Everything Personal

Trends in cookbook publishing change drastically from year to year. Every popular cuisine has received an in-depth "lite" or "low-fat" treatment. Fusion cooking, the every-ingredient-in-the-world in one dish mish-mash of flavors had a great run, and to date, most of the regions of Italy have already been explored. This fall's most interesting upmarket titles are very personal explorations of regional cuisines or culinary areas. Readers can dine in Chicago chef/restaurateur Rick Bayless's mexican kitchen or enjoy the anecdotes and photos of life on the Provençal farm of food writer Patricia Wells. Each of the authors adds to a body of work with these new books, which offer mature and insightful presentations of personal creations derived from years of pleasurable study.

Oklahoma natives Rick and Deann Groen Bayless are proprietors of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago, two of the country's best-known interior Mexican restaurants. Sampling recipes from their newest work, Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen (Scribners, $35, hardcover), proves to me that the success of their restaurants is based on more than the location in a hot media market. Long before they opened their restaurants, the Baylesses were frequent travelers to Mexico. They ate and cooked their way across the republic many times in the process, learning from and building working relationships with many of Mexico's most important native culinary figures. Many of those respected cooks receive credit in the beginning of this new book: cookbook author and culinary travel guide Marilyn Tausend, chef/authors Lula Beltran and Maria Dolores Torres Yzabal and frequent Austin visitor UNAM gastronomy professor Ricardo Muñoz.

Bayless freely admits that his books are not ethnographic collections of recipes; his role is that of translator. He bases his work on what he describes as "artifact recipes gathered in 25 years of traveling and cooking in Mexico" that are translated to the American kitchen with a passion and genuine reverence for their Mexican culinary heritage. The new book begins with a section entitled "Essential Flavors of the Mexican Kitchen," building blocks which are important components of many dishes in the rest of the book. Each essential recipe is followed by a list of the traditional dishes that utilize it and Bayless also offers suggestions he calls "Simple Ideas from my American home." Most of the essential recipes are for sauces, salsas and flavoring pastes which contain instructions for roasting, broiling, toasting and grilling techniques necessary to develop the distinctive layers of flavor in authentic Mexican cooking. The Essential Roasted Tomatillo-Serrano Salsa renders a tangy Tomatillo Guacamole and is wonderful napped on grilled chicken or shrimp. Mastering the Essential Roasted Poblano Rajas with seared white onions and herbs opens up a whole range of possibilities for everything from an excellent Roasted Poblano Crema to quesadillas, tacos, and omelettes.

The soup section seemed an appropriate place to start cooking during some recent cool weather. Silky Golden Squash Blossom Crema is a truly elegant first course, garnished with thin slices of the delicate flower. There is a variation which allows for the use of yellow squash when blossoms are unavailable. The hearty Oaxacan Black Bean Soup with chorizo is a meal in itself with hot tortillas. Perhaps the most interesting soup is the Mushroom-Cactus Soup made with tangy roasted nopales and woodsy tasting mushrooms such as shiitakes accented with epazote, hoja santa and cilantro. The roasting and toasting of all the ingredients takes a while but the resulting flavor is remarkable.

After days of soups, I was determined to try something else and chose Bayless's version of the traditional special occasion cake in Mexico, Pastel de Tres Leches. The Three Milks Cake calls for sweetened condensed milk, canned milk and whole milk. Chef Bayless has substituted cajeta (Mexican goat's milk caramel) for the sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream for the milk. The finished product is justification enough for a fiesta, divinely light and delicious with fresh fruit and strong coffee. Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen is a useful and accessible collection of recipes and techniques which will allow the cook to duplicate authentic Mexican flavors in American homes. The self-described "translator" communicates these recipes very well indeed.

Fans of food writer Patricia Wells will be pleased with her newest publication, Patricia Wells at Home in Provençe (Scribner, $40, hardcover). In her five previous best sellers, the award-winning international journalist has always presented recipes of chefs, trattoria owners, butchers, and fishmongers encountered in the course of her work. This new book is her first compilation of personal recipes. They are interspersed with anecdotes and photos about the rustic Provençal property she and her husband bought several years ago and turned back into a working farm surrounding a warm and inviting home. The Wells farm at Chanteduc with its outdoor bread oven, olive grove, small fruit orchard, vineyard and year-round garden is really the star of the book. Wells' recipes are the natural result of having what she refers to as a "living food encyclopedia outside my door," home-cured olives, wild mushrooms picked in the woods on her property and black truffles harvested from beneath the soil of her vineyard. She also introduces the reader to the vegetable vendors, fishmonger, and butcher in the nearby village of Vaison who obviously recognize their neighbor's passion for good food and were generous enough to share some of their own recipes with her.

View of the vineyards and the Alps from Patricia Wells's farmhouse office

While some of the recipes would surely benefit from shopping in a Provençal market or living on a working farm, the majority of what Wells offers is perfectly within the reach of the American home cook. The key to reproducing her recipes is to choose seasonal fresh ingredients and prepare them rather simply. The Chicken with Tarragon and Sherry Vinegar produces such fragrant, sensuous sauce that it should be paired with rice or pasta for maximum enjoyment. Wells' neighborhood butcher shared Monsieur Henny's Rabbit Bouillabaisse, a divine concoction with saffron, pastis and fennel, laced with the garlic and red pepper mayonnaise rouille, a spicy sibling of aioli. The recipe works equally well with chicken.

The sunny aroma of Provençe can be experienced in your kitchen with the preparation of the Lemon Lover's Tart, a dessert which incorporates a hint of lemon zest in the pastry crust to build the layers of flavor.

Each of Wells' recipes is followed with serving suggestions, menu ideas, and wine recommendations. The volume is graced with lovely Robert Freson photographs of the food, the house, the surrounding farm and many of the village vendors the author describes. The vegetable chapter begins with a picture of her vineyard taken from Wells' office window that certainly stirred some longing in my heart for a better workday view. Patricia Wells frequently opens her Chanteduc home to friends and students who attend her cooking classes. For those of us who don't know her or don't have the money for the trip, this wonderful culinary memoir is nice to suffice.