Amuse-Bouche

While chefs at many fine restaurants offer guests an amuse-bouche to welcome them, nobody does it better than Rick Tramonto, the celebrated executive chef/partner of Chicago's TRU--one of Conde Nast Traveler's Top Fifty restaurants in the world in 2000. With the publication of this book, Tramonto aims to share this delicate, delicious world with a mainstream audience. Amuse-bouche are, to us, what hors d'oeuvres were to Americans in the 1950s--a relatively unknown but rapidly embraced French culinary tradition. Rick Tramonto's beautiful and lighthearted, if sometimes zany, recipes will inspire home cooks and professionals alike to let their imaginations soar. These preludes to a meal can be as provocative and inventive as one chooses--from Black Mission Figs with Mascarpone Foam and Prosciutto di Parma to Curried Three-Bean Salad. With more than one hundred recipes and fifty full-page color photographs, the book will satisfy your eyes as much as the amuses will please your tastebuds.