Small bites

Honoring achievement in the food world

NEW YORK - Recipients of Bon Appetit's American Food and Entertaining Awards this year include renowned chefs and restaurateurs, distinguished food writers and teachers - and a humanitarian whose work adds a reminder of the profounder side of feeding the hungry.

Editor in chief Barbara Fairchild presided over the recent awards ceremony and dinner of the series' eighth annual event, held at Le Bernadin restaurant, whose chef and co-owner Eric Ripert was honored as "chef of merit," for his sustained achievement.

Robert Forney, president and CEO of America's Second Harvest, accepted the humanitarian award for the huge organization he heads, which serves as a network for more than 200 food banks across the nation.

Other honorees were:

-Chef of the year: Michael Mina, founder of a San Francisco-based restaurant group.

-Food writer: Harold McGee, author of "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" (Scribner), now out in a revised, updated edition.

-Cooking Teacher: Patricia Wells, teacher in Paris and Provence, food critic.

-Pastry Chef: Christine McCabe, founder of Sugar: A Dessert Bar, in Chicago.

-Restaurateur: Stephen Starr, Philadelphia-based head of a restaurant group.

-Tastemaker: Steve Wynn, Las Vegas hotel impresario.

-Food artisan: John Harney, authority on tea.

-Wine and spirits professional: Joe Bastianich, New York-based restaurateur and wine maker.

-Lifetime achievement: Ariane Daguin and George Faison, of D'Artagnan food company.

-Designer: Jonathan Adler, who designs interiors, tableware and furniture.

Secrets from cooking professionals

Insiders' cooking lore is shared in a couple of new books, one that's titled "How to Break An Egg" and another that includes, for beginners, tips on how to boil an egg.

You don't need to boil it, actually - perfect hard-cooked eggs are steeped, according to Linda Carucci's "Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks" (Chronicle, 2005, $22.95 paperback).

For everyone, even the most professional, there must be similar practical revelations tucked somewhere into this book, either among the pages of general explanation of cooking basics, or later in the chatty notes addressing specific details that buttress each of the 100 recipes.

Carucci, a recipient of the teacher of the year award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, is curator of food arts at Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food & the Arts in Napa, Calif. Her book also offers charts, lists, menus and step-by-step drawings for things like butterflying chicken breasts.

"How To Break An Egg" (Taunton, 2005, $19.95) bills itself as a collection of 1,453 kitchen tips, food fixes, emergency substitutions and handy techniques, by the editors, contributors and readers of Fine Cooking magazine.

Oddly, actual egg breaking is not among the challenges, puzzles and procedures through which the book guides readers, although plenty of other eggy dilemmas are dealt with. Question-and-answer chapters reveal "useful tomato tricks," "cookie crust shortcut" and plenty of other smart ideas. Step-by-step photo series explain procedures, and ingredients are discussed, but the book stops short of recipes themselves. Plenty of other books make up for that.

Nuances of chocolate appreciation

How do we love chocolate? Let us count among the ways two recent, sharply contrasting approaches:

-"Naked Chocolate" by David Wolfe and Shazzie (Maul Brothers Publishing, 2005, $24.95) will seem tough love to many. The authors, an American nutritionist and a British woman described as a health educator, are passionate about the virtues of chocolate in a narrowly prescribed form: raw organic cacao beans (the writers are advocates of pretty much raw everything).

The cacao beans are ground into a powder and used in many of the book's 60 or so recipes, along with other ingredients that include fruit, nuts and seeds, all uncooked, though they may be crushed, pounded and dehydrated. The first chapters of the book are packed with the history and scientific details of cacao, illustrated with ancient and modern art. Then come the recipes, bibliography and sources.

-"Hot Chocolate" by Michael Turback (Ten Speed Press, 2005, $9.95) takes an almost completely opposite tack. Turback, a restaurateur and food writer, summarizes chocolate's origins and refers to health benefits, but stresses the voluptuous pleasure of ingesting it. He has no reservations about using processed chocolate and cooking up the richest possible drink of choice.

The choice he offers ranges over 60 varied concoctions, some shown in well-made color photos in this small-format book. The "haute chocolate" chapter includes recipes for Chinese five-spice hot chocolate, and lavender-pistachio hot chocolate. Other grown-up versions include maple-whiskey chocolate hot toddy, and hot chocolate nightcap tequila.

The recipes are rounded out with a happily sinful menu of whipped creams.