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The rich tradition of European peasant cooking is the scope of The Old World Kitchen, by Elisabeth Luard (Bantam; 538 pages; $22.50). History, lore and reasonably complete recipes are presented entertainingly and informatively. Luard ranges from Ireland, with its potato dishes and soda bread, to Turkey, where pilaf and pita are favorites, and from Scandinavia, with its herring, to Spain, with its varieties of olives and rich paellas.
Peter Grunauer and Andreas Kisler present a "new approach" to Austrian cooking in Viennese Cuisine (Doubleday; 230 pages; $24.95). The nockerln and goulash soup, the schnitzels and Schlagobers desserts, the braised game and hearty boiled beef all date back to the Habsburgs. What is new is the stylish lightness of presentation without sacrifice of classic flavor -- features that made Manhattan's Vienna Park and Vienna '79 the extraordinary restaurants they were when Grunauer owned them and Kisler was his chef.
Exotically esoteric but nonetheless appealing is the food described in Lebanese Mountain Cookery, by Mary Laird Hamady (Godine; 278 pages; $19.95). Here are all the yogurts and fresh pickles, the simple grills and whole-grain delicacies, the sesame oils and seeds, and the dried fruits that health-food advocates sound off about but rarely deliver in palatable form. This is a sensuous food world that is rarely well represented in restaurants outside its homeland: pungent sumac, sweet lemons and pomegranate seeds, mellow kabobs and oily stuffed vine leaves, palate-whetting maza, or appetizers, and flaky honey-gilded phyllo pastries. The instructions are brief, but experienced cooks should have no trouble.
The south of almost anyplace, including Italy, seems In this year. Too long has that region's savory fare been dubbed declasse by snobbish restaurateurs. The Food of Southern Italy, by Carlo Middione (Morrow; 330 pages; $25), is virtually an ode to it. The subtle recipes provided by Middione, a San Francisco delicatessen owner, refutes the accusation of heaviness so often leveled against this cuisine because of poor preparation in cheap eateries. As described here, the food, whose origins range from Lazio and Abruzzi down to Sicily and over to Sardinia, sparkles with freshness and lightness, especially the fish and shellfish dishes, the many pasta and vegetable combinations and the yeasty breads and pizzas. Middione includes menu and wine suggestions for each dish, and his recipes are detailed -- the instructive paragraphs too much so, and hence a bit hard to follow.
And what could be more southern than the Southern Hemisphere, specifically Australia? It is the subject of The Down Under Cookbook: An Authentic Guide to Australian Cooking and Eating Traditions, by Graeme Newman (Harrow & Heston; 168 pages; $8.95). Recipes may be a little hard to reproduce, especially when they call for witchety grubs and tiger snake, but the book provides amusing insight into a culture Americans are beginning to explore ever more avidly.