Ladies and gentlemen, start your ovens

Originally printed by a British publisher in 2000, the book is clearly intended for a European audience; brill, whiting and partridge don’t make frequent appearances in U.S. stores. Many recipes call for corn syrup; a careful parsing indicates this may be his don’t-try-this-at-home equivalent for liquid glucose, but it struck me as lazy.

Many recipes require Ramsay’s haute equivalent of special sauce (he calls it “classic vinaigrette”) — a bland dressing with a base of olive and peanut oils. Worse, each had specific, inexcusable flaws, some so obvious that they were exposed by the accompanying photo. 

A dish of poussins (young chickens) said not to trim the accompanying baby bok choy, then later specifically advised to trim it; it also suggested the geometrically improbable feat of serving whole poultry atop whole bok choy. Yet the photo showed neatly trimmed leaves.

A “quick dish” — fricassee of scallops and chanterelles — took nearly two hours thanks to an elaborate “light cream” sauce made with romaine lettuce. The accompanying image clearly displayed cream sauce, yet the ingredient list lacked a single ounce of dairy. Instead, the lettuce’s subtle flavor was drowned by … vinaigrette.

For a chef of Ramsay’s caliber, who unloads time-consuming preparations on his “Hell’s Kitchen” hopefuls and asks much the same of his readers, these gaffes are simply @##@%^ inexcusable.    —J.B.

Back to school
Linda Carucci, winner of a prestigious Cooking Teacher of the Year award, has put her classroom knowledge between the covers of "Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks" (Chronicle, $23). She opens with general tips on equipment and technique, but those impatient to skip to the recipes will find tips sprinkled throughout those margins too.

Her rock-simple garlicky chicken breasts are now the preferred quick chicken fix in my household. If I remember in the morning to toss frozen breasts into a Ziploc with Carucci's simple marinade together before heading to work, I'm guaranteed tender, flavorful meat that can be served in a multitude of ways when I return home.

Carucci notes that she grew up eating hearty Italian food and just assumed everyone else did the same. Raised myself on an Italian aunt's long-simmered spaghetti sauce, I was skeptical of Carucci's rigatoni with sausage and mushroom ragu recipe, in which the sauce was much quicker. Surprise, surprise, it was a divine delight, and none the worse for its speedy prep time. And I know I'll be making the sweet, melt-in-your-mouth savory corn pudding again.

When I made some recipes, I found myself skipping Carucci's "recipe secrets," the tips listed in the margins. But when I tried a dessert, grilled peach sundaes with caramel sauce, I found each of the offered tips to be useful ones, kind of like getting a recipe from your mom over the phone and having her add in tips learned from a lifetime of cooking.     —G.F.C.

It’s a dog’s life
Usually, I review cookbooks by trying recipes on a range of friends with picky or adventurous palates.  However, when testing “Cooking the Three Dog Bakery Way” (Broadway, $14), I was unable to find a single tester who did not often enjoy eating dirt.  Even the neighbor dog that only eats the bits, not the kibbles, also deigns to eat grass.

My omnivorous poodle, Buster, adored the doggie meatloaf — not surprising, since the ingredients were not much different from people meatloaf. All the recipes are almost food you would eat yourself, which is part of the Three Dog Bakery philosophy. The Kansas City-based national chain takes the concept of a natural, additive-free diet and applies it to canines.

Fortunately for those of us who barely have time to cook for the humans in our family, that philosophy doesn’t require you to cook for your dog every day — the recipes included are mainly for occasional treats, or times when your dog is ill and needs something gentle.  I half-expected to see a recipe for doggie chicken soup.  But the entrees are great for Buster’s delicate stomach, and the doggie peanut brittle is his new reward for not barking at the mailman.

What I found most useful, though, were the sidenotes on dog health and feeding scattered throughout the book. It’s just the right level of information for people who are dog-crazy, but not dog-insane.  Fair warning, however: If puns make you groan, you will find this book “arf-fully” hard to get through, no matter how much you love your pup.    —Hannah Meehan Spector

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