Cookbook review: Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America's Best Chefs, Farmers and Artisans

Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America's Best Chefs, Farmers and Artisans is one of those cookbooks that's almost more photography than recipes. Food porn all the way.

It highlights the symbiotic relationships between chefs and their suppliers. Until fairly recently, the supplier was probably Sysco, shipping in boxes of frozen meat and questionable produce every week, right along with the plastic take-out containers and packets of Equal. Thankfully, many chefs have started to reexamine the origins of their food, so that it's no longer unusual to find a menu that highlights local farms.

Harvest to Heat pairs celebrity chefs (Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert) with the men and women who grow, herd, ranch and create the artisanal foods that supply those chefs. And with recipes like Crab-Stuffed Zucchini Flowers with Black Truffles, or Goat Cheese Panna Cotta with Caramelized Figs, how could you not want to sit down with this cookbook and a nice glass of wine and plenty of Post-Its for bookmarks?

Granted, some of these may not be the most frugal of recipes. But sometimes you gotta splurge.