Chocolate for Breakfast: Entertaining Menus to Start the Day with a Celebration, from Napa Valley's Oak Knoll Inn.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Book review

CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST: Entertaining Menus to Start the Day with a Celebration, from Napa Valley's Oak Knoll Inn.

BY BARBARA PASSINO

GERALD & MARC HOBERMAN COLLECTION, LTD.

BOCA RATON, FLA.

2009, 288 PAGES, $40.00

This coffee table cookbook entices would-be readers with a larger-than-life, partly unwrapped chocolate bar on the cover--and the situation improves from there. Perhaps I was an easy sell on the idea of chocolate for breakfast: my morning pre-run ritual includes coffee and a chunk of dark chocolate.

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Dishes are arranged in exotic brunch, or anytime, menus. Chocolate and nonchocolate recipes are partnered for maximum visual and gustatory pleasure. Most menus have international or holiday themes. Wine recommendations are included, befitting a Napa Valley inn. The "North of Southwest" menu includes chocolate tacos that combine deep cocoa with a touch of cayenne (a nearly fat-free recipe featuring easily handled skillet-cooked and cocoa-rich taco shells loaded with fresh fruit), jicama slaw (not chocolate) as well as a margarita tapioca pudding topped with fruit and a chocolate-tequila-lime-sorbet. The tacos are fairly easy to make with a couple of nonstick skillets; no fancy equipment is necessary.

Asia, Italy, Spain, France, and Morocco get similar brunch treatments. There is a large section of all-American recipes, with pairs and trios of recommended treats. Other holidays--most notably the Fourth of July--appear. It is not all dessert: garlic soup, camembert cheese pancakes, and butternut squash ravioli with black walnut-brown butter sauce haven't a trace of sweet, but are wonderful recipes nonetheless.

The tone is casual and chatty, as if the author were a friend describing an old family recipe; comments about memories associated with some recipes are only part of it. Passino's directions are in plain language: no clinical cookbook "cook until fork-tender" that leaves the novice poking something...