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For sheer usefulness, the best book on the market must be La Varenne Pratique by Anne Willan (Crown; $60), the Briton who in 1975 founded the famous Paris cooking school La Varenne. This is a how-to book more than a book of recipes, although Willan has scattered many simple recipes throughout the technical sections of her well-illustrated manual. In one of the most instructive sections, double-page illustrations show the kinds of meat cuts typically available both in the U.S. and France. I have often wondered just how to butterfly a leg of lamb when, at the last moment, I have had to settle for the whole leg. Eight quick steps, each with its own picture, show how to debone the thing, and then it's an easy, two-step process to lay open the fillet so that it's ready for the grill. For the more adventurous, the book teaches the construction of a crown roast of lamb, which is fashioned from two racks of lamb, bent round and tied. A simple roasting recipe features the typical lamb seasonings of garlic and rosemary, accompanied by an elegant rice pilaf served from inside the crown roast.
Just about every technique the home chef could need or aspire to need is contained in this pricey volume. It never occurred to me to make chocolate truffles at home, but the process looks easy in Willan's book. You whip up a genache by pouring a boiled combination of butter and cream over chopped chocolate. Chill that and then roll into little balls and chill some more. Melt some more chocolate, dip the genache balls in the warm chocolate and roll them in powdered cocoa.
^ At the same time that American cookery has become more inventive, there is a resurgence of interest in both purely ethnic cuisines and down-home, regional foods. The best in this category are a pair of overillustrated but authentic books on country cooking from France and Italy. Recipes from a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt (Simon & Schuster; $24.95) is as helpful with its gardening instructions as with its recipes. If my lavender ever blooms, I'm going to try the ice cream with fresh lavender flowers and muscat. The companion book, Recipes from an Italian Farmhouse by Valentina Harris (Simon & Schuster; $24.95), is equally beautiful but can be a bit too authentic. I thought the sausage-meat-risotto recipe sounded good right down to the one- half cup of fresh pig's blood, at room temperature (optional, of course).
The casual cook will be intrigued by The Foods of Vietnam (Stewart, Tabori & Chang; $35), especially now that good Vietnamese restaurants have spread across the country. But Nicole Routhier's handsome book presents a difficulty with ingredients, which are hard to come by except in coastal urban areas.
A converse problem emerges in Hot Links and Country Flavors by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly (Knopf; $19.95). Good fresh sausages are available in such variety and quality all over the U.S. that the let's-eat-soon crowd will wonder why they should spend all day stuffing sausages when they can simply buy them. But for the real sausage aficionado, this is the book.