Jacques Pépin cooking my way Recipes and techniques for economical cooking

Many have tried to achieve the kind of fame Pépin (however modestly) possesses: tens of cookbooks, 12 James Beard awards, and a dozen PBS TV cooking series attest to his culinary stature. In this charming and economically focused 100-plus recipe collection, home chefs and readers get a sense of who the ultimate expert is as a person too: a garden- and ocean-lover, former NYC restaurateur, devoted dad and grandfather, and repository of food history (e.g., Auguste Escoffier invented peach melba, named after an Australian singer). His emphasis here on low-cost, in-season ingredients will further win over readers, allowing cooks creativity and freedom with techniques designed to save money. Look at your grocery store's discount shelves, he advises, and check out inexpensive cuts of meat. Use all (or most of) the bird: bones for soup, legs and wings for fricassee, breast for scaloppine, crisp the skin and sprinkle it on a salad, use the liver on toast as hors d'oeuvre. Readers will be amped to cook, simmer, bake, and prepare away: eggs in poblano boats, corn off the cob, chicken diable, apple stew. Always a delight.

Legendary chef Pépin (Jacques Pépin Art of the Chicken) dishes up valuable advice for saving time, money, and effort in the kitchen. Special attention is given to repurposing leftovers, with Pépin noting that reserving them "in their original form" is a "common mistake." Instead, leftover French bread serves as croutons for garlicky romaine salad; leftover roasted pork is incorporated into pork and potato hash; and any jams or jellies that are sitting in the fridge make a perfect base for rhubarb compote with sour cream. Pépin also emphasizes using up all parts of each ingredient whenever possible: he boils shrimp shells in stock to create a more flavorful shrimp bisque and cooks poultry skin to use as a crispy topping for escarole salad. Encouraging readers to use whatever they already have on hand instead of taking "a special trip to the market" for missing ingredients, Pépin offers plenty of helpful substitution suggestions: any type of dried beans will work in the bean and bacon salad and virtually any fish filet or steak can be used for the grilled cod with olives. Complete with Pépin's own whimsical paintings, this handy resource demonstrates that efficiency doesn't have to mean sacrificing flavor. Agent: Doe Coover, Doe Coover Agency. (Sept.)

Growing up in post-World War II France, Pépin learned a thing or two about being thrifty. Now he shares his hard-earned culinary wisdom about being economical in the kitchen--no motion is wasted, no ingredient is discarded, and being budget-conscious is a good thing as long as it never comes at the expense of flavor--with a new generation of cooks. A revised, updated, and repackaged edition of Pépin's Cuisine Economique from 1992, this volume contains recipes for 150 dishes from garlic soup and warm vegetable salad to quiche Lorraine and quick fragrant ratatouille and is illustrated with colorful, delightful paintings by Pépin as well as photographs of a few finished dishes. Pépin's genuine charm and culinary joie de vivre shines through the book, including the introduction, in which he takes a charming detour midway through to instruct readers on how to break down a turkey and what to do with the end results. VERDICT After 30 cookbooks and more than eight decades spent in kitchens both in Europe and the States, Pépin (Jacques Pépin Art of the Chicken) proves he still knows how to educate and engage home cooks.--John Charles