'Ballymaloe Desserts is an extraordinary cookbook'. – David Tanis Attainable, reliable, and inspirational recipes for the home baker from the acclaimed pastry chef at the iconic Ballymaloe House in Ireland Ballymaloe House, in County Cork, Ireland, is heralded as the birthplace of modern Irish cuisine. There, visitors are treated to acclaimed pastry chef JR Ryall's daily array of seasonally inspired treats, wheeled through the dining room on a vintage dessert trolley. In Ballymaloe Desserts, Ryall presents 130 recipes for his award-winning confections, tested and perfected for the home baker. Eye-catching, elegant, and a bit magical, these inspiring yet accessible recipes range from the delightfully retro Ice Cream Bomb to the showstopping Irish Coffee Meringue Gâteau to a Classic Strawberry Shortcake made modern with an edgy geometric presentation. Ryall is an excellent teacher, providing clear, detailed instructions for each dish. Recipes are built to be adaptable, highlighting Ballymaloe's commitment to seasonality and fresh local ingredients. His thoughtful advice appears throughout the book, revealing the best method for whisking egg whites, serving tips for adding major & 'wow' factor, and more. Chapters and recipes include: Fruit : Compote of Green Gooseberry and Elderflower; Sugared Peaches Meringues : Almond Meringue Gâteau with Chocolate and Rum Cream Mousses, Set Creams, Jellies and Fruit Fools : Orange Mousse with Chocolate Wafers Puddings : Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding Some Biscuits and Petit Fours : Strawberries Almandine Frozen Desserts : Blackcurrant Ice Cream; Blood Orange and Passion Fruit Sorbet Pastries : Rhubarb and Custard Tart Cakes : Irish Apple Cake; Chocolate Mousse Gâteau

David Tanis might cook in the most famous restaurant in America, but here he is all about keeping meals simple at home.
In this eloquent appeal for good sense in cooking great food, Davis Tanis serves up twenty-four seasonal menus that are simply conceived and simply served-on platters, family style. His food bursts with invention and flavor, such as wild salmon with spicy Vietnamese cucumbers to celebrate spring and braised duck with fried ginger for a cool-weather dinner.
Tanis has an elemental, unpretentious finesse with ingredients and a genuine gift for words. Deliciously down-to-earth, his intuitive menus make cooking a pleasure, not a stress-whether you're "Feeling Italian" (Steamed Fennel with Red Pepper Oil; Roasted Quail with Grilled Radicchio and Creamy Polenta; Italian Plum Cake), "Slightly All-American" (Sliced Tomatoes with Sea Salt; Grilled Chicken Breasts; Corn, Squash, and Beans with Jalapeno Butter; Blueberry-Blackberry Crumble), or "Too Darned Hot, Alors!" (Provencal Toasts; Melon and Figs with Prosciutto and Mint; Deconstructed Salade Nicoise; Lavender Honey Ice Cream).
"David's recipes are simple and marvelous," says cookbook author Paula Wolfert. "What more can a food lover want?" Tanis shows you how to slow down, pay attention, give ingredients their due, and provide meals that will delight friends and family.
Here, at last, is a cookbook that has nothing to do with celebrity chefdom and everything to do with real life. Cancel the dinner reservations and pick up this book-and rediscover the pleasure of cooking at home.

Sections on universal ingredients - such as garlic, onion, and shallots - offer some of the simplest yet most satisfying recipes in the world. Consider the onion in these three marvelous incarnations: Lebanese Caramelized Onions, American Buttermilk Fried Onion Rings, and French Onion and Bacon Tart. And the chile section encourages readers to use real chiles (rather than reach for bottled hot sauce each time) on an everyday basis in recipes from Hungary to India, from Mexico to China, with wonderful results. Surprises abound in this vast recipe collection (over 60 percent of which are vegetarian or vegetable-based), such as Tanis's unexpected happy nod to the value of leftovers: he offers scores of suggestions to morph them into dishes every bit as delicious as the meal in which they originally appeared.

David Tanis knows what we want. Sometimes it's pasta for breakfast or a bowl of butter-steamed potatoes for lunch. Eccentricity is celebrated in this utterly delightful collection of personal favourites that satisfy every need. His simple and delicious small meals have more allure than a big plate of protein with a vegetable and starch. Here are recipes for any time of day, for any reason, from the restaurant chef whose passion is home cooking. He is ever the original, with chapters organised around delightful themes, such as meals you can eat with a spoon, recipes you can cook in a skillet, and recipes where bread makes the meal. And every recipe has that uniquely 'Tanisian' touch: his popovers, made with fine cornmeal, are the perfect combination of air and crunch; his tartare is made with red beets, not raw beef; his spicy scallion oil makes cold chicken sing. And throughout there's that calming, reassuring voice readers have come to love and trust.

Recipes from a very small kitchen by a man with a very large talent.
Nobody better embodies the present-day mantra "Eat real food in season" than David Tanis, one of the most original voices in American cooking. For more than a quarter-century, Tanis has been the chef at the groundbreaking Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, where the menu consists solely of a single perfect meal that changes each evening. Tanis s recipes are down-to-earth yet sophisticated, simple to prepare but impressive on the plate.
Tanis opens this soulful, fun-to-read cookbook with his own private food rituals, those treats jalapeno pancakes, beans on toast, pasta for one for when you are on your own in the kitchen with no one else to satisfy. Then he follows with twenty incomparable menus (five per season) that serve four to six. Each transports the reader to places far and wide. And for grand occasions, a time for the whole tribe to gather around the table, Tanis delivers festive menus for holiday feasts. So in one book, three kinds of cooking: small, medium, and large."