But his new book, Good Eats: The Early Years, is what his fans have been waiting for, and is one of the most unique books about food and cooking since Robert L. Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook. This book is a delightful retrospective of his quirky TV show that is one part liner notes to its first six seasons, one part reference book, one part trivia, one part recipe book, and one part gorgeous coffee table book that are all blended together into a newfangled version of the Larousse Gastronomique if that tome was co-authored by Mr. Wizard and Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

This book covers Brown's first 80 shows and covers just as many different foods and cooking techniques in each of its entries, including: eggs, corn, beans, noodles, garlic, gravy, beer, frying and grilling.

Each entry follows the same pattern. 

Tofuworld (Episode 40, Season Three) tackles Tofu. Brown takes a page to reminisce about the episode, tells us why it was made, and offers some snack-like tidbits and trivia about the food in question: "The first soy food manufactured in the United States was Baco-Bits". 

Another page deals with that show's edible subject and gives us some straightforward "knowledge concentrate" such as how tofu is made, the differences between silken and firm tofu, and how long it keeps. They're the kind of facts that will have you exclaiming "I didn't know that!" with every turn of the page. 

Then there are a few "applications" (Brown's geek speak for recipes) from the show. This entry includes tofu-based Moo-Less Chocolate Pie with Chocolate Wafer Crust, and fried Filet O'Fu. 

While the 140-plus recipes in this book are clearly explained, have been designed to be easy to make, and use ingredients that are readily available at your local mega-mart, the selection in this book is not what one would find in your typical cookbook that specializes in Japanese cooking, making muffins, or slow cookery. 

This is not a cookbook that you will flip through to find inspiration for tonight's dinner, but rather a fun celebration of various foods and what makes them tick.That said, the recipes that do appear in this book have been craftily designed to cap off each food entry and show you how the most mundane or underrated ingredient can be turned into a good eats. And good eats they are!

I prepared lunch and dinner yesterday using two recipes that included key ingredients I would not ordinarily use: eggplant and beans.

The first recipe, Eggplant Pasta (from season five's Deep Purple: Berry From Another Planet) takes a whole eggplant that you "cure" with salt for 30 minutes and then cut into linguine like strips. You add these into a hot pan with some olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes, and toss. You then add some chopped tomatoes and heavy cream as you continue tossing your eggplant "pasta". The dish is finished with basil, parmesan and bread crumbs. This meal took only minutes to make and looked a lot like a pasta dish that tasted like eggplant parmesan. It was the perfect light lunch that was surprisingly delicious -- surprisingly because I usually cannot stand the alkaloid taste of eggplants but this dish was superb. 

I opted for the Black Bean Salad (from season three's Cool Beans episode). This one called for a pound of dry black beans that are simmered in water for a few hours and then tossed into a mix of olive oil, lime juice, red onion, cilantro, ground cumin and chili powder. The preparation of this application did not work out as well, as I did not simmer the beans at high enough heat, and it took closer to four hours to get them tender enough instead of the two suggested by this recipe. But, as Alton Brown usually says, "your patience will be rewarded" and indeed it was, as this dish was delicious hot (and later cold as a midnight snack). 

Brown is working on two sequels to this book, and I am definitely looking forward to them. His next book should include Season Eight's Field of Greens episode that saw him prepare turkey legs with turnip greens. That might just inspire Thirfty Table to use at least some of that turnip that is still lurking in the refrigerator.