David Tanis is a chef, cook, teacher, and author whose career has spanned three decades. When he's not cooking in restaurants, he's cooking for his friends at home or travelling the world's open-air markets. Tanis has been featured in The New York Times.Whereas the menus in A Platter of Figs were designed to feed eight to ten with grace and ease, the menus in this book serve four to six. There are twenty-four menus, six per season, each of them amusingly and engagingly titled and punctuated with rich mini-essays full of information and insight. The menus are bookended by a chapter on private rituals, those treats for when you're on your own in the kitchen with no one else to satisfy, and at the other end, menus for holiday feasts.