150-279-4

Webster's defines treasures as accumulated wealth. In the case of Hillman, the treasures involve an accumulation of prized recipes , collected (from friends, colleagues, travels and culinary experiments) and presented in a single volume by the cook and educator. Hillman's storehouse of useful procedures cover the gamut of a meal: the mastery of breadmaking, the taste of soups, vegetables, salads (accompanied by homemade dressings) and varied delicacies (e.g., ``Eggplant Caviar,'' ``Shrimp Remoulade,'' and blini) before undertaking a lavish main course of stuffed, roast chicken or steak au poivre, and concluding with such desserts as Danish red fruit pudding with cream or unbaked Swedish applesauce cake. Hillman combines fundamental cooking knowledge, adventure and imagination to build on the student's skills, as well as to lure insecure cooks with a desire to prove themselves. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Jan.)