Sweet tarts

"Once inside, there was nothing especially quaint or ye olde about Patisserie Tante Marie: just a few plain tables, a freezer full of homemade ice cream, and a long display case of cakes and tarts. But what cakes and tarts!

"Lumpy golden fruit tarts oozing golden nectar were lined up beside fudge-brown disks floating above clouds of mousse. Sheets of almond sponge barely contained a lava flow of coffee cream. Lemon tarts, the color of butter, almost shivered with fragility."

Michael Krondl, in "Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert"

In Claire's corner

Claire Criscuolo, who owns and runs Claire's Corner Copia in New Haven, Conn., with her husband, Frank, looks back at decades of vegetarian cooking in "Welcome to Claire's: 35 Years of Recipes and Reflections from the Landmark Vegetarian Restaurant."

She talks of inspiration and their "commitment to using organic and local foods," and the joy with which they have served generations of students and professors.

Their restaurant, at Chapel and College streets, is on "undeniably the most beautiful corner in the city," she writes. "It's the place where you can see the first daffodils of spring as they pop up from the land surrounding the Yale campus... the place where you can feel like you're in the center of the city."

Criscuolo ("Claire's Classic American Vegetarian Cooking") divides the book into seven convenient sections, including breakfast; soups, stews and sandwiches; and desserts.

The first contains recipes for apple-maple muffins, chocolate chip-and-walnut scones, and healthy fresh fruit smoothies.

By far the largest chapter, though, is the one on appetizers, salads, dressings, dips and salsas. It showcases everything from black bean-and-sweet corn quesadillas to pan-grilled vegetable fattoush, a Lebanese bread salad. Criscuolo also notes dishes that are gluten-free or vegan, or can easily be made so.

In this substantial volume, she rewards longtime customers with satisfying favorites and introduces the rest of us to a slew of delicious possibilities.

(A version of this review appears in Publishers Weekly.)