'Guide To Good Eating'

For years people have flocked to Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Mich., to chow down on the delicious food. Others had it delivered directly by Zingerman's wildly successful mail-order business.

Now, you can eat those dishes in your own home with the help of "Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating."

It was written by the deli's co-founder Ari Weinzweig, who demonstrated some of Zingerman's delights on The Early Show.

Weinzweig says the basic concept behind "Zingermans' Guide to Good Eating" is to make all great-tasting food accessible. He also says each food section is filled with his picks on certain products, or products from a certain region, or products prepared a particular way. He has provided the reader with some history, information on food selection, processing, harvesting, purchasing and eating recommendations in the form of recipes. Throughout, he weaves a very simple food formula:

Get to Know Your Food:
Weinzweig says you've got to ask questions. What country did that salt come from? How were the goats raised that produced the milk to make the cheese? How long will it last? How is it used in the homeland?

Look at It
The more you look, the more you learn. Read the labels of packaged foods. Look closely at fresh items and feel them.

Smell It
Weinzweig says aroma isn't everything, but it's about as close as you can get to flavor without actually eating. The sense of smell accounts for roughly 90 percent of what you taste.

Taste It
As you eat, Weinzweig says, notice that you sense different flavor components in different parts of your mouth. You'll detect sweetness primarily in front, toward the tip of your tongue. Sourness starts to show up toward the back, along the sides. Bitter comes in all the way at the back. You can taste saltiness all over.

Weinzweig says there's no excuse for not preparing home-cooked meals. He himself cooks dinner every night, despite spending his entire day sampling the food in his establishment.

Recipes:

Stuffed Piquillo Peppers
Makes 16 to 20 stuffed peppers
Serves 8 as an appetizer

Ingredients:

2 jars (12 ounces each) Spanish Piquillo peppers, drained
1 5-ounce round fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, preferably Catalan
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
coarse seat salt to taste
coarsely ground black pepper to taste

With your fingers, gently open the stem end of one of the peppers, being careful not to poke through the flesh. With a small spoon or your fingers, carefully stuff about 1/2 teaspoon goat cheese inside. It should fill the pepper's cavity but should not be falling out. Continue until all the peppers have been filled.

Preheat the broiler to high.

Arrange the peppers in a single layer in a broiler-proof glass baking dish. Pour 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over them. Sprinkle the garlic over the peppers. Broil for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese is soft and bubbly.

To serve, pour the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil onto a warm white platter. Arrange the peppers so that they look like spokes of a wheel. Sprinkle on salt to taste and grind on a bit of black pepper. Serve warm.

Chocolate Sandwich
Serves 1

This treat is truly a delicious dessert or afternoon snack. Some chocolate fiends even fry it up for breakfast. You can make it with dark chocolate or certainly with any good milk or white chocolate as well.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature
2 1/2-inch-thick slices sourdough bread
1 ounce (2 large squares) dark (bittersweet) chocolate

Butter each slice of bread on one side. Sandwich the chocolate between the non-buttered sides.

Heat a small skillet over medium heat. When the skillet is hot, place the sandwich in the center. Set a bowl or plate on the sandwich to weigh it down. Cook until the bottom of the bread is lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Turn the sandwich over and brown the other side, about 3 minutes more. Serve warm so the chocolate can drip down your wrists as you eat.

Zingerman's Funky Chunky Dark Chocolate Cookies
Makes 12 large cookies

These cookies are baked in four-inch rounds, but you can just as easily portion them into smaller sizes. They are on the firmer end of the chocolate-chip-cookie spectrum, as opposed to the very soft fudgy cookies some prefer. Muscovado sugar - traditional-process unrefined brown sugar - brings out the best in these cookies.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 vanilla beans
8 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup firmly packed muscovado or dark brown sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 large egg
8 ounces dark (bittersweet) chocolate, broken or chopped into bite-sized pieces
4 ounces walnut halves and pieces, toasted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Split the vanilla beans lengthwise with a small, sharp knife. With the tip of a small spoon, scrape out the seeds into a large bowl (reserve the pods for another use). Add the butter and mix together. Stir in the sugars and eggs until creamy. Gradually stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture. When thoroughly combined, stir in the chocolate pieces and nuts. Chill the dough for 10 minutes in the refrigerator.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. For each cookie, scoop out 1/4 cup of the dough and roll it into a ball, then press out on the cookie sheet into a 3 1/2-inch round, about 1/4 inch thick. Place the rounds of cookie dough about 1 1/2 inches apart on the baking sheets.

Bake on the middle rack, one sheet at a time, for 7 to 10 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown and baked through. Cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute, then transfer to a rack.

Serve hot or cool and store for up to 2 weeks, although to keep them that long you may have to hide them well.