Roasting: A Simple Art

Child Award Barbara Kafka minces herbs, not words. She opens her remarkable book with a straightforward credo. I believe, she writes, in hot ovens, short roasting times, and rare meat. With passion and wit, Kafka confronts many of the sacred cows of home cooking custom -- not to mention chickens, pheasant, swordfish and summer squash -- and roasts them all at a blazing 500 degrees. Kafka can take the heat. As she has in her previous award-winning cookbooks-- and in her popular commentary in Vogue, Gourmet, and now on the national Television Food Network--Kafka proposes a bold new change in American cooking habits. In Roasting, she introduces a fundamentally different way to use conventional ovens, detailed in precise techniques and more than 230 meticulously tested recipes. Her high-temperature roasting method produces delicious results -- for vegetables and fruits, as well as poultry, fish and meats -- often in half the usual time.