Fobel, Jim. Beautiful Food. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983.
The lacquered lobster on the cover was all it took. I was unable to resist buying Jim Fobel’s Beautiful Food when I found it in a used bookstore several years ago. To its credit (as promised on the jacket), it has been a “constant source of delight and inspiration to [me]” since then. Possibly more delight than inspiration–I’ve never actually made any of the recipes, which range from the merely fussy to the totally insane. The premise of the cookbook is that “meals in minutes” must be vanquished, and that food should be as much (or more) about appearance as taste. While I’m all for lovely presentation, Fobel sometimes took things a bit too far, in a completely charming sort of way. On Thanksgiving, for instance, he recommended dressing up the turkey “with a tailor-made pastry outfit,” otherwise known as a tuxedo:
