Long the world's favorite meat, pork has surged in popularity in American kitchens thanks in part to high-protein diets, but mostly because of its adaptability to just about every taste. Whether you like spicy Asian flavors, flavorful pan braises, or light and healthy grills, pork fills the bill. Now Bruce Aidells, America's leading meat expert, presents a guide to pork's endless versatility, with 160 international recipes and cooking and shopping tips.

This comprehensive collection contains everything cooks need to know about pork, including how to choose from the many cuts available, how to serve a crowd with ease, and how to ensure moist pork chops and succulent roasts every time. Aidells offers temperature charts for perfect grilling, roasting, and braising, as well as a landmark chapter with step-by-step instructions for home curing. With Bruce Aidells as your guide, you will be making your own bacon, salami, and breakfast sausages with ease. If you are looking to enhance everyday dining, there are recipes here for quick after-work meals, as well as dramatic centerpiece main courses that are sure to impress guests. Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork is a matchless all-in-one guide that will become a kitchen classic.

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With such past triumphs as Hot Links and Country Flavor, Real Beer and Good Eats and The Complete Meat Cookbook Bruce Aidells has established himself as a god-like carnivore among mere mortals. His taste buds know no bounds, his thirst for the next best recipe absolutely unquenchable. "I am a restless cook and adventurous eater," he says in the beginning of Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork, perhaps his greatest cookbook yet.

Maybe the dog has been hooked up with humankind longer than the pig, and has wandered into regions pigs knowingly eschew, like the Arctic. But pigs and people share a long, delicious history the dog can only sniff at, and longingly at that; an intimacy, if you will, unmatched in any other cross-species relationship. Aidells celebrates this connection. He gives the reader a brief history of the pig, then delivers definitive instructions on how to select great pork, and, in a general overview, how the flavor it and cook it to best advantage. He honors his subject and elevates his reader.

The recipes that follow have only one thing in common: Bruce Aidells loves them. They come from all corners of the world, from friends and from professionals, and from deep personal experience. They cover breakfasts treats, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, and salads (Chopped Grilled Vegetable Salad with Grilled Pork Medallions); chops and steaks, scallops and cutlets (Smoked Pork Chops with Sour Cherry Sauce); kebabs and ribs (North African Marinated Pork kebabs on Couscous with Apricot Sauce); roasts, ham, pot roasts, stews, baked pastas, and casseroles (Grill-Roasted Pork Shoulder Cuban Style).

In each shift among the pork primals Aidells discusses the fitting master recipe, the umbrella technique beneath which truth and beauty unfold. He's a champion of flavor brining and his instructions eliminate any possible confusion. But he saves his soul for the last section, which is given over to some of the best material in print on preserving pork, the making of sausages, pâtés and terrines, bacon and salamis. It's at this point in the book that poignancy kicks in. This final word has the feeling of last word as well. --Schuyler Ingle