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.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2009.