Amazon.com description: Product Description: Colin Cowie, one of the West Coast's preeminent specialists in catering and event planning, has been the mastermind of some of Los Angeles' most spectacular parties. Now, in Effortless Elegance With Colin Cowie, he dedicates himself to helping you create the same effortless elegance when you entertain at home.

With enthusiasm, taste and style, Cowie teaches you how to entertain with ease and comfort and how to enjoy your own parties. One impressive yet easy menu, "Dinner When Time Is Short," takes just one hour, including shopping and preparation, leaving you plenty of time to relax and clean up before your guests arrive. Cowie's philosophy is based on enhancing the materials at hand. He tells you how to create a lasting impact with just one element -- a type of flower or a single color -- and use it to the greatest effect.

Beginning with "A Lazy Sunday Brunch" and ending with "Dinner in Front of the Fire Effortless Elegance With Colin Cowie provides complete menus for all seasons and any occasion, from "An Elegant Cocktail Party" to "A Perfect Picnic." A sampling of the delicious menus and recipes includes: "A Casual Breakfast" with fresh grapefruit juice, fried apples and stewed prunes, almond pancakes, scrambled eggs with yogurt and chives, and chicken and fennel sausage; "A Rustic Luncheon" with a terrine of eggplant and roasted peppers with arugala sauce, seafood paella, and lemon sorbet with marinated grapefruit; and "A Cape Malay Barbecue" featuring curried lamb kabobs with mango chutney, basmati rice with toasted cashews, raisins and sultanas, a bulgur mint salad, and baked bananas with rum-spiked creme fraiche.

The recipes are designed to be prepared with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of aesthetic impact, freeing the party-giver from the kitchen and allowing him or her to enjoy the essence of the perfect party -- a close and companionable evening with good friends.

Effortless Elegance With Colin Cowie is a gorgeously illustrated treasury with more than 250 color photographs, 200 recipes organized into 28 menus, and an abundance of effective strategies for making all of your parties, both large and small, sensational events to remember.

Nothing is impossible for Colin... He delivers fantasies and dreams that most people can only think of."--Emeril Lagasse