Cookbooks by Debra Ponzek

THE FAMILY KITCHEN: Easy and Delicious Recipes for Parents and Kids to Make and Enjoy Together by Debra Ponzek (2006):

Want to prepare one meal the entire family will actually eat? Get your children to finish their vegetables? Spend more quality time with your kids?

Enter The Family Kitchen, where award-winning chef and mother of three Debra Ponzek shares recipes that are simple enough to please kids, refined enough to satisfy parents, and easy enough for everyone to roll up their sleeves and help make. From Breakfast to Dinnertime, Bake Sales to Vegetables and Salads, Snow Days to Summer Supper on the Grill, chapters include 125 flavorful crowd-pleasers such as Pan-Seared Pork Chops with Green Apple–Cranberry Compote, Honey-Glazed Carrots, and Double Hot Chocolate with Homemade Marshmallows. This is food you and your kids will want to eat every day—and not a smiley-face pizza in sight!

THE SUMMER HOUSE COOKBOOK: Easy Recipes for When You Have Better Things to Do with Your Time by Debra Ponzek and Geralyn Delaney Graham (2003)

Whether your summer house is a beachside bungalow, a lakeside cottage, or a year-round retreat, cooking for family and friends while on vacation can be a delight—if you know how to keep it simple. The Summer House Cookbook has all of the tips, tricks, and recipes guaranteed to make summertime cooking a breeze.

Rather than stocking a vacation home with a full array of spices, whip up a couple “make-to-take” infused oils, marinades, and spice blends to bring along—they’ll give instant, effortless flavor to meats and fish. Save time in the kitchen by cleverly dressing up leftovers—turn extra roast chicken into Tarragon Tree Chicken Salad, and grilled flank steak into a great sandwich with some Balsamic-Marinated Red Onions. From crowd-pleasing recipes such as Picnic Basket Fried Chicken, Memorial Day Coleslaw, and Bar Harbor Lobster Cakes to sophisticated offerings like Charred Pesto Shrimp and Grilled Lamb Chops with Olive Butter, these dishes require nothing more than the basic equipment available in even a bare-bones kitchen.

The Summer House Cookbook is filled with great ways to enjoy the pleasures of the season. Share a big pitcher of margaritas and a bowl of Best-Ever Guacamole with friends, or celebrate summer produce with Fourth of July Strawberry Shortcakes and Perfect Peach Pie.

FRENCH FOOD, AMERICAN ACCENT: Debra Ponzek's Spirited Cuisine by Debra Ponzek (1996)

In her nearly eight years at New York City’s Montrachet and now the proprietor of her own prepared foods store, Aux Delices, Debra Ponzek has garnered raves for her updated French fare. Building on foundations such as perfectly cooked fish or meat, roasted vegetables, and earthy grains, she skillfully blends ingredients to create dishes that dazzle with their originality and clarity of flavor.

Now, in French Food/American Accent Ponzek shares both the recipes and philosophy behind these inspired combinations, demonstrating how even the most sophisticated dishes can be broken down into easily mastered elements, which can recombined to create a savory variety of entirely new dishes. More than 160 carefully chosen recipes exemplify Ponzek’s kitchen credo of “simple food, perfectly cooked.”

And whether its her rendition of classics such as ratatouille, coq au vin, and chocolate mousse, or such peerless showstoppers as Halibut with Tomato Cumin Broth and Curried Couscous, Warm Duck Salad with Cranberries and Walnuts, or Maple Cinnamon Bread Pudding with Vanilla Cream, all are surprisingly easy for the home cook to prepare.