Cook the Mountain: The Nature Around You

Cook the Mountain is a dramatic showpiece book, as arresting as the Italian Alps in which chef Norbert Niederkofler's restaurant, St. Hubertus is nestled. It makes a powerful case for the inspiration provided by a focus on distinctly local cuisine and ingredients. There are two volumes here, packaged in an ingenious case that converts to a bookstand. The larger volume is 13 x 11.25 (just slightly smaller than Heston Blumenthal's The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, if you have one of those on your shelves). It is 393 pages celebrating the food, landscape and people of the South Tyrol in beautiful photography, including more than 60 arresting, seasonally-organized recipes. Among them

• Wild asparagus in beeswax
• Sheep's rib with dandelion pesto
• Risotto with wild garlic, kefir, and mutton
• Sweetbreads with sorrel and fermented larch cone broth
• Veal in a sauce of black currants and marrow

While the photographs of the plated food appear in the large hardcover volume, the recipes appear in a smaller paperback, which can be taken into the kitchen with less risk and which has ample space for chef's notes. The complex production of this book leads us to expect that it will have only a short-term availability. 2 volumes in a corrugated case; one hardcover with color photographs throughout, one paperback with black-and-white photographs. In English.