Won’t You Come Home Lee Bailey?

Lee Bailey is sprawled like a rag doll across an overstuffed ottoman in his Manhattan loft, smiling easily for a photographer.

He poses effortlessly, or at least with “the illusion of effortlessness,” to steal a Bailey phrase. Making it all look easy is patented Bailey style.

In the last decade, two names have defined the look and style of lavishly photographed, high-gloss, entertaining cookbooks: Martha Stewart and Lee Bailey. Where Stewart is Westport perfection and high tea on Sunday, Bailey is Bridgehampton casual-chic and a picnic lunch on the beach.

This month, Bailey will publish his 10th book in nine years, “Lee Bailey’s Cooking for Friends” (Clarkson Potter: $30), a movable feast that follows Bailey on a gustatory journey through the Florida Keys, the Greek Isles, Tuscany, Gascony, the Hamptons, New York City and St. Barth’s as he develops recipes based on the local cuisine and produce.

Bailey likes to rent houses when he’s on vacation--he hates hotels, he says, perhaps because he lived in one as a child--and, therefore, finds himself in strange kitchens in foreign lands. Cooking for friends all weekend long is a habit he acquired in his Long Island house on the water (which he sold last year), and a favorite pastime he began documenting with his first book, 1983’s “Country Weekends.”

His friend Amy Gross wrote in her introduction to “Country Weekends” that she wanted to know how Bailey “could have six or eight people for dinner Friday night: eight or 10 on Saturday night; offer his house guests breakfasts, lunches and midafternoon treats like tomato sandwiches or blackberry cobbler; and still remain amiable.”

Bailey, whose black turtleneck offsets his trim white beard, smiles and in a buttery Southern accent explains that he learned his easygoing entertaining style from his father, who loved to cook for his friends and would always say, “Oh, no, it’s nothing,” if someone commented on the effort he’d made.

“With some people they can’t wait for you to realize how much trouble they’ve gone to,” Bailey says. “I found that irritating, I really don’t want to know that. Somehow you don’t want the image of them breaking their necks. It puts a yoke around your neck in some ways as a guest. You think, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to like this, they spent so much time, worked so hard.’ ”

Perhaps the casualness, amiability and preference for simplicity also come from Bailey’s insistence that he is an “amateur cook,” someone who does not consider himself part of the “Food Establishment” and who doesn’t pay much attention to food trends, never forgetting his Southern roots. (“I have never thought of cooking as an art; I think it’s a craft,” he contends.) As Bailey himself laughs, who else has a tomato aspic recipe in every book?

Bailey grew up in the ‘30s in a town called Bunkie, La., and his mother never had to learn to cook because, Bailey says, “I grew up in the time when everybody had a cook.” In his books he writes about good old Southern souls like his Aunt Freddie, his grandmother “Mawmaw” and Parson, a black man who had been born into slavery who worked for his grandmother. In the South, where the joke was that you’d better hurry up and finish breakfast so the vegetables could be put on to cook for lunch, Bailey learned to love vegetables--ones cooked to death and ones simmered for minutes. One of his aunts used to say, “We’re going to have a perfectly goa-geous vegetable dinner tonight,” he remembers with a laugh.

He says he can still smell the scent the touch of a tomato vine in his grandmother’s garden would leave on his hand. Bailey, who is about to launch a series of little books on single food subjects, is doing the first one on tomatoes. What is it about tomatoes, anyway?

He picks up the proofs for the little tomato book, which sits on the table before him, a plump red tomato shimmering on its cover.

“It’s got a flavor not like anything else,” he says, laughing. “How can you explain why you love somebody? I love tomatoes. I mean how can I tell you? The darling thing, look at it!” he says, holding up the picture.

Two years ago, Bailey published his only book devoted solely to the cooking of his childhood, “Lee Bailey’s Southern Food and Plantation Houses,” which focused on Nachez, Miss. There are 900,000 copies in print of Bailey’s books, among them “Lee Bailey’s Good Parties,” “Lee Bailey’s Small Bouquets,” “Lee Bailey’s Country Desserts” and “Lee Bailey’s Wine Country Cooking.”

His success as an author was serendipitous. A designer who studied at Tulane and the Parsons School of Design, Bailey’s work had been featured in magazines such as “House & Garden,” “House Beautiful” and “Vogue.” A design shop he and a partner had opened in Southampton then became a highly successful department at Bendel’s in New York, featuring everything from toys to housewares to books. “It was very quirky; we just sold anything that I liked.”

Bailey says he decided to publish “Country Weekends” thinking it would provide good publicity for his Bendel’s shop. He had never done any writing, and was intimidated by the prospect until he discovered “that it was acceptable to write the way you talk.” The success of “Country Weekends,” which won the R.T. French Tastemaster Award for Best Cookbook of 1983, took him by surprise. Ten years later, Bailey is focusing on his books and has decided to leave retailing. (The contract for his design shop, which had moved to Saks Fifth Avenue, expired last year.)

But Bailey says he still thinks of himself first as a designer, not as a cook. His spacious loft, which he designed and furnished, has a clean, warm look that offers such visual surprises as a bar arranged on a small, antique table. Two sprays of roses--one a soft-pink, the other yellow--sit behind the man who wrote and photographed “Lee Bailey’s Country Flowers.”

For Bailey, coming up with a new recipe is a bit like designing. He looks around the intimate living area he has created at one end of his loft, with its embroidered love seat and ottomans and bright yellow, armless chairs.

“In imagining how this space will look, a lot of it is done in your head first,” he says. “And I realize you use the same technique when you’re putting together food. You start by saying, ‘Well that would taste good with that. And with that then you’ll need this.’ It’s kind of a natural process.”

But Bailey admits that he still follows recipes slavishly, especially his own. “I have a terrible memory. I don’t wing it very often. I’m not very good at that. If I make something I like I want it to taste like that again . . . I’ll keep fiddling with it till it tastes the way I want it to. Then each time I don’t fool around, I really want it to be that way.”

In his new book, “Cooking for Friends,” he writes that he doesn’t cook a proper meal for himself when he’s alone, although it’s always delicious.

What’s for dinner tonight?

“I’m having mustard greens, corn bread and tomatoes,” he drawls.

Tomatoes in March, for the man who vows he won’t go near one unless it’s vine-ripened?

“I tried to ripen them in a bag,” he says with a sheepish laugh. “We’ll see if it works.”

These recipes--made without tomatoes, bag-ripened or not--add up to a typical Bailey meal: casual, stylish and flavorful.

LEMON LAMB WITH YOGURT

3 pounds boneless lamb, cut from leg

1/2 cup ouzo

1 cup beef stock

2 medium cloves garlic, crushed

1 small onion, coarsely chopped

6-inch sprig rosemary, leaves stripped off, or 1 tablespoon dried

2 medium bay leaves, broken into several pieces

2 dozen fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Salt, pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 cups chopped onions

2 tablespoons flour

2 cups beef broth

3 generous tablespoons coarsely chopped lemon zest

Generous dash cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 cup plain yogurt

Cooked rice

Lemon zest strips for garnish, optional

Mint sprigs for garnish, optional

Cut lamb into 2-inch cubes. Carefully trim off all gristle, fat and connective tissue. You should wind up with about 2 1/2 pounds of trimmed lamb. Set aside.

Combine ouzo, beef stock, garlic, onion, rosemary, bay leaves, mint, lemon juice, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon pepper in large glass or ceramic bowl and whisk together. Add lamb, tossing lightly and pressing down gently so that it is completely covered with liquid. Cover tightly and marinate overnight in refrigerator.

Remove lamb from marinade and pat dry. Discard marinade, then sprinkle lamb with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 3/4 teaspoon pepper. Set aside.

In large, heavy skillet, heat oil and butter together over high heat. When very hot, quickly brown meat on all sides, placing it in large pot as it is finished. When all meat is browned, add chopped onions and saute over medium high heat, until tender and beginning to brown, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle with flour and mix.

Continue to cook, moving mixture around with spatula, until flour turns golden, another 3 minutes. Scrape mixture into pot with lamb. Deglaze skillet with beef broth and add to pot. Bring to simmer and add lemon zest, cayenne and season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer until lamb is tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in paprika and yogurt and serve over bed of rice. Garnish with lemon zest strips and mint sprigs. Makes 6 servings.

SHREDDED ZUCCHINI

2 cups shredded zucchini

1 teaspoon salt

2 generous tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup coarsely chopped onion

Place shredded zucchini in colander, sprinkle with salt and toss. Put in sink or over plate and cover with tea towel. Allow to drain at least 1 hour. Discard accumulated liquid from plate and squeeze as much additional liquid from zucchini as possible. Set aside.

Melt butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and saute until tender and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and toss. Continue to cook over medium heat until zucchini is tender, about 6 to 8 minutes. Do not overcook. Makes 6 servings.

MIXED BERRIES WITH VANILLA CREAM

1 cup milk

3 large egg yolks

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups or more mixed berries

Place milk in small saucepan and scald. Beat yolks and sugar together, then slowly stir into milk. Pour into double boiler and cook over hot, not boiling, water until thickened slightly and mixture coats back of spoon, about 15 minutes. Stir in vanilla. Allow to cool, then refrigerate.

Place berries in individual bowls and top with vanilla cream. Makes 6 servings.