James Beard’s American Cookery

Long before ingredient-driven cooking was in vogue and "seasonal" and "nose-to-tail" were culinary buzzwords, there was James Beard—champion of all those things. His best book, American Cookery (Little, Brown and Co., 1972_),_ is an essential encyclopedia of regional American cooking that includes recipes for everything from Yankee pot roast to Southern-style greens to wild squirrel (which "is as typical of America as grouse is of Scotland"). —Tom Colicchio, Craft Restaurant group