Amazon.com (ISBN 076790155X, Hardcover)

Interested in terrific food? Good. The first thing to do is buy this book. Then clear your calendar for the next 150 days. At a recipe a day, that's how long it will take to go from cover to cover. Your old life? Buy this book and kiss your old life goodbye. You won't regret it.

Most recipes that come out of high-end restaurant kitchens either aren't feasible in a home kitchen with home cooking skills, or they produce the kind of contrived food you wouldn't think to serve--the kind of food you go out to a restaurant to have served to you.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, on the other hand, has moved in the direction of ultimate, minimal simplicity with heightened, surprising flavors as the payoff. His Steak with Red Wine Reduction and Carrot Purée, a popular restaurant dish, simply asks that the cook reduce a bottle of red wine to a single cup, stir in carrot purée, and use this as a sauce on a grilled steak. If that sounds like a gimmick, consider that his Manhattan restaurants--Jean-Georges, Vong, JoJo--receive lavish, stunning reviews. And it's all about the food. It's all about finding flavors and textures in your mouth that have never been there before.

In his life and career, Jean-Georges Vongerichten has moved from the foods of his home in France, across Asia, and finally to New York. When the food media was first beginning to talk about "fusion" cuisine, that all-too-often forced marriage of classic French and Asian cooking techniques and ingredients, Jean-Georges had already blown on by into a realm of his own making.

The results of his insight and energy are in this book. This is easy, elegant, flavorful food: Cold Tomato Soup with Cucumber and Cantaloupe, for example, or Salmon in a Cardamom Broth. You won't cook, eat, or taste anything the same old way once you tuck this book and this food experience under your wing. --Schuyler Ingle