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Show TT E Home for the holidays 1943 and all that BY SYB&. PRATT Home is where the heart is, and home cooking is at the heart of the American home. To celebrate our rich and diverse culinary heritage, Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison have put together over 300 recipes in American Home Cooking (Broadway, $30, 0767902017). To the Jamisons, "home cooking" suggests simple. hearty, seasonal fare lha! can be made w ithoul an excess of energy, expense, and time. The question of what is American" food is harder to define. We are. proudly, a land of immigrants, not only the proserhial melting pot of people, hut a melt- tng pt.it of ethnic cooking sty ks. The dishes included here may hase foreign antecedents and deep regional roots, but they all speak w uh a distinctly American accem. cooking simplified for the home cook (though there are some tips to make things easier for the r This is unabashed miking, exactly as it is done m this four-sta- r restaurant. 1 tt H j The recipes range from simple (well, simple on the Kelkr scale) to diffin Puree cult: a of English Pea Soup iv easy, while White Truffle Custards with Blaik Truffle Ragout (haked in carefully severed fixir-sta- f,, f pale-gree- ly oolu Nothing says American home cooking boner than a big breakfast, and you may discover some fabulous new ways to start the day among the flapjacks. grits, and hash, not to mention the SantaFe Breakfast Bumtos and the Baked Apples with Appk Glared Bacon. Breakfast is only the beginning: youU find both die signature dishes of American cuisine (New England Clam Chowder. Crawfish EtoutTce, F ried Green Tomatoes), and some lesser known kx.al (Salmon Poached in Hard Cider. Salted Green Soy hearts. Maui Mango Bread) in the 16 chapters that follow. iik lulling a salute to the sandwich, Garnished w ith cultural and historical background and prepaniikm tips, this is a -- cre-atio- fijsorful. prjitKal, infor- mative tribute to our natKmal table. IVhwIa For Thomas Kelkrr. chetowner of the renowned Freni h Laundry in the Napa Valley and now author of The French 1 .sundry Cookbook ( Artisan. SV, I 57965 267). expending energy, time, and expense on fooJ and its preparation is not only an everyday occurrence. its an absolute neressi.v. His cooking is an ode to elegance. a lesson ui luvurHxis dining, and his cookbook, w ith its grand proportions, chowe paper, and lush coke photog-raphis the perfect reflection of his culiand his passion lor ciwnmitmeni nary food Keller's evoking is not abxKit most o( the recipes are aial require thought Clearly, this is not last lood. it's not even tour-sta- r 1 conve-nK-nci- e, eggshellst tv K put it miklly. Chalkngtng with a capital C. Keller dues take the tune to dewrnbe and explain many fixxl techniques: some arc basic, such as braising and tug pul blanching, and some, such as working with foie gras. resale in the realms of the rarefied and refined. Since many of Kelkr 's inventive, signature dishes are composed of separate preparationv you can make just one part erf a complex recipe a velvety pxrfenu with mascarpooe. sublime Wuu if the whole is a bit overwhelming This is a chef s ehef-- oeusrr. or a marvckius gift fie any venous fie the many who preter to take their cook's tour m the comfort of an amuhair. d mi A louper cookbook for the whole tainSy Blue Moon Soup (Little. Brown. $16.95. 0316329916) is a disarmingly charming colkctHei erf seasonal soup recipes ladled out by Gary Goss with whimsical watereirf-or- v by Jane Dyer. It's btlkd as a family mi-booa nurvekeis magnet to pull cluktren and adults together as they choose a seip to make fie lunch or dinner, but it's enough to be used without much parental partK'ipatKei. It the kub. can read well and are respmsiNe enough to heed Gary s Rules ol the Soup Kitchen, there's mi reason why they can't whip up a warming pee erf in the winter or a ihilkd How Does Your Garden Grow Gapacho in the summer, and an Ice Cream Soup that will bring cheer any time of year. A finely, practical present fie the holidays and beyond. k. Sshl Piatt v anas hi not The British keig have boasted that their island nation has not been invaded by a foreign power in nearly a thousand years, me since William the Conqueror's little expedition in 1066. It's a pretty boast, and it's almost true. They tend to oserkiok that Germany invaded the Channel Islands, off the coast of France, in 1940 and occupied them throughout Work! War II. The story of the occupation has been loki before, most succinctly in Alan and Mary Wood's Islands in Danger. But that was htstoncal fact Tim Binding now tells it in fiction in Lying with the Enemy (Carroll ami Graf. $24, 07S67O657O), a novel set on Guernsey in 1943 that combines war story and whodunit to thumping great effect. There are understandable reasons for shov mg aside the inconvenient fact of occupation, because it brings in its tram the embarrassing issues of capitulation and. especially, collaboration. The embarrassment was as true then as today. For what were they now? What identity did they possess?" thinks Ned Luscombe. Guernseys unwilling default. England kept quart about the Channel Islands as if she were punishing the islands for kiting the side al y -- down." Collaboration is the subject of Lying with the Enemy (seemingly expressed in the possible double meaning of the title, though the British title was Island Motfness. Are you a traitor, the story implicitly asks, if you work for the occupiers in order to support your family? Are you more of a traitor if you're a businessman whose enterprise supplies the work? Are you a greater traitor still if you operate, or buy from, a black market rations? The story asks these queswhen people are on tions not because the author has the answers or even necessarily believes in the concept of treason but because the questions are always on the minds of the populace. n Conquerors and conquered manage to get on, sometimes swimmingly smart set. is exhilarated by Marjorie Hallivand. doyenne of Guernsey 's pre-wthe war and the German officers, especially Majvir Lentsch, the island's commandant: They were of the same ciavv alter all." Even those not of the island's petty aristocracy. like Veronica Vaudin, find it advantageous to be pliant. What urn form v was how quicksurprised these men. still dressed in their ly the women had embraced their wav of life." The sharpest express! of the collaboration is the relationship of Guernsey women to the German men. War in an insular backwater apparently hav ing inflamed both the island's inhabitants and the author's imagination, there is copas always, whether m war ulation on a whoksak scak, though its distribution or peace is unequal. Luscombe and Lentsch. however, have equally shared the favors of Isobel van Dickn. though at different times. Isohel rv the daughter erf a wealthy, widowed contractor who is helping the Germans with a monstrous construct ion project Being built by 6. (100 slave laborers, known av foreignv" who ten) in brutish conditions, ignored by the islanders. Luscombe and Lentsch are enemies in Uve and war, until Iscrfiel turns up dead, her mouth and nose filkd with cement. Ike death and the search for her kilkr bring them gradually c Wiser together, though Luscombe initially suspects that Lentsch had sonKrthmg to do w ith the murder. Here the novel's tight construction tightens still further, as it screws itself up to rush down the multiplying dark avenues of a proper and highly satisfying murder mystery. Why has Isohd's father disappeared- Did he kill her, as many islanders believe? Wav the charming and cruel Captain Zepemick, who likes to romp an nature! through the Victor Hugo house w ith Veronica, involved in some way ? Or was Isobel ktlkd by one erf the loretgns? The murderer and motive, rcveakd at the very end, are nnre banal than any thing suggested by those pissiNlntev. By that time we have Warned of the fundamental decency erf Lentsch and of the supposedly sluttish Veronica We also kam lhai much of this activ ity has been driven behind the scenes by a pissibk visit to the island by Hitkr. to wfxm. throughout the story, the author refers in capitals He. Him. Hiv like a deity. Germany was His alter ail. like whci knows? the world is Gcxi's. and maybe the future will wipe out the distinction. But by that pun! in history such a consummation was not m the cards, however devoutly scime Germans and vome erfherv wished it. Ah. war who the enemy, who the IncnJ Is collaboration treason It depends ar once-feare- 1 - -- Rover K Miller is a prelam e w ruer in ttiuiwur |