An International Bill of Fare

By Michael Demarest

Traditional and new recipes travel from arroz to zuppa

A great cookbook can compete with any adventure novel. It will have glamorous, expensive leading characters like Mam'selle Canard and Signor Vitello, and a savory supporting cast. There will be cuttings and slicings, pairings and peelings, as in any other thriller, and the unpredictable can always be expected. Like a good novel, a well-done cookbook is also a sociological document, recording the infinite ways in which people all over the world nourish, titillate and please, borrowing from one culture, lending to another. Even before the Romans planted vines in Southern France, before Marco Polo returned from China bearing the secrets of pasta and ice cream, mankind was engaged in this most civilized exchange. It continues.

Haute cuisine, as we relish it, was formulated and perfected in France between the 14th and 19th centuries. The recipes developed by La Varenne and La Chapelle, Brillat-Savarin and Beauvilliers (who founded the first recorded restaurant in France) are as practical and savory as ever. In The Grand Masters of French Cuisine (Putnam; 288 pages; $25), Celine Vence and Robert Courtine, two of France's most distinguished culinary authorities, have assembled some of the greatest formulas ever invented. It would be hard to resist the original instructions for boeuf mode as constructed by Pierre de Lune in 1656, or for preserved quinces as prescribed by Nostradamus in 1552. From the stick-roasted eggs of Taillevent (1373) to the spit-roasted eel of Alexandre Dumas pere (1873), the dishes outlined are all cookable with available ingredients.

Good meals, c,a va sans dire, should not be corseted by classic formulas or restricted to scarce foodstuff. This is what nouvelle cuisine is all about: less emphasis on heavy, masking sauces, greater reliance on the fresh flesh, fish, fowl and vegetables that can be encouraged to speak for themselves. Jean and Pierre Troisgros most elegantly practice the new cookery at their three-star restaurant in the Rhone Valley. In The Nouvelle Cuisine (Morrow; 254 pages; $12.95), the chers freres range easily from red mullet with beef marrow to that little-known marvel, coupe-jarret, which consists of five different meats (pork, veal, beef, lamb and chicken) cooked in one kettle.

French and Italian cuisines "have been intertwined since the young French queen-to-be Catherine de Medicis coached from Italy to France in 1533 with a retinue of chefs and their recipes, plus forks, then unknown to the Gauls. The old established Italian cuisine is still among the world's most refined, largely because it has stayed close to its rural roots. When Marcella Hazan published The Classic Italian Cook Book in 1976, it was considered the definitive opus. Her sequel, More Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf; 496 pages; $15), is as valuable as its predecessor. Scooping up irresistible formulations from palazzo, trattoria and country cottage, she makes available for the home cook another whole array of la buo-na cucina. Kazan's recipes for veal, in all its luscious Latin variations, are worth a book unto themselves. It so happens that Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey of the New York Times have produced just such a volume, Veal Cookery (Harper & Row; 229 pages; $10). No meat is more succulent than the creamy pink flesh of milk-fed calf, whether married to crabmeat, crawfish, shrimp, lobster or tuna, or stewed, stuffed, sauced, roasted or grilled, or divided into what some call the ''odd parts." such as brains, sweetbreads and soup bones. Indeed, le petit veau is a centerpiece of all the great cuisines save the Chinese. The book's most notable contribution may be a simplified recipe for cotes de veau Orloff, that unusually hard-to-prepare confection of glazed chops with pureed onions and mushrooms that was one of czarist Russia's more admirable innovations.

Another lovely legacy of old Russia is Chicken Kiev, a dish too seldom served in American homes or restaurants. Carl Jerome's The Complete Chicken (Random House; 247 pages; $12.95) should provide a rise in fare. The author, who has been a teaching and writing associate of James Beard's, ennobles the plebeian poulet in such great incarnalations as demi-deuil, en brioche and bollito misto, all sagely laid out. Jerome also offers some offbeat recipes for Southern fried chicken that will stir sizzling debate in Dixie.

That same delicacy is prescribed in The Time-Life American Regional Cookbook (Little, Brown; 527 pages; $12.95). Compiled by the editors of the most authoritative cookbook series ever assembled, this savvy potpourri ranges with wit and spice from Eastern Heartland chow to the Creole cuisine of New Orleans, from the Tex-Mex chilis of the Southwest to the fish and game specialties of the Northwest.

In theory, it is not a great leap from the North American chili-tortilla parlor to the true provincial cuisine of Mexico. In fact, it would take years for the most diligent gringo to understand or annotate this peasant-rooted cuisine of peppers and cornmeal, arroz, barbacoa and relleno. Diana Kennedy, English by birth and Mexicana by persuasion, invested a large part of her life tasting and testing south of the border to produce The Cuisines of Mexico in 1972. She spent five more years researching the 1978 followup, Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico (Harper & Row; 288 pages; $12.95). The result, for novice or aficionado, is a masterwork that sweeps the terrain from Chihuahua to Yucatan, from shrimps in pumpkinseed sauce to sugar-glazed flaky pastries. One could quite happily live on Diana's sopa de ajo y migas, which inadequately translates as garlic and bread-crumb soup.

It is 8,925 miles from Durango to Hunan, but the Mexicans and Chinese who inhabit those provinces could easily establish a kitchen detente. What they have in uncommon is a passion for pepper--not the condiment but the vegetable, red and red-hot. The spiciest variety in Hunan is a fingertip-size bomb called "To-the-Sky," because it grows facing upward. The explosive has not gone off in America; there are only a dozen restaurants devoted to authentic Hunanese cuisine in the entire U.S. The first was founded by Henry Chung in San Francisco five years ago, and almost immediately won national acclaim. In his Hunan Style Chinese Cookbook (Harmony Books; 145 pages; $10), Chung relates charming anecdotes from his native Li-ling county and introduces many worthy dishes, notably hot and sour chicken, fried asparagus in hot black bean sauce and, for breakfast, steamed thin-sliced pork with fermented black beans. Ni hao, Mr. Chung.

And bienvenue, Julia Child! America's most generous and persuasive evangelist-explicator of great food is back in print with a compendium of recipes, reflections and recommendations. Julia Child & Company (Knopf; 243 pages; $8.95 paperback) is not so much a collection of recipes, of which there are a Julian abundance, as a matter of celebrations and consummations. There is a Dinner for the Boss that runs through consomme brunoise, standing rib roast and macedoine of fruits in champagne with bourbon-soaked chocolate truffles. Anyone who serves anyone such a repast must have a very good boss or richly deserve a raise. Julia also has suggestions for such events as a birthday dinner ("roast duck and a big gooey cake"), a Sunday night supper, a chafing-dish dinner and a buffet for 19, with good ideas about the wines avec. The book goes on to breads and breakfasts, capons and caramel, sherbets and shellfish. Julia, please stop.

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