Gourmet's America

`Gourmet's America' is one of two different types of recipe collection books put out by `Gourmet'. This is a special theme volume. The other variety is the yearly `best of' collection which features the cuisine of a major world city such as Paris, Rome, or San Francisco. The best feature of both types of volumes is their presentation of recipes as complete, themed meals which make the whole series of collections a great source for people who really love to entertain based on a culinary theme. This volume's themes are principle American regions such as New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Heartland, the Mountain states, the Southwest, California and Hawaii, and the Northwest and Alaska. Unfortunately, these regions are so big that any reasonably cohesive menu from, for example, the Mid-Atlantic states will represent only a miniscule portion of that region's cooking. For example, a Pittsburgh based Polish menu would be totally foreign to a Baltimore crabfest. I can't argue with the recipes, however. I checked out the ones from the region I know best (the same Middle Atlantic states) and found good to superior renditions of what happened to be very close to a Pennsylvania Dutch themed collection. I still have the problem with the fact that if what you want is a good source of American cookery, for $25, you can get a spanking new copy of James Beard's magnum opus, `James Beard's American Cookery', with upwards of 3000 recipes, very nicely organized by occasion and ingredient. I also detected a certain absence of features which seemed to arrive at Gourmet when Madame Ruth Reichl took over the reins at `Gourmet'. There is no `make ahead' schedule so useful for `do it yourself' entertaining. I don't know if Ruthie was personally responsible for adding that feature, but I do sense the `Gourmet' volumes done in the last five years seem to be just a bit better than in previous years.