For years, Clive Berkman kept empty wine bottles that reminded him of great celebrations in which he played a part. Now, the Houston chef has put those moments, along with the wines, menus, recipes and stories, in his book, “Creating Empty Bottle Moments” (Baxter Press, $30).

Berkman was at last week’s Ben E. Keith food show in the San Antonio Convention Center, signing books and talking food.  In his book, the restaurant manager/chef and catering consultant reminisces about meals he cooked throughout his career for celebrities, wine makers, sports figures, rock stars and theater greats.

If you like to see recipes in the context of a complete menu, this book offers interesting combinations to help you plan your own meal.  (Here and there some of the recipe ingredients are not exactly in the order of use, though, so it’s a good idea to read through them carefully first.) His recipe for a Potato Pancake is one that serves four and is suggested as a good side for grilled meats.

But what Berkman has done in this book is to share not only triumphs and failures in the kitchen, but the many ways he learned from people he encountered throughout his career. Along with memories he delivers cooking and hosting tips that are philosophical as often as they are technical.

For example, he says, “Waiting is a lost art in our culture. … In the restaurant business and in every other aspect of life, we often find more meaning in the process than in the conclusion. … The conclusion of the meal isn’t the goal. The focus is the entire process involving creativity and interaction.”

Good thoughts for anyone to consider, from a writer who obviously put much thought and heart into creating those “empty bottle” moments.

If Julie Powell could bake her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and actually master the art, then I can see any number of serious bakers do the same with “The Art and Soul of Baking” (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $40) from Sur La Table with Cindy Mushet.

This is a gateway into the world of baking from someone who has not only mastered the art of creating memorable dishes, but also the elusive art of conveying even the most complex of techniques in a style that makes it seem understandable and not too hard to follow.

Or, as chocolate queen Alice Medrich writes in her introduction, Mushet is, simply, “a superb and empowering teacher who relates to the beginner as well as the seasoned baker.”

Take, for example, these instructions on how to buy and thaw sheet phyllo: “Choose phyllo packages from the back of the freezer case, where the temperature is more consistent. Phyllo sheets that have been thawed and refrozen will stick together and tear unmercifully. Always buy an extra box, just in case you get one that has thawing damage. Thaw frozen phyllo in the refrigerator for 24 hours before use. if you try to thaw it quickly on the counter, condensation will form, the dough will get sticky, and you won’t be able to pry the sheets apart. After it has thawed in the refrigerator, place the box on the kitchen counter for 1 to 2 hours and allow the dough to warm to room temperature. Cold phyllo is prone to cracking, whereas room temperature phyllo is more supple and easier to work with.”

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.

Then consider the dazzling array of recipes, from Cream Scones and Peach-Gingerbread Dumplings to Malted Milk Chocolate Tart and Chocolate Velvet Pound Cake. Few of us with a sweet tooth could resist a summer stunner like Apricot-Cherry Almond Cobbler with almond paste in the crust. Or the exquisite Raspberry Soufflés With Hidden Chocolate Truffles, a photograph of which graces the cover of the book. (That mouthwatering photo and more from Maren Caruso will should sell more than a few copies of the book.)

The book isn’t all sweets. There are recipes for various breads as well as savory treats, such as Potato, Onion and Gruyère Galette and Pesto Rolls.

Still not convinced you can be a great baker? The book breaks each section (quick breads, tarts, fruit desserts, cakes and so on) begins with a primer on the general techniques involved in each.

There are also “What the pros know” notes accompanying many of the recipes. Here’s one: “There’s a trick to making pumpkin pie that keeps the prebaked crust crisp against the liquid custard filling, and it defies logic. You’ve probably always heard that a prebaked pie crust should be cooled before being filled with custard and sent back to the oven. Not here. The crust should be hot from the oven (or reheated until hot) and then filled with hot custard. It’s crazy, but it works beautifully. The bonus is that hot crust plus hot custard equals a shorter baking time. While pumpkin pies usually take an hour or more to bake, this one is finished in about 30 minutes. Now that’s a reason to be thankful.”

Bakers will certainly be thankful not just for such juicy morsels, but for the whole banquet of flavors revealed in this expansive work.

We just finished Christmas, I know. But it’s always a good time for a cookie as simple and delicious as the one in “Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove Cookbook” (Harlequin, $29.95).

All you do is spread some peanut butter between two Ritz crackers, then dunk the sandwich in melted chocolate chips. Sprinkle on a little Christmas candy, if desired, and let set. That’s it.

The end result is sweet and salty, with a good variety of textures, especially if you use crunchy peanut butter.

What makes it a Christmas cookie? Nothing except the name: Jack Griffin’s Christmas Cookies.

I don’t rightly know who Jack Griffin is. I haven’t read one of Macomber’s books, but I gather they are served up with plenty of food references.

What I can tell you is that Macomber does know her food. She likes it simple yet often elegant, with a healthy dose of comfort mixed in. For appetizers, there are recipes for Celery Cups With Blue Cheese Mousse and Bacon as well as Mini-Hamburgers decked out to the max. No pretense here.

Blueberry Muffins, Pumpkin Tea Cake, Southwestern Taco Salad and Roasted Salmon with a creamy dill sauce are among the more enticing offerings.

The book is set up as a tour through Macomber’s fictional Cedar Cove. You stop at 16 Lighthouse Road for breakfast with Olivia Griffin, then move on to 204 Rosewood Lane for lunch with Grace Sherman Harding. Tea time is spent with Justine Gunderson at 6 Rainier Drive, and so on through dinner, dessert, Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each is accompanied by a short story from your tour guide, Charlotte Jefferson Rhodes, Macomber’s centra character.

Nothing is too complicated, and the instructions are straightforward, making this a good choice for beginners. I may not agree with Macomber’s choices in all recipes. Velveeta cheese food in macaroni and cheese is too easy and just doesn’t taste as good as a real cheese, such as fontina or even sharp cheddar.

In the end, the emphasis favorites the sweets, but don’t overlook some of the savory dishes whether it’s Cowboy Eggs With Smoky Black Beans and Lime-Avocado Salsa or the vegetarian Broccoli Lasagna.

Several years back, the movie “My Big, Fat Greek Wedding” proved a crowd-pleaser with its humorous Cinderella tale of a young Greek woman for finds romance.

Now comes “How to Roast a Lamb” (Little, Brown and Company, $35) from chef Michael Psilakis of New York’s Anthos and other restaurants, a big, fat Greek cookbook that should romance you into trying an ethnic cuisine that many of us eat but not as many of us cook.

Why is that? I can hear a few people say that they don’t have a spit in their front yard for roasting the lamb, as they did in the movie. That’s true; but jokes aside, the real reason stems more from our unwillingness to spend money on an ingredient like lamb or seafood and possibly not serve it to its best potential.

We’re scared of the waste. We’re scared our families may not like it. We’re scared of the time involved.

That’s where Psilakis wants to help. He fills his book with stories of his childhood, his business life, how he became a cook, and the passion that drives his cooking. He does it in such straightforward style that you get swept up in it. He doesn’t sugar-coat matters, though he romanticizes them a bit, which is true to his Greek character. He remembers, for example, being a rebellious teen fighting with his mother and even wanting to ruin the surprise birthday party she had worked so hard to give him.

But he gets carried away by fast Cretan dance for the men that his godfather has decided to turn into a group strip-tease, to the delight of the women around them. “We danced at a feverish pitch,” he writes. “As I looked around the room, for a moment I stepped outside myself. I could see the sheer joy, delight and reckless abandon on the faces of everyone around me. These were the people I shared my life with and the people who loved me. These are the moments in life that are frozen in my mind forever — and they are priceless.”

Psilakis goes on to write that “when I look back on my life to the snapshots that populate my memory, many of my fondest memories are of events that happened at the parties we hosted at our house when I was growing up. Entertaining, however, and especially throwing big parties, can seem like a daunting proposition. But a good party doesn’t have to be a huge party. Gather together any number of people you want — 30, 20 or 15 of your close friends and family. With a couple of days’ advance planning, a little organization and the help of your friends, you can create memories of your own to last a lifetime.”

Makes me want to start planning now. And I just might add Psilakis’ Warm Feta With Tomato, Olive and Pepper Salad to the menu. Or his Potatoes, Olives and Capers With Anchovy Vinagrette. Or the Taramosalata, a spread made with carp roe. The list of dishes to try is fairly endless.

Psilakis explains in extensive detail how to make each dish, so that the directions are simple and easy to follow. He also offers plenty of variations, so you can remake the dish in various ways.

Yet there is a drawback, at least to me. I loathe recipes that send you back and forth to other sections of the cookbook in order to find yet another recipe that you have to make in order to complete the one you want. In other words, the list of ingredients for Shrimp With Orzo and Tomato calls for “1/4 cup Garlic Purée (page 264)” while the Grilled Porgies sends you to page 270 for a mustard sauce called Ladolemono. This might be acceptable if the practice were limited to, say, vinaigrettes. But it seems to be in every third recipe in the book.

That said, in the end, Psilakis has demystified many Greek dishes for non-Greek cooks (with the help of Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s rustic photography), broadening our culinary repertoires to include some great new fare.

The past year has been a good one for cookbook lovers, with dozens of new titles covering every topic from opulent cocktails to special desserts. Here are 10 choices in no particular order that would make great gifts to various people on your holiday shopping list:

1. “La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy” (Rizzoli, $45)  – Fifty years ago, a group of Italians known as the Accademia Italiana Della Cucina decided to collect recipes from throughout their home country. The recipes were gathered region by region, and the project was only completed in 2001. It took eight years, but this encyclopedic approach to the country’s culinary riches is finally available in English. The end result can be richly rewarding for those who are not slaves to a recipe, as some need finessing (too little water here, too much spice there). Yet the compilation is exhaustive, exhilarating and an exciting new way to view Italian cuisine.

2. “I Know How to Cook” by Ginette Mathiot (Phaidon, $45) – The success of “Julie & Julia” has turned the spotlight on Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” But don’t overlook this French volume, first printed in 1932 and now available in English for the first time. More than 6 million copies have sold in its home country, and it’s easy to see why. It’s clear and concise. Yes, editors have updated the work, making the 1,400 recipes more direct without losing their Gallic charm. Soon, you’ll be saying “Je suis cuisiner” (“I know how to cook”), too.

3. “Pastry Queen Parties: Entertaining Friends and Family, Texas Style” by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman (Random House, $32.50) – Who can resist a cookbook with a recipe for something called Peach Daiquiri Likkercicles? Fredericksburg pastry chef Rebecca Rather offers recipes for six Texas-style parties ranging from San Antonio Fiesta (of course) to Gulf Coast Beach Bash. Nothing pretentious here, and many of the recipes use home-grown recipes, such as Honey-Lavender Rack of Lamb.

4. “The Craft of Baking: Cakes, Cookies and Other Sweets With Ideas for Inventing Your Own” by Karen DeMasco and Mindy Fox (Clarkson Potter, $35) – DeMasco, Tom Colicchio’s former pastry chef, uses seasonal ingredients to create an array of spectacular desserts. She also tells you how to adapt your recipe to what’s in season, so a Rhubarb Rose Cobbler becomes a Mixed Berry Cobbler as the seasons change. The list of must-bake recipes just keeps growing as you leaf past the likes of Pine Nut Tart With Rosemary Cream, Pumpkin Seed Brittle and Raspberry Granola Bars.

5. “America’s Most Wanted Recipes” by Ron Douglas (Simon and Schuster, $15) – Ever wanted to make Olive Garden’s salad dressing in your own home? Or Johnny Carino’s Five Cheese Chicken Fettuccine? Copycat versions of all your favorites are here, including Red Lobster’s Cheddar Biscuits and Luby’s Spaghetti Salad. There are no pictures in this affordable paperback. But who needs pictures? You’ve had the dishes enough at each of these chain restaurants to know what it looks like. The recipes are no presented in a no-nonsense way that makes each easy to replicate in your own home.

6. “The Conscious Cook” by Tal Ronnen (William Morrow, $29.99) – This vegan chef has taken a familial approach to his cookbook, inviting fellow vegan chefs to join him in creating a surprisingly varied array of dishes. He starts with the basics, including a section on cashew cream, which he swears “makes it easy to live without dairy.” He then moves on to small plates, salads, soups, sandwiches, entrées and desserts. Even meat-eaters could like Paella With “Sausage,” Nori-dusted Oyster Mushrooms and Wine-braised Artichoke Hearts or Cajun Portobello Sandwich with Avocado and Rémoulade.

7. “Ad Hoc at Home” by Thomas Keller (Artisan, $50) – The chef/owner of the French Laundry goes for more accessible fare at his home-style restaurant, Ad Hoc. By accessible, we mean Buttermilk Fried Chicken and chicken pot pie. Those who were put off by the tortured, laborious recipes Keller presented in his overwrought “French Laundry Cookbook” will be surprised by the warmth and down-home style here. “Ad Hoc at Home” is still a large, coffee table-sized book that won’t fit into many small kitchens easily, but the recipes will leave you hungry for more.

8.  “My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method” by Jim Leahy (W.W. Norton & Company, $29.95) – If you’ve always wanted to make bread but haven’t trusted yourself around yeast or the controversy about kneading (too much vs. too little), then this book is for you. Leahy mixes flour, yeast, salt and water together quickly, then leaves the mixture alone for 12 hours before baking it in a Dutch oven. That’s it. And people swear by the results. Once he finishes the basics, Leahy takes cooks on through a series of breads as well as pizza dough.

9. “Foods and Flavors of San Antonio” by Gloria Chadwick (Pelican Publishing, $19.95) – Want to send a taste of home to some friends who live far away? Check out this cookbook, which is a savory mix of traditional Alamo City classics presented alongside some colorful variations, such as Chipotle Salmon to Apple Enchiladas. Chadwick also offers some good information on the city’s cultural traditions and attractions, making it a keepsake for locals and tourists alike.

10. “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” by Ree Drummond (William Morrow, $27.50) – Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond (thepioneerwoman.com) welcomes you to her culinary frontier, where home cooking is prized by all. Recipes for Cowboy Calzone, Tomato-Basil Pizza and Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes are all accompanied by step-by-step photographs, so you can cook to your heart’s content with assurance. From Spicy Pulled Pork to Patsy’s Blackberry Cobbler, this is an Oklahoma answer to Thomas Keller’s “Ad Hoc at Home.”

Gordon Ramsay’s “Cooking for Friends” (Wm. Morrow, $35)  is a big, hearty book of appealingly homey meals. It shows off  Ramsay’s creativity in a setting apart from his famous kitchen jobs. Here, he’s not cooking for his friends at a restaurant. These are recipes made at home, and many of them are classics.  Or ones we might even call “new” classics. If there can be such a thing.

Ramsay’s cooking has spread throughout the world. He holds 10 Michelin stars; his restaurants can be found in New York, London and further afield in places like Prague and Tokyo.

So what does the author of an autobiography titled “Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen” do at home? We’d assume this former soccer player adopts a milder manner as he puts his creative touches on comfort foods such as Chicken Legs With Braised Peas and Onions, or (as an example of a new classic) Goat Cheese, Beet and Lentil Salad.  There’s the touch — lentils in the beet salad. Plus, the beets have been roasted in a crust of salt and the salad greens are refreshed with a handful each of chopped mint and parsley.

And, no, things aren’t frenetic in the Ramsay’s kitchen at home. “Everyone imagines that it must be hectic in the Ramsay’s kitchen, but it’s not. We turn cooking into serious fun,” he says in his introduction.

The recipes are generally simple to make, not overly long or convoluted. In fact, they do look fun as well as really good to eat.

Barbara Scott-Goodman’s “The Vineyard Cookbook” (Welcome Books, $24.95) is the type of cookbook I generally hate. The recipes are from numerous vineyards, which all too often means they call for pretentious ingredients none of us is like to keep in our cupboards. You know what I mean: ground duck breast, ciliegine (cherry-sized balls of fresh mozzarella), fresh goat’s milk or persimmon purée.

Plus, the recipes are divided into seasons, the times of year when the ingredients should be available. But whose seasons? Not South Texas’, that’s for sure. We have heirloom tomatoes available at various times in spring, summer and fall, not just in the summer when her recipe for Heirloom Tomato, Basil and Feta Cheese Salad appears.

I’ve never seen fresh peas here. Does that mean I’m not to make the Linguine With Fresh Asparagus and Peas (click here)? Not on your life. This is a dish you can make with asparagus any time of year and frozen peas.

Yet, when I started to look at the recipes, my appetite took over and I embraced “The Vineyard Cookbook” in a big way. Why? Because the recipes are largely easy yet elegant, relying on the freshest ingredients prepared in the simplest ways possible. Nothing’s too fancy or fussy. And the photographs show you how beautiful these recipes can be on your dinner table.

Who wouldn’t love Warm Mixed Olives (click here), a dish that goes together in minutes and yet could be a perfect appetizer or relish tray accompaniment? Or a simple Golden Walnut Cake With Fresh Berries and Cinnamon Cream? I can’t wait to make the Blue Cheese Caesar Salad, the Creamy Carrot and Chive Soup or the Buttermilk Biscuits.

These are the types of dishes you expect the people at wineries like Chateau St. Jean, Paraduxx, Nickel & Nickel or Willamette Valley Vineyards really eat when people aren’t looking. Though, I do have to ask, where are the recipes from Texas wineries? Maybe in the next edition.

I have long been a fan of Portugal and its bounty of seafood, its spectacular cheeses and olives, its nuts, fruits and vegetables, and its rustic breads. The food may be peasant in origin, born out of its citizens’ poverty, but there’s no denying the ingenious ways in which its cooks use the simplest ingredients to create the most memorable meals. Think of steamed clams mixed with bits of pork and garlic. Or a bowl of bread-thickened soup with large chunks of lobster swirled in like surprises.  The array of desserts made with little more than egg yolks and sugar staggers the mind and overwhelms the taste buds.

So I was eagerly looking forward to the publication of David Leite’s “The New Portuguese Table” (Clarkson Potter, $32.50) to find out if he captured the spirit of this remarkable cuisine with the same exhaustive intensity as Anya Von Bremzen’s “The New Spanish Table” of a few years back. Leite’s book is a little slimmer than Von Bremzen’s and a little more photo heavy. But the recipes tested largely succeed, making it a worthy companion.

Leite, creator of the foodie site www.LeitesCulinaria.com, was a good one to tackle the job as he is of Portuguese descent, though that’s something he freely admits he disavowed in his youth. “Let me set the record straight,” he says at the beginning of the book, “for the first 32 years of my life, I wanted nothing to do with Portugal, its food or its culture. For anyone else, that wouldn’t have been a problem, considering that during the 1960s and 1970s Portugal wasn’t exactly on most people’s radar. But coming from a Portuguese family, I was hard-pressed to ignore my heritage.”

He overcame that feeling in time and has rendered a rich array of recipes that will delight and intrigue. To explore the book, I got together with the friends I’d last traveled to Portugal with, and we made more than a half-dozen recipes, ranging from a Green Olive Dip laden with anchovies and cilantro to Pork Tenderloin in a Port-Prune Sauce (see recipe below). Other dishes on the menu included Grilled Shrimp With Piri-Piri Sauce (see recipe below), Spinach With Toasted Bread Crumbs, Sweet-Sour Carrots, Sweet Lemon and Black Olive Wafers, and Baked Custard Tarts.

All but one of the recipes was a keeper (more on the exception later), and most were easy to make. The shrimp skewers gained immeasurably from grilled lemon wedges as well as the spicy sauce in which the shrimp were marinated. The soft spinach gained contrasting textures and greater depth of flavor from toasted breadcrumbs and garlic. The lemon and olive wafers were a winning – and yes, odd – combination of sweet and savory ingredients that worked better than I can begin to describe.

After the end of the meal, I wanted to dive deeper into the book to try Seared Skate in Garlic-Pepper Oil, maybe, or the Green Soup made with kale or collards and, of course, more garlic. There are plenty of traditional favorites, such as clams in the flying saucer-shaped cataplana and several suggestions on what to do with bacalhau (salt cod). The hot sauce, piri-piri, is used liberally, and everything seems to be sprinkled with cilantro, just as the Portuguese do.

But there are a few revisions that don’t work as well as the originals – and require more, unnecessary work. The beauty of Cilantro Bread Soup With Poached Eggs is its ease of preparation, the way in which you can make a nourishing soup with boiling water and a paste made of garlic and salt plus the addition of cilantro, stale bread and a poached egg. Adding chicken stock, or even vegetable stock, dresses it up into something it’s not and makes the flavors a little less pristine.

Even worse is Leite’s fussy version of Baked Custard Tarts, or Pastéis de Nata, which betrays a bit of Portuguese culinary history. You see, when the Portuguese explorers sailed to Asia by way of Africa, they didn’t bring back such New World foods as vanilla or chocolate; and neither figure much into traditional Portuguese desserts. Leite’s version includes vanilla and lemon zest, both of which distract from the heavenly simplicity of a dessert that is little more than egg yolks, sugar and cream baked in puff pastry. (I have to admit his version is not bad. I ate four, but I ate those four remembering how much better other recipes have been.)

If those two had been the only recipes I tried, I would have had my reservations about “The New Portuguese Table.” But on the basis of every other recipe tried, this is a cookbook worth returning to time and time again.

Pork Tenderloin in a Port-Prune Sauce

Taste the sauce once it has been processed, once again after adding the salt and pepper, and finally upon completion. You’ll be surprised at how it changes each time.

2/3 cup pitted prunes
1 cup ruby port
1/2 cup beef stock
1-inch thumb of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 tablespoon honey
Kosher salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 (1-pound) pork tenderloins, fat and silver skin removed
1 garlic clove, minced
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish

Place the prunes into a small saucepan, add the port, beef stock, ginger and honey, and bring just to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let steep for 20 minutes.

Pour the prunes and liquid into a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 450 degrees.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Season both tenderloins well with salt and pepper and sear one at a time, turning occasionally, until brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a baking sheet and set the skillet aside.

Roast the pork until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the meat registers just under 150 degrees, 15 to 18 minutes. Transfer the tenderloins to a cutting board, tent with foil and let rest for 5 minutes.

Pour off all but a thin film of fat from the skillet. Lower the heat to medium, toss in the garlic, and cook until lightly colored, about 2 minutes. Add the port-prune sauce and stir to pick up the browned bits stuck to the skillet. Pour in the vinegar, and any accumulated juices from the pork, and cook to meld the flavors, 2 to 3 minutes. If the sauce seems thick, add more beef stock. For an elegant take, strain the sauce through a sieve.

Cut the tenderloins on the diagonal into 1/2-inch slices. Divide the slices among six plates, drizzle with the warm sauce and sprinkle with cilantro.

Makes 6 servings.

From “The New Portuguese Table” by David Leite

Grilled Shrimp With Piri-Piri Sauce

2 1/2 pounds extra-large shrimp, shelled and deveined
1 cup piri-piri sauce (see recipe below), plus more for serving
2 lemons cut into wedges
Kosher salt, to taste

Combine the shrimp and piri-piri sauce in a large resealable freezer bag and toss to coat. Place the bag in a shallow dish and marinate in the refrigerator, turning a few times, for at least several hours, or, preferably, overnight.

Heat a gas or charcoal grill to medium.

Thread the shrimp and lemon wedges on skewers and season with salt. Grill the shrimp over indirect heat, turning several times, until just opaque, 5 to 6 minutes. For an extra spike of flavor, brush the skewers with fresh piri-piri sauce just before serving.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

From “The New Portuguese Table” by David Leite.

Piri-Piri Sauce

3 garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
6 to 8 fresh red chile peppers, such as cayenne, Tabasco, or pequin, to taste, stemmed
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Pinch of kosher salt

Mix the garlic and vinegar in a small bowl and let steep for 20 minutes. Drop the peppers (including their seeds) and the garlic mixture into a food processor and pulse to chop. While the motor is running, pour in the oil, sprinkle with salt, and whir until smooth.

Pour the sauce into a small glass jar with a tight-fitting lid and let steep in the refrigerator for at least several days, preferably 1 week. Strain the mixture, if you wish. The sauce will keep for about 1 month in the refrigerator. Shake well before using.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

From “The New Portuguese Table” by David Leite

The tag line of Frank Bruni’s memoir, “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater” (The Penguin Press, $25.95), intrigued me.

Bruni recently resigned as the restaurant critic for the worshiped New York Times’ food section.  What type of secrets would he reveal?  Secret alliances between chefs?  More wisdom like never ordering seafood on Monday?

Surprisingly, Bruni is talking about his childhood, and he reveals a painful relationship with food and self-image from an early age.  In the first chapter, he confesses to be a “baby bulimic.”  This striking confession disturbed me greatly; I thought that perhaps he viewed the disease with an ill-placed sense of humor.  Yet Bruni’s seemingly jovial start is just his way to broach a subject that is difficult to discuss.  In his formative years through college, Bruni tried everything from dieting to actual bulimia for weight management.  After a night of binge eating, he would let shame and guilt drive him to purge.  Confronted by his friends, he decided to change his patterns.

It was not an easy decision to make, and there were setbacks.  He came from a family that equated love with an overflowing table of dishes.  He worried that extra pounds would detract any possibility for love or sex.  Stressful jobs including being part of President Bush’s traveling press corps provided rare healthful options.  When offered a new assignment in Italy, it seemed as though it would be practically impossible to maintain a modest weight, much less be thin.

Yet it was living in Italy that turned him around.  Even though the meals were multi-coursed and full of rich ingredients, he learned portion control.  Healthy relationships and the regular exercise of walking kept him fit.  When the New York Times offered him the venerated position of restaurant critic, he honestly confesses that his family was afraid of how detrimental the job could be.  Fortunately, the good habits he learned abroad and the great trainer he had back in Washington, D.C., enabled him to eat those second dinners without letting them add to his waistline or damage his self-confidence.  There are still hard moments – his fondness for Chinese delivery can prove a difficult temptation.  However, it seems that he has learned to meter his hedonism and maintain health, both in body and mind.

The closing chapters of the book are reminiscent of Ruth Reichl’s “Garlic and Sapphires” – a look into the cat-and-mouse game between restaurant and critic.  Some of the anecdotes included are simply too funny to spoil – you must read them for yourself.

Maybe Bruni was born round, but judging from the real, unphotoshopped images of him on this book tour, he isn’t going back to round.

I love cocktail books. I hate cocktail books.

I love the pictures of all the crazy drinks with their swizzle sticks loaded with pomegranate seeds, fresh rose petals or cherry blossom garnishes. And I usually find one or two recipes worth shaking up.

But at the same time, who has even half of the ingredients mentioned in most of the recipes? I mean items like elderflower liqueur, Velvet Faernum (a clove-spiced liqueur), bottled ginger juice (not ginger beer or ale, mind you) and passion fruit liqueur?

Yet all of those items are key to some of the recipes in “Mix Shake Stir” (Little Brown, $29.99), a glossy, collection of mixed drink recipes from Danny Meyer’s New York restaurants, which include the lauded Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park.

For the Turf Race, to cite just one recipe, the bartender is asked to mix 3 1/2 ounces gin, preferably Hendrick’s; 1/2 ounce maraschino liqueur, preferably Luxardo; 1/2 ounce absinthe, preferably Lucid; and 1 generous dash of orange bitters (not Angostura).

All of these ideas are grouped under the laughable subtitle “Cocktails for the Home Bar.” Whose home? Certainly not Meyer’s patrons, people with Manhattan apartment so tiny that the book would take up too much space, not to mention the volume of bottles of pear cream liqueur, drunken cranberries, Campari cocktail mix, cardamom syrup, rosemary-infused pear nectar, verjus,  and ginger-infused rye. I have a fairly well-stocked bar and I don’t have room for any of these.

Still, I did enjoy sipping my way through a few recipes. The few I found that weren’t too sweet, mind you. Cocktails, like very other drink nowadays, have gotten too sweet in recent years. Blame the cosmo-crazed women on “Sex in the City” or the sugar-coated American palate, but it’s hard to find a drink that isn’t sickeningly sweet. I can’t even order a margarita in San Antonio any more without asking first if it has been polluted with some sort of sweet-and-sour mix, syrup or sugar infusion.

One elixir called Hang Time mixed together muddled thyme with citrus-infused vodka and lime juice to great effect. Well, the printed recipe did call for sugar, but it was more refreshing without it.

The same is true of the Thai Basil Bliss, which gets enough sweetness from fresh pineapple that, in my opinion, makes the addition of simple syrup cloying and superfluous. To make the drink, muddle 4 basil leaves and 4 (1-inch) pineapple cubes in a shaker. Add ice. Then pour in 2 ounces silver tequila, 3/4 ounce fresh lime juice and an optional splash of sparkling wine. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a basil leaf. (Sweeten with syrup, if you must.)

Another plus of the book is a collection of bar snack recipes, from Five-Spice Cashews to Grilled Watermelon With Heirloom Tomatoes. Here’s a recipe for Dried Cherry, Bacon and Pecan Mix that the book promises is a great match with the somewhat fussy Modern Old-Fashioned, also below.

Dried Cherry, Bacon and Pecan Mix

Candied Bacon:

3 slices thick-cut applewood or other wood-smoked bacon
1/4 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Mix:
1 pound pecan pieces, divided use
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries
1/4 cup chopped candied orange peel, optional

For the bacon: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lay the bacon on a rimmed baking sheet and bake, rotating the pan after 10 minutes, until the bacon starts to crisp, about 15 minutes. Drain off any fat from the pan. In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, cayenne and cloves. Sprinkle the mixture on the bacon, return to the oven, and bake until the bacon is very crisp and the sugar mixture is bubbling, about 5 minutes. Transfer the bacon to a cutting board and let cool. Leave the oven on.

In a saucepan over high heat, combine 1/2 pound of pecans, sugar and water. Cook, stirring often, until the sugar melts and thickens to a syrup, 6-8 minutes. At this point, stir constantly until the sugar syrup crystallizes and is sandy, 3-5 minutes longer. Pour onto another baking sheet and let cool.

In a bowl, stir together the egg white, salt and cloves. Add the remaining pecans, toss to coat and spread on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake until lightly toasted, about 5 minutes. Let cool.

Cut the bacon into 1/2-inch pieces. In a bowl, toss together the bacon, praline, toasted pecans, cherries and orange peel, if using, and serve. The nut mix, without bacon, can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Makes about 5 cups.

Adapted from “Mix Shake Stir: Cocktails for the Home Bar”

The Modern Old-Fashioned

4 dried cherries, divided use
1 1/2 ounces Poire William or other pear liqueur, divided use
5 slices ripe but firm red Bosc pear
Splash of fresh lemon juice
Ice
2 ounces bourbon, preferably Michter’s
1/2 ounce simple syrup
Dash of Angostura bitters

In a small bowl, soak 3 of the cherries in 1/2 ounce of the pear liqueur until plump. Thread the cherries onto a small skewer and set aside. Fill a rocks glass with ice. Muddle 4 of the pear slices, the remaining dried cherry and the lemon juice in a cocktail shaker. Add ice, then the bourbon, the remaining 1 ounce pear liqueur, the simple syrup and the bitters, and shake vigorously. Strain into the glass, garnish with the skewered cherries and the remaining pear slice and serve.

Makes 1 drink.

From “Mix Shake Stir: Cocktails for the Home Bar”