The Best American Recipes 1999

For this ground-breaking collection, two leading food authorities scoured every conceivable printed source for the year's great recipes: cookbooks, magazines of every kind, national and regional newspapers, press releases, newsletters, the Internet -- even the backs of boxes. From literally thousands of possibilities, they narrowed the field to 500 for testing, before choosing 111 of the very best. Many of their discoveries are brilliantly simple, like the delightfully retro meatball appetizer that's making the rounds of Manhattan cocktail parties and the supremely easy Moroccan-inspired weeknight chicken supper that won its creator a million dollars in a cooking contest. The roast chicken recipe that's currently considered by food insiders to be one of the two best in the world is revealed here, as is the recipe for luscious black-bean burgers, a favorite of the food editor of a major women's magazine. And gone public at last is a well-known novelist's provocative spin on linguine with clam sauce, which food lovers have been excitedly e-mailing all over the country, as is the latest update from one of the nation's most talented pastry chefs, a new twist on her definitive hot fudge sauce. You'll find memorable dishes for holidays and other special occasions: a cider-cured turkey, an exceptional wild rice soup from Minnesota that solves the problem of what to do with the leftover bird, a trick to make a cheap supermarket ham taste exceptionally elegant, and the formula for a basic cookie dough that can be easily varied to produce fifty different kinds of cookies. You'll find breakfasts and brunches, starters and drinks (both alcoholic and non-) and salads and side dishes. There's even a recipe for banana biscotti for dogs. Throughout, the editors have added cooking notes, tips, and serving suggestions based on the results of their extensive testing. Whether the source is a virtuoso chef or an obscure home cook, a famous movie star or a fireman in a small town, each dish is perfectly calibrated to produce a single reaction among all those who taste it: "I must have that recipe!"