The Figs Table

Authors English and Sampson are aiming, with The Figs Table, at the 15 best pizza recipes out of Todd English's award-winning restaurant, Figs. But to get there--poor reader--you will have to pass through one impossibly flavorful ordeal after another, starting right up front with such basics as roasted garlic, balsamic onions, and fig jam.

You will find the whimsical: Fennel, Watermelon, and Black Olive Salad with Feta Cheese, which comes of English musing about agro dolce and melon paired with prosciutto. You will find the sublime: Roasted Beets with Walnut Gorgonzola Dressing. And in between, you are sure to stop at some very basic treasures like White Bean Soup, Black Bean Chili, a lasagna to end them all, Sweet Potato Polenta, Roasted Fennel and Shrimp Risotto, and then on into those pizzas to die for.

English uses the Mediterranean like a springboard for his flavor imagination. This cookbook is his dismount. Any judge would give him the highest points possible. --Schuyler Ingle