Holiday Cookbook Roundup

Food & Wine Cocktails 2007

Each month, Food & Wine magazine covers a dozen or so great drink recipes; then at the end of the year, they put them all in an annual. I buy it each year because it's such a handy compendium of recipes for delicious, innovative, and unconventional drinks. Whether you're sharing a cocktail with your significant other or making hundreds for a party, there's something here for every taste.

This year, there are more than 160 new drink recipes ranging from the almost traditional Sazer­ac – but with cognac and rye whiskey instead of just rye – to the wild and sweet drinks like Chocolate-Raspberry Truffletini. Kudos to the bar at Jeffrey's, which rated inclusion with its Rosemary Martini, a delicious concoction of vodka, homemade rosemary syrup, lemon juice, and sparkling pear wine.

I buy both the Food & Wine Annual Cook­book – with the whole year's recipes – and the Food & Wine Cocktails annual each year. The quality and ingenuity of the recipes offer at least a year's worth of something new and fun. Then the next year's annuals come out, and you can start all over again.