Cooking Club: Six Friends Show You How to Bake, Broil, and Bond
By Katherine Fausset, Sharon Cohen Fredman, Rebecca Sample Gerstung, Cynthia Harris, Lucia Quartararo and Lisa Singer (Villard)

"Cooking in New York City is like driving—no one in their right mind does it. In this city, dinner at home requires only two ingredients: a phone and a drawer full of take-out menus. Mongolian at midnight? Not a problem. Cooking, on the other hand, involves trawling for elfin-sized groceries at your corner deli, boxing out an angry executive to nab the last bottle of soy sauce, and then lugging a shopping bag up four flights of stairs in a brownstone walk-up to an apartment that you can't afford anyway."

So begins the tale of the Cooking Club, and if you wonder then just how these six young friends who work in publishing actually got it together to create menu after menu of dazzling dishes—first for their regular meetings, and now for this delightful book—grab a copy and read along.

It's like HBO's smash "Sex and the City" for the cooking set. (Just try their Aphrodisiac Salad, Seduce-Me Steak, Baked Pesto Oysters on the Half Shell and Wild Ginger Rice that are part of their Sexy Menu chapter.)

But the group has more than hanky-panky on their minds. They also offer informed chapters on spa cuisine, grilling, fast food, brunch, entertaining and a number of ethnic foods, as well as heart-to-hearts on starting your own cooking club and bonding with your fellow members.

In the end, though, it's all about them (shown in fetching color pics throughout)—as well it should be: This is one intelligent, witty—and photogenic—crowd. These women may be in publishing now, but it seems like their own TV cooking series/personal confessional reality show can't be far behind.

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