Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Friends: Fresh Ways to Entertain with Style by Alison Attenborough and Jamie Kimm

  • Passion fruit caipirinha

    from Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Friends: Fresh Ways to Entertain with Style Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Friends by Alison Attenborough and Jamie Kimm

    • Categories: Cocktails / drinks (with alcohol); Entertaining & parties; Brazilian
    • Ingredients: cachaça; superfine sugar; passion fruit; limes
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Notes about Recipes in this book

  • Citrus salad (grapefruit, avocado, and beet)

    • SpatulaCity on July 17, 2025

      Delicious mix of flavors and textures! Used pre-cooked red beets for speed and ease. It obviously gets messy with too much mixing, so best to add avocados only at the very end.

  • Citrus salad (pomelo, jicama, and chile)

    • SpatulaCity on April 05, 2025

      Love adding jicama to a fruit salad! Store didn’t have pomelo, so used one grapefruit and orange. Made for friends who don’t like cilantro, but successfully subbed with parsley and it was still herby and fresh. I would say watch the pepitas because they take you on a more savory earthy path. If you want to stay bright and fresh I don’t think you need them.

  • Grilled halloumi with figs and blood oranges

    • SpatulaCity on September 04, 2023

      Fig and blood orange season sadly didn’t overlap for us this year. Used mission figs and navel oranges and thought the dish was nice enough. The halloumi was a bit squeaky at this thickness. Nice, but not one I’d rush to repeat.

  • Roasted pork loin with pappardelle

    • SpatulaCity on January 30, 2023

      Easy to prepare. The mushrooms had great flavor in the sauce and complimented the pork nicely. While rich and flavorful, the sauce was too thin and small in volume. I think next time I’d thicken it with some starch.

  • Shaved salad (cucumber, red onion, and dill)

    • Aggie92 on August 22, 2016

      I love cucumber salad and this quick and easy recipe was very good. I used a V-slicer to cut the onion and the cucumber (across instead of the trendy long way). Salted both for 30 minutes before proceeding with the recipe. Herb amounts are a little too generous so I cut the mint and dill back to 1 tablespoon each. Made it a couple hours before serving and it gave off quite a bit of water. Next time I will salt the cucumber for 45 minutes-1 hour.

  • Warm farro salad with herbs

    • SpatulaCity on July 17, 2025

      Great base salad. Love the heavy touch with herbs and how adaptable this can be. With the leftovers we added tomatoes, feta and chickpeas and served over arugula. Made for a delicious salad

  • White Port and tonic

    • SpatulaCity on October 31, 2023

      Is white port less sweet than Ruby port? At first it tasted a tad sweet for my tastes, but then the bitterness of the tonic came through and I thought it was pretty good. It’s definitely an interesting and incredibly easy cocktail recipe.

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  • ISBN 10 084873288X
  • ISBN 13 9780848732882
  • Published Oct 01 2009
  • Format Hardcover
  • Page Count 256
  • Language English
  • Countries United States
  • Publisher Oxmoor House
  • Imprint Oxmoor House

Publishers Text

With stylish, delicious recipes and charming, imaginative flourishes, Alison and Jamie share their entertaining know-how with a heady enthusiasm and a healthy dose of humor.

As experienced personal chefs and two of New York's most sought-after food stylists, Alison Attenborough and Jamie Kimm have spent years planning and cooking menus for dinner parties and cocktail fetes for a long list of clients. They've sought out the best purveyors at the greenmarket, finessed ingredients, and created unique touches for every dish they serve, and then stamped it all with a signature panache. What they've learned along the way is that simple and seasonal are always best. They also know a thing or two about how to show their own friends a great time and still keep hosting duties light.

When these two professionals invite people over, they distill all they've discovered on the job into their own style: smashingly simple yet invariably special. Their parties are festive events imbued with a strong appreciation for well-made food and an infectious dash of gaiety. One way they inspire fun is by presenting a favorite recipe-a shaved salad, a plate of crostini, a granita, a Bellini-in a brand-new guise, dressing it up for the occasion, the season, or both.

Alison and Jamie's prescription for a memorable meal is straightforward: fresh ingredients, minimal fuss, and, most important, good friends, good wine, and good conversation. They know how to make their guests feel welcome (a drink and a nibble on arrival), how to feed them well according to the season and the mood, and how to win them over with a delectable dish presented in a singular way, such as summer cherries on ice or yellowtail crudo layered with avocado and basil.

In Cooking for Friends, Alison and Jamie share their clever ideas, their love for food, and their indomitable spirit for fun with the rest of us. After flipping through these pages, it's impossible not to start plotting the menu for your next gathering, giddy with anticipation that it may be the best dinner party you'll have ever served.