Annual Cookbook Issue : There Will Always Be a France : “Cooking With Daniel Boulud,” Daniel Boulud (Random House: $40; 372 pp.)

Daniel Boulud is one the hottest chefs in New York, having starred at La Regence, Le Cirque and now Daniel’s. His cookbook doesn’t suffer very much from this.

French chefs live in a rarefied world where veal glaze and puff pastry are always on hand. Boulud, however, belongs to the school of la cuisine du marche (“cuisine of the market”), which stresses seasonal ingredients and simple sauces. In effect, what he makes is an elaborated (and health-conscious) version of French home cooking.

There’s more to him than that, actually. He says in the book’s introduction that having worked in this country has given his style melting-pot characteristics, particularly of Near Eastern and East Asian provenance (two recipes come from his Cambodian sous-chef). Still, the important thing is that the dishes in this book seem doable for the home chef who doesn’t have legions of flunkies helping out.

That doesn’t mean it’s an easy book for just anybody to cook from. As a restaurant chef, particularly one of the cuisine du marche persuasion, Boulud demands the very finest ingredients, and he tells us of his delight in finding that they actually are available in this country. But if it isn’t practical for you to shop at specialty food stores and upper-end farmers markets, a number of these recipes lose their point. (I can testify that if you cook fettuccine with mushrooms, sweet garlic and thyme using regular supermarket button mushrooms instead of mixed seasonal mushrooms, it’s a pretty forgettable dish, and I don’t expect to make any of the dishes that call for pink radishes, sweet-water prawns or fresh sardines in the foreseeable future.)

If ingredients are no problem, though, the recipes are really wonderful, full of subtle and unexpected flavor combinations. Chicken liver puree on toast goes surprisingly well with a cinnamon-flavored butternut squash soup. Roast loin of pork comes with a fresh-tasting curried cauliflower and apple puree, and also has a delicate apple sweetness and touch of curry flavor in the sauce, a rich reduction of pork juices.

The instructions are clear and practical, though some could be made clearer--having cut a small butternut squash into two or three slices, we’re supposed to “run a large knife firmly around the inside of the skin,” which definitely won’t work unless you’re rotating the squash against the cutting board, which he doesn’t make clear.

The dishes are handsome, and very handsomely photographed; the book’s price reflects the large number of color plates. The most striking photo is of seared tuna with cranberry beans, the color of the rare tuna memorably picked up by a background of cranberry bean pods.

The 200-odd recipes range from a dish of tomatoes stuffed with rabbit and chanterelles, created for an all-tomato dinner, to a homey casserole of pig knuckles with bacon, endives and lentils; from the elaborate lamb couscous served at his wedding rehearsal dinner to a short-rib terrine with whole leeks in it. Comes with a 40-page discussion of seasonal ingredients.