Tested, Tasty: The Bon Appétit Cookbook Dinner

For me, there's nothing better than blowing off an afternoon of chasing buckage for the Shelf to cook a dinner for people I enjoy--and still call it work.

So, on an early fall evening in Seattle, we hosted a dinner for eight friends in the book biz at our house. The mission: to cook an entire meal from the newly published Bon Appétit Cookbook (Wiley, $34.95, 0764596861).

The book had arrived at my door a few weeks earlier, containing 792 pages of material from what many consider to be the best cooking magazine, all wrapped in a gorgeous burnt orange metallic cover. My first task was to plan the menu. There are more than 1,200 recipes in The Bon Appétit Cookbook but no sample menus. In the beginning, this was a little daunting. But then I thought back to all the dinner parties we've been to where the menu was uninspired and decided that this is where the creative fun lies. Choosing a great menu is almost harder than cooking it, and the selection of dishes can offer great insight into cook's personality. (Note to my sister: we knew that boy was no good for you when we noticed his menu choices revealed a curious proclivity for "stuffing" almost everything.)

After many evenings pouring over all the recipes, the menu was settled:

Caramelized onion and roasted shallot cream soup
Crown Roast of pork with stuffing and cider gravy
Broccoli with mustard butter
Carrots with cumin and orange
Triple Cherry Cheesecake

I've always wanted an excuse to make a Crown Roast of Pork. Just thinking of one makes me want to re-read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates and watch the movie Ice Storm. It's so retro, so suburban chic, so fun, and as the cookbook tells us, "a spectacular entrée for a special occasion dinner." But really--the best thing about a crown roast is the little chef's hats or booties on the ends of the bones. Or at least that's what I thought they were called until I was corrected, sort of . . . The debate lingers. First a book industry friend told me that they are called "panties." Really. She even sent me a Google link where chefs refer to them as "panties." But our own savvy book reviewer Marilyn Dahl swears they are called "frills" or, en français, manchettes. Whatever the label for these little treasures, they are practical: they keep the ends of the bones from burning. Still, we all preferred the apocryphal story that these frivolous adornments date to Victorian times, when having a giant roasted bone uncovered, was, well, unseemly.

We started with the soup. It was effortless to make: we roasted some onions and shallots and then prepared the base. It resembled your fondest memories of French onion soup, only more grownup, more civilized--and without the giant rubbery disc of cheese on top.

The crown pork roast came out perfectly. (Grab a thermometer and use it. This is the only way to tell for sure when the roast is done.) There's nothing easier to prepare and to impress a crowd with than a giant roast . . . plus, while it cooks you can get everything else done. The cider gravy was a snap to whip up while the roast rested. But it was the apple and pork stuffing that stole the show. I didn't bake it inside the roast as the recipe suggested since I was afraid of wiping out a microcosm of the book business via trichinosis. I cooked it alongside the roast, and it was nothing short of a revelation: fresh pork sausage with celery, shallots, breadcrumbs, garlic, sage and allspice, with a secret ingredient, dried apples. Whoever figured out that using dried apples, instead of fresh, lends incredible flavor while avoiding the apple juices that would make it watery is an ingenious chef. The crown pork roast was far and away everyone's favorite. And even though we made enough to feed 12, it was gone by the end of the meal.

Marilyn Dahl prepared the vegetables: curried carrots and broccoli with a mustard sauce. They were both good and uncomplicated recipes. But she did have some concerns as to why certain recipes in the cookbook would specify "unsalted" butter while others would just say "butter."

Time for dessert! I am not a big cheesecake fan. I'm always afraid that someone will talk while eating it and I'll see those awful phlegmy strings, which make the person look like a Tolkien monster. But I do believe in the wonders of anything that has almond and cherry in it, so I had to give the Triple Cherry Cheesecake a go. It was easy to make and the almond in it perfumed the whole house while baking. It was light (which is saying a lot for a cheesecake) but the sauce of dried cherries, fresh cherries, and cherry jam really made it. You know this when your guests ask if there are leftovers to take with them at the end of the meal.

The dinner was a grand success. Everyone went home stuffed and happy. The Bon Appétit Cookbook is a wonderful collection. It gives the most basic recipes a sophisticated twist, without being high fallutin, without featuring recipes with (gasp) "infused foams." Stock up on this book. Put it in the window and by the cash wrap. Give it to your friends for the holidays, and if you're really, really lucky, they'll cook for you from it.--Jenn Risko