You’ve volunteered to bring dessert to a dinner party. You want to knock ’em dead with an old-fashioned chocolate cake. You own 200 cookbooks, and clearly, some of them contain recipes for chocolate cake. But which ones? How do the recipes compare? And what about that one woman, Bridget – isn’t she a vegan? And a pagan? And doesn’t she have one of those open marriages? My gawd, what’s that like?

But you digress.

The point is, owning shelf upon shelf of cookbooks is an embarrassment of riches, but the books aren’t cross-referenced. Wouldn’t it make life easier if they were?

Enter Eat Your Books, a new online service that offers a master index for your whole (or nearly your whole) library of cookbooks.

The benefits are worth noting here – you can enter one or more ingredients that you have on hand and locate recipes that feature them, in cookbooks you already own. You can locate that great recipe for balsamic-glazed asparagus that you misplaced years ago. You can search for recipes by ethnicity or special diet, or create new categories, menus and lists. You can find out if a favorite cook has a recipe for a favorite dish (how does Paula Deen make her cheese grits?). And as noted above, you can compare similar recipes across a number of cookbooks and decide which works best for you.

Eat Your Books’ database contains 16,000 cookbooks and counting. The site, which does require payment, also provides a communal place for cooks and cookbook fetishists to share ideas.

– Byron Kerman

The Ritz-Carlton recently appointed Jaco Smith as its executive sous chef. His duties cover both The Grill and The Restaurant at the Ritz. Smith, who hails from South Africa, previously cheffed for four years at the Ritz in Greensboro, Ga. He’s also held culinary positions in West Virginia and Tennessee.

Starting tomorrow, the folks at The Wine & Cheese Place will launch a major offensive in the war against vegetarianism. More specifically, they’ll announce the first artisan bacon to be featured in what they deem “the year of the BACON at TWCP.”

But this is just the beginning: TWCP has huge plans, as you may have gathered from the quote. Monthly (or more frequently, depending on demand – c’mon, biweekly!), the stores will feature a new and different artisan bacon in what’s basically a bacon-of-the-month club … except you don’t have to sign up for anything, do any research or pay shipping costs. All you have to do is arrive in time to buy some before it sells out.

According to TWCP, the fastest and surest way to get details is through its blog or Facebook page. As for the bacon to be announced Wednesday? It sounds like a very worthy debut; this will be its initial offering in St. Louis, and it’s gotten rave reviews elsewhere. Otherwise, I’m not telling – because I want to be first in line.

– Dennis Lowery

Just in time for the arctic assault, Thurman Grill & Provisions is hosting the second Shaw Chili Challenge this Saturday, Dec. 12. A trio of judges will select winners in three categories: best meat chili, best veggie chili and best overall chili. The contest has already closed to entrants – but not to eaters. The grill (which lies just a few blocks north of Tower Grove Park) will supply cups, spoons, Cheddar cheese, chopped onions and various hot sauces. The public can start enjoying entrants’ efforts at 7 p.m., and a sample of all of the chilis will cost just $5, with proceeds benefiting The Salvation Army. So if you’ve already had a bellyful of cold, prepare to fill your belly with a bit of pleasing heat.

For many people, Hanukkah means a menorah, candles, songs and children opening gifts with a terrific ripping and squealing for eight nights in a row. But please – don’t forget the latkes!

Latkes – Jewish fried potato pancakes – are a heavenly Hanukkah indulgence, and surprisingly, learning a kitchen trick or two takes them from merely sinful to, well, miraculous.

This Thursday, Dec. 10, just such tricks will be taught at Chabad of Chesterfield on Clarkson Road. At 6:15 that evening, a Latke Frying Happy Hour there will feature a demonstration, samples of many different varieties of the pancake at a latke bar and a fry-off that enables guest cooks to take home crispy, golden-brown latkes for their families and friends.

All ingredients are provided, and admission costs just eight symbolic bucks. Interested parties should RSVP at chanalar@gmail.com or 636.778.4000.

– Byron Kerman

The pressure’s on to produce a fowl that isn’t foul for your T-Day feast. Stephen Gontram, executive chef and owner of Harvest in Richmond Heights, shared these tips for making your Thanksgiving celebration the tastiest yet:

• Brine your turkey prior to roasting it: Combine 3 cups kosher salt and 1 cup brown sugar with 1 gallon hot water, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 3 star anise, 1 tablespoon coriander and 1 tablespoon black peppercorn. Submerge the turkey in the brine for two days prior to roasting.

• Pick interesting wine varietals. Buy a bottle of Gewürztraminer as your white wine and a Grenache for your red. A turkey dinner is wonderful with these lighter-styled wines.

• Bake an apple pie. The apple harvest is fantastic this year, and there are numerous varieties of apples available in stores. Gontram likes to serve his pies with vanilla ice cream and melted sharp Cheddar cheese.

But if you do experience an epic cooking failure on Nov. 26, head to Harvest – it’ll be open.

– Ligaya Figueras

Standing in the future home of Vom Fass, the German-based gourmet food shop, Anita von Ballmoos was covered in plaster dust. But she still spoke enthusiastically about her store’s upcoming debut.

Vom Fass, which has more than 200 stores worldwide, specializes in artisanal vinegars, oils, liqueurs and spirits sold straight from the cask. Although von Ballmoos had hoped to welcome her first customers before Thanksgiving, rehabbing the Maplewood space, located at 7314 Manchester Road, and other complications have delayed her timetable. She now projects a grand opening next month: “I don’t know it for sure, but the plan is for the 1st of December.”

Why Maplewood? “I was looking for the perfect spot for it,” she said, “and we match a lot with Penzeys [Spices] – and this was the reason.”

You never know what’s in chili. Some of the more adventurous cooks put chocolate, coffee, jelly and possibly even Johnny Depp’s victims from Sweeney Todd in the stuff.

You do know what’s not in the chili at the fifth annual Kosher Chili Cook-Off at the Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur, though – no pork, no rabbit, no dairy products mixed with meat, etc. (Incidentally, venison, duck and even giraffe are kosher. But for a cook-off, all kosher meat is provided by the host just to ensure everything’s, ya know, kosher.)

The cooks who show for this competition (which occurs this Sunday, Nov. 15, from 2 to 8 p.m.) can get every bit as serious as their secular counterparts. They’ll be vying for such awards as People’s Choice, Best Meat Chili, Best Vegetarian Chili, Best Costume/Table Decorations, Best White Chili and Best Chili/Youth Division.

Curious about how they keep the proceedings kosher from start to finish? Head to the Web site of the cook-off’s sponsor, Nusach Hari B’nai Zion, for the good word, bubbeleh. At the cook-off, Rabbi Ze’ev Smason will supervise and keep everything proper. According to his synagogue’s site, “His word is final, no beans about it.”

– Byron Kerman

Just in time for holiday entertaining, Dierbergs School of Cooking has published Appetizers, the latest addition to its growing line of cookbooks. Gracing the book’s cover is a close-up of a tomato bacon mini tart, and the loveliness of that puff-pastry blossom instantly made us want to commence our end-of-year noshing and tippling.

Appetizers features chapters on cheese, seafood and meat, veggies and fruit, dips and nibbles, beverages and desserts. The 64 individual recipes range from baked Manchego to fillo-wrapped shrimp with Jack Daniel’s sauce, from mini Greek strudels to strawberry daiquiri cupcakes. Accompanying each of the recipes in Appetizers is nutrition information, including a given recipe’s cardiac healthiness (in accordance with the Eat Hearty program co-sponsored by Missouri Baptist Medical Center and Dierbergs Markets).

The cookbook’s 18 contributors, incidentally, include chef Coby Arzola from (um, duh) Chuy Arzola’s; he provides a recipe for chipotle glazed pecans that sounds as if it would go great with the customary seasonal re-viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life.

The 96-page, 8.5-inch-square full-color hardcover, which went on sale this week, includes an index and retails for $12.95.

College students are so cute. Ya know, the way they furiously scribble notes in class, cheer their football teams with rabid glee, and do beer bongs and stuff. College kids run on highlighters, cheap beer and even cheaper food.

Kathy Mistretta of the Straub’s Culinary Center has some bizarre and fascinating cooking tips for these young achievers. Turns out, Mistretta has a Ph.D. in the arcane art of dorm-room survival cooking. She’ll be teaching a College Dorm Cooking 101 class on Aug. 4 at the Ellisville Straub’s (6:30 p.m., $10), with advice on making a decent grilled cheese sandwich with an iron, and using Ramen instant noodles in unexpected ways, among other tricks.

Mistretta, who seems to take her cues from Bob The Surreal Gourmet Blumer or MacGyver, explained that you can make a cheese sandwich, butter the outsides, wrap it first in wax paper, and then tin foil, and grill it with an iron and ironing board. “But cover the iron in tin foil, too, to make sure you don’t get butter in it,” she cautioned.

Another trick: crush dry Ramen noodles to make a coating for chicken breasts. Sprinkle with that little high-sodium Ramen flavor packet. Steam Chicken à la Ramen in the microwave, then crisp it with the iron using the above method.

Mistretta promised recipes for dorm-room French onion soup, microwave risotto and something called Hair Dryer Heat-Ups. When the college cafeteria is closed, apparently, not all hope is lost.

The instructor says her daughter, a college student, informed her that “the only thing I use my iron for is to make grilled cheese sandwiches.” And on that note, students at the Straub’s class need to BYOI: Bring your own iron.

– Byron Kerman