Talk about keeping cool

Far-off places, exotic fare

The Orvis Cookbook: Fifty Complete Menus for Fish and Game

Romi Perkins

Lyons Press, $19.95

These tales of traveling, shooting, fishing and dining in places such as Patagonia, Botswana and New Zealand guarantee that this cookbook will appeal to outdoors lovers. Snipe, octopus, quail, venison, woodcock and wild boar are dispatched to the cooking pot in imaginative and witty prose that offsets the occasional excruciatingly time-consuming recipes.

In fairness, along with such rarefied offerings as roast Hungarian partridge and pheasant poached in cream, Perkins includes Patagonian filet mignon on the rocks, sizzled on hot-fired river stones for unlucky fly-fishers with empty creels.

Vegetarians will bask in tasty appetizers, side dishes and desserts.

Great good eating, great fun reading.

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Susan Dworski