bountiful blessings; Ricky Lauren's new book celebrates food, family, and fresh-air life.(Ricky Lauren: Cuisine, Lifestyle, and Legend of the Double RL Ranch)(Book review)

Byline: William Norwich

It is domestic bliss watching Ricky Lauren prepare for a small luncheon at her country place about an hour north of Manhattan.

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach, yes, but I am easy. Even a promising recipe does the trick. The smell of homemade chocolate-nut biscotti baking in the kitchen fills the house. We are extolling the virtues and how-tos of a wide range of dishes, from sweet-potato-and-carrot tzimmes to chicken quesadillas, just two of some 300 delicious recipes, plus the aforementioned biscotti, included in Ricky Lauren: Cuisine, Lifestyle, and Legend of the Double RL Ranch, published this month by Assouline.

Written, illustrated, and photographed by Ricky, with some additional photographs by a few friends, the book is part literary journal, part memoir, part photographic essay. Divided into the four seasons, it celebrates the mysteries and joy of living life in sync with nature-rain or shine, black bears and butterflies, and then it snows-on the Colorado ranch she shares with her husband, designer Ralph Lauren, and their three grown children, Andrew, David, and Dylan.

Today's gathering is to celebrate the completion of the book. Arranging food on a plate and setting a table is like creating a painting, Ricky says. "The plate is the canvas, and the cook is the artist." It is a warm autumn day, and the artist is thinking American West meets blue-blood Back East. She has accordingly set her table with a colorful mix of American Indian blankets and Scottish tartans, dainty white lace napkins rolled inside sturdier red cotton cloths held in silver-and-turquoise wrist cuffs; there are cut garden flowers in three pewter vases instead of just one static centerpiece; blue stem glasses from the family's stores; and antique English blue-and-white plates (the pattern is called Asiatic Pheasants). Prepared from recipes in the book, the meal will include pumpkin soup and a southwestern Cobb salad made with chicken, avocado, and black beans. On the lawn, seen through open French doors, is a dessert buffet with two kinds of low-cal cheesecake, Yellow Mountain bread pudding, a meringue concoction called "floating snowy mountain peaks," a nut crunch, and soon, the chocolate-

nut biscotti.

"I didn't cook as a child," Ricky says, putting the ...