Pierre Franey's Cooking in America (1992)

When Pierre Franey came to America in 1939, his French background gave him status as a chef. Now that American cooking is in vogue, Franey, a recipe writer and a TV chef on PBS, has been touring the country looking for ideas. Instead of gathering traditional recipes from grass-roots grannies for Cooking In America and his TV show, Franey sat in with innovative cooks and set up his own batterie de cuisine at locations that the camera could exploit: Disney World, the Club Med yacht, a Nevada cowboy campfire. In a typical Franey flourish, the cowboys got their campfire steaks with bearnaise sauce. That recipe and other fresher combinations are among the 200 that Franey and coauthor Richard Flaste have set down here. As always with this duo, the dishes are notable for their efficiency as well as their panache. B+