When Saint Augustine wrote his Confessions he was facing, and responding to, a growing spread of asceticism in the Roman world.

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves — including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox — devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger — a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay, gold ... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.

Meanwhile, back in Europe ...

The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession — her child.

While ...

Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead ... and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.

Tracing symbols to their cultural, religious, or mythological origins, this informative book explores a rich array of objects and concepts which contain hidden or encoded meanings behind their ordinary, outer appearance. An invaluable aid for artists, writers, and all those who search for the deeper significance lying within the ordinary and everyday. 1,500 entries. 900 illustrations.

Maria Polushkin Robbins has compiled an astonishing array of quotations about cooking and dining from centuries of observations, numbering in the hundreds. They range from the philosophical to the ridiculous. Included are memorable quotes by Nora Ephron, Julia Child, Lewis Carroll, Vladimir Nabokov, and many more. Line drawings.

Adrian Bailey, wine-magazine editor, food journalist, and author of several cookbooks, brings the culinary know-how; and Philip Dowell, contributor to the Time/Life Foods of the World series, furnishes the photographic excellence for this innovative and useful food guide. The setup is elegantly attractive and extremely practical. Part I is all pictures (Dowell spent more than a year collecting the color plates), with similar food items (usually life-size) shown together on one page for easy comparison. Divvied up among a number of food categories—such as herbs, oil, cheese, and vegetables, dried pulses, fruit, baking goods, and pasta, fish, poultry, game, and sausages, coffee, tea, and alcoholic drinks—each pictured ingredient is followed by a brief but informative paragraph explaining its origin, uses, and flavor. Take "galangal." It's identified as the ground, dried root of a Chinese plant, ginger-peppery in taste, and used in curries and liqueurs.

Part II is the text reference section, wherein each spice, seaweed and pickle, each grain, lamb cut and liqueur is categorized and described. Followed by a comprehensive index, this pictionary of foods was clearly created with dedication and love, to instruct, assist, and gratify the food enthusiast. With 200 pages of sumptuous color photographs and 100 pages of supportive text covering 2,000 cooking ingredients, Philip Dowell's and Adrian Bailey's kitchen reference is a culinary godsend, a scholarly success, and a work of art. —Stephanie Gold

Can you tell whether a recipe will work before you cook it? You can if you really know what's cooking.

In the long-awaited CookWise, food sleuth Shirley Corriher tells you how and why things happen in cooking. When you know how to estimate the right amount of baking powder, you can tell by looking at the recipe that the cake is overleavened and may fall. When you know that too little liquid for the amount of chocolate in a recipe can cause the chocolate to seize and become a solid grainy mass, you can spot chocolate truffle recipes that will be a disaster. And, in both cases, you know exactly how to "fix" the recipe. Knowing how ingredients work, individually and in combination, will not only make you more aware of the cooking process, but transform you into a confident and exceptional cook — a cook who is in control.

CookWise is a different kind of cookbook. There are over 230 outstanding recipes — from Snapper Fingers with Smoked Pepper Tartar Sauce to Chocolate Stonehenge Slabs with Cappuccino Mousse — but here each recipe serves not only to please the palate but to demonstrate the roles of ingredients and techniques. A What This Recipe Shows section summarizes the special cooking points being demonstrated in each recipe. This little bit of science in everyday language indicates which steps or ingredients are vital and cannot be omitted without consequences.

Among the recipes you'll also find some surprises. Don't be afraid of a vinaigrette prepared without vinegar or a high-egg-white, crisp pâte â choux. Many of the concepts used here are Shirley's own. Try her method of sprinkling croissant or puff pastry dough with ice water before folding to keep it soft and easy to roll.

CookWise covers everything from the rise and fall of cakes, through unscrambling the powers of eggs and why red cabbage turns blue during cooking but red peppers don't, to the essential role of crystals in making fudge. Want to learn about what makes a crust flaky? Try the Big-Chunk Fresh Apple Pie in Flaky cheese Crust. Discover for yourself what brining does to poultry in Juicy Roast Chicken.

No matter what your cooking level, you'll find CookWise a revelation. Different people will use CookWise in different ways: Home cooks will value CookWise as a collection of extraordinarily good recipes.The busy chef can use CookWise as a reference book to look up and solve problems. Major headings are shown in the Contents and 42 At-a-Glance summary charts make problem solving quick and easyBeginning cooks can use CookWise as a howto book with easy-to-follow recipes that produce dishes looking and tasting like the work of an experienced chef.Food writers and test-kitchen chefs who are developing recipes can find the formulas and tips for successful recipes,Anyone who wants to improve a recipe can use CookWise as a guide. Here is how to make cakes moister, a pate A choux drier and crisper, a dish lighter or darker in color; how to make muffins peak better, cookies spread less, or a roast chicken juicier.Everyone who cooks needs to be able to spot bad recipes and save the time, money, and frustration that they cause. Many of the At-a-Glance charts point out specific problems.

CookWise is not only informative, it's engrossing, and many sections react like a mystery story. The knowledge you gain from its pages will transform you, too, into a food sleuth, an informed and assured cook who can track down why sauces curdle or why the muffins were dry — a cook who will never prepare a failed recipe again!

Make every Christmas a cookie craft Christmas! The holidays offer just the right combination of cold weather and family togetherness for cookie crafters to elevate their skills to showstopping new heights. With more than 60 new Christmas cookie designs, along with festive New Year’s cookies and lovely Hanukkah treats, Cookie Craft Christmas delivers colorful inspiration to cookie decorators just when they need it most.

Each spread features a full-page, close-up photograph of one cookie cutter shape with detailed decorating instructions on the facing page. Some pages feature one gloriously decorated cookie, while others might feature two or three interpretations of the same shape — ornaments in complementary colors, Christmas trees decorated in varying styles, or gingerbread men wearing a rainbow of colors and patterns.

Decorating instructions are as simple as tinting cookie dough green before baking Christmas trees or as intricate as piping hair on a gingerbread grandma, creating a frilly pattern for her apron, and decorating her dress using a pretty feathering technique. Techniques are described in full in a Decorating Glossary, and cookie and icing recipes are included.

Fresh inspiration and fabulous decorating ideas fill the pages of this handy little sourcebook. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who has ever picked up a pastry bag.

Publisher's Note: 

The chart on page 17 gives ingredient quantities for making royal icing with meringue powder. Please note that you should use only 4 teaspoons of meringue powder for 2 cups of confectioners' sugar in both the piping and the flooding recipes. (The table incorrectly gives the meringue powder quantity as 4 tablespoons.) This will be corrected in reprints of the book. Our thanks to an alert reader for finding and pointing out this error and our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

From Morocco’s savory little dishes—Filled Pancakes, Fennel and Olive Salad, Sweet Tomato Jam—to a celebration of "Dishes from the Palace," here are all the tastes and scents of Moroccan cooking. Spicy kebabs, rich vegetarian and meat tagines, perfect couscous, and rosewater-infused desserts are just a few of the pleasures waiting to be discovered in Cooking Moroccan. 250 color photographs explain special techniques and show finished dishes; ingredients integral to each cuisine are featured in special expanded focus sections, and cultural tips—a discussion of the traditional Moroccan mint tea service, a look at the spicy tradition of chorizo sausage—immerse the reader in regional cuisines. The practical and inspirational meet in this lavish exploration of Moroccan cuisine.

"An indispensable cookbook."
- Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue

When Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of Southwest France was first published in 1983, it became an instant classic. This award-winning book was praised by critics, chefs, and home cooks alike as the ultimate source of recipes and information about a legendary style of cooking. Wolfert's recipes for cassoulet and confit literally changed the American culinary scene. Confit, now ubiquitous on restaurant menus, was rarely served in the United States before Wolfert presented it.

Now, twenty-plus years later, Wolfert has completely revised her groundbreaking book. In this new edition, you'll find sixty additional recipes - thirty totally new recipes, along with thirty updated recipes from Wolfert's other books. Recipes from the original edition have been revised to account for current tastes and newly available ingredients; some have been dropped.

You will find superb classic recipes for cassoulet, sauce perigueux, salmon rillettes, and beef daube; new and revised recipes for ragouts, soups, desserts, and more; and, of course, numerous recipes for the most exemplary of all southwest French ingredients - duck - including the traditional method for duck confit plus two new, easier variations.

Other recipes include such gems as Chestnut and Cepe Soup With Walnuts, magnificent lusty Oxtail Daube, mouthwatering Steamed Mussels With Ham, Shallots, and Garlic, as well as Poached Chicken Breast, Auvergne-Style, and the simple yet sublime Potatoes Baked in Sea Salt. You'll also find delicious desserts such as Batter Cake With Fresh Pears From the Correze, and Prune and Armagnac Ice Cream.

Each recipe incorporates what the French call a truc, a unique touch that makes the finished dish truly extraordinary. Evocative new food photographs, including sixteen pages in full color, now accompany the text.

Connecting the 200 great recipes is Wolfert's unique vision of Southwest France. In sharply etched scenes peopled by local characters ranging from canny peasant women to world-famous master chefs, she captures the region's living traditions and passion for good food.

Gascony, the Perigord, Bordeaux, and the Basque country all come alive in these pages. This revised edition of The Cooking of Southwest France is truly another Wolfert classic in its own right.

Greeted upon its publication in 1983 as one of the truly great works of culinary art, Paula Wolfert's The Cooking of South-West France is an exploration of the gastronomic delights of one of France's most extraordinary regions. While its cuisine makes use of sophisticated ingredients like foie gras, truffles, and Armagnac, it is, at heart, rustic, abounding in such deeply flavorful dishes as cassoulets and the delicious preserved meats and poultry known as confits. In her five years of research Wolfert has collected and refined over 150 recipes from both local home cooks and some of France's greatest chefs, and has produced a book anyone who is serious about food will want to own.

The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean refers both Paula Wolfert's love of great food and the pioneering spirit that has inspired her to travel across the globe many times over in search of the world's best recipes. In all of her remarkable books, she delves with tireless enthusiasm into her research and writing, ensuring each recipe's authenticity and accessibility. In The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, she brings readers and cooks into the kitchens that produce the healthy home cooking that is the trademark of such lands as Macedonian, Turkey, Syria, and the countries on the Black Sea.

Wolfert's food dazzles the palate. Her book begins with recipes for sauces and dips, including two walnut and pomegranate sauces; soups include Anatolian Sour Soup and Macedonian "Green Cream." Meat, poultry, and fish dishes include eleven varities of kibbeh, Duck with Quinces, and Skewered Swordfish. Her sumptuous recipes for vegetables and grains—stuffed eggplants, pilafs, and pomegranate-flavored vegetables, to name a few—reflect the bounty and healthful eating patterns of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Wolfert's Middle Eastern grain salads are healthy and rich with flavor. Paula travels into the kitchens of native cooks to ensure that her recipes are as genuine as they are delicious. She takes us into the home of a friend in the Republic of Georgia, whose mother teaches Wolfert how to prepare Chicken Tabaka; to a mountain village in northern Greece where, with a sister food writer, she searches for fine cheese to complete a savory pie; and to a farm in Turkey, where the country's best bread baker tells her secrets of baking unleavened flat griddle bread.

These delicious, authentic recipes focus on the healthy eating patterns for which the Eastern Mediterranean is increasingly being recognized. Wolfert's recipes are as delightful to read as they are to use. Armchair cooks and travelers will be moved by the descriptive geography and resonate personal stories Paula Wolfert relates along with her fabulous dishes. Wolfert's expertise is renowned among food lovers, amateur and professional, and her joy of discovering new ways to prepare food is infectious to her many devoted readers.

A recipe from Cooking with the Two Fat Ladies

SCONES
Makes about 12

Fresh scones, still warm from the oven, are part and parcel of the delicious teas of our childhoods. No one seems to make them nowadays; instead, they buy terrible things in supermarkets tasting of soda and studded with soggy fruits. Scones take but a moment, so do try them.

1 2/3 cups self rising flour
small pinch of salt
4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup milk, fresh or buttermilk.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until it all resembles crumbs. Mix in the milk. Form into a soft dough with a metal spatula. Knead lightly on a floured board, then pat out into a round 3/4 inch thick. Cut into 2-inch rounds with a cutter.

Place the rounds on a greased and floured baking sheet and brush with milk. Bake for 10 minutes until well risen and brown. Cool on a rack, but eat when still warm, with lots of butter, clotted cream, and jam. Yummo.

Variations:
Fruit scones: Add 1/3 cup dried fruit and 2 tablespoons superfine sugar.
Savory scones: Add 3/4 cup grated hard cheese and 1 teaspoon dry mustard, or 1/3 cup minced olives, anchovies, or what you fancy.