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. For loyal readers who suspect the Sterns of going straight, a few pie-in- the-face recipes are thrown in, including seafoam lime Jell-O mold with marshmallows and Mary Bobo's carrot casserole, a concoction made with Ritz crackers and melted cheese. It should be noted that the Sterns and Fussell give quite different recipes for New Orleans red beans and rice, yet both are credited to Buster Holmes, operator of the famous French Quarter greasy spoon. Quite possibly the old master cook never makes that dish the same way twice, which is why there probably cannot be, as the Sterns suggest, a last word on the subject.
Duded-Up Fantasy American Cookery could have been the title of the book by Jeremiah Tower, the over-celebrated chef and co-owner of both the Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Berkeley and Stars in San Francisco. But with no false modesty, he chose to call it New American Classics (Harper & Row; $25). Translation: the bizarre California-style dishes Tower created for his trendy restaurants. There is a windy self-congratulatory text, a double-page spread reproducing the author's signature and some superfluous vista photographs a la Falcon Crest. Inevitably, there are many of the California cliches -- hot goat cheese, cold pasta and dangerously raw salmon. Nevertheless, this erratic chef has a talent for simple dishes, among them lobster gazpacho, warm duck salad with turnip pancake, chopped lamb steak au poivre, T-bone steak cowboy style, a luscious warm vegetable stew and a fragrant polenta pound cake with Madeira cream.
Modesty -- in short supply this year -- is the enticing ingredient of three new cookbooks. The authors have all received wide recognition as cooking teachers, and their recipes are both delicious and reliable. Marcella's Italian Kitchen (Knopf; $22.95) is the third book by the redoubtable Marcella Hazan, a no-nonsense instructor who has conducted classes in New York City, Bologna and now in Venice. As before, she advocates the one right way to do a particular task or dish, usually with her old reliable utensils. "If I had to choose, I would sooner give up my food processor, because what the food mill does, no processor or blender can." But she relents, giving instructions for both hand and machine methods on many tasks.
The author always manages to find delectable Italian dishes and variations that seem new, and she can still entice the most indifferent reader to the kitchen. There, in the tradition of Julia Child and other thoughtful instructors, she will instruct how much of a dish can be made in advance, a great boon to anyone entertaining dinner guests. Among the many excellent recipes, a few that were irresistible in the testing were a risotto with squid, shrimp and clams, and a rosemary-and-sage-scented shoulder of veal, encrusted with bread crumbs and Parmesan after being braised. Pears simmered in red wine and accented with bay leaves proved to be the properly restorative dessert, and a scoop of Hazan's lemon ice cream added to the pear did no harm at all.