the alice b toklas cook book Author:alice b toklas During the almost forty years that she was Gertrude Stein's constant companion, Alice B Toklas had a secret ambition, which she confesses in these pages: to write a book of her own. Whenc she finally came to do so after Miss Stein's death, the two consuming interests of her life merged: her years with Miss Stein in France, where they were in co... more »nstant contact with the great and near great; and the superb food she took such pleasure in preparing for Miss Stein and her distinguished guests. The result is The Alice B Toklas Cook Book, which Janet Flanner, writing in the New Yorker, called "a book of character, fine food, and tasty human observation." The reader is not only given a fine recipe for cold bass decorated a la Picasso -- designed to make any dinner party a success -- but an engaging account of what happened when Picasso came to lunch and it was served to him. The more than 350 recipes here, most of them well within the range of the imaginative American cook, go all the way from Birthday Ice Cream for adults to Chicken Saute' aux Ducs de Bourgogne. And the "tasty human observation" is turned on such men as Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, and James Branch Cabell.« less