Menu Mystique: The Diners Guide to Fine Food and Drink Book

I like what she says about improvising, but on a more basic level the dishes she gravitates towards aren't as appealing to me. There's very little about beans, and surprisingly there seems to be much more meat than vegetable dishes. So for a vegetarian or someone who eats more vegetarian food, this is a book worth getting from the library rather than the bookstore.

I also think this book shines when it is systematic, as in the section on ingredient combinations where she basically says "what grows together goes together", and the recipes and variations would have benefited from that as well. Each recipe has a section called "understanding"... understanding how that recipe and its variations work... and that really adds to the usefulness of the book.