A Few of My Favorite Cookbooks... And A Few More To Look Forward To

Also a fantastic trip. A fabulous dish. And a vintage menu.

The Joy of Cooking sold 18 million copies… which is probably one reason publishers keep bringing out new cookbooks. Here’s another: in this digital age, cookbooks remain one of the few categories that don’t translate to your phone, tablet or computer. These are books you want to hold in your hands, take into your kitchen, cover in melted butter and splatter with tomato sauce.

Over the years I’ve collected thousands of cookbooks and I certainly don’t need any more. Still, I keep buying them. Here are a few of my favorite from last year’s crop.

A caveat: celebrity cookbooks continue to be huge sellers, but they don’t much interest me. The cookbooks I like best tend to be personal, which is why I like Bludso’s BBQ Cookbook: A Family Affair in Smoke and Soul so much.

It’s certainly not because I’m a pit master; I leave the smoking of meat to my friend John Markus who was inaugurated into the BBQ Hall of Fame last year and is occasionally kind enough to bring his portable rig to my house. When I’m in LA, however, I eat at Bludso’s BBQ, and when I’m not I read Kevin Bludso’s celebration of his heritage, which is written in a straightforward, raucous voice you haven’t heard before. The recipes go way beyond barbecue to include excellent fried chicken, oxtail birria, and buttermilk pie. Besides, how can you resist a book that give you a meticulous recipe for smoking brisket and then serves up “a method for when you get drunk and go to bed”?

I love the food Reem serves in her San Francisco restaurant, and I love the Za’ater she blends for Burlap and Barell. She has a bakery as well as a restaurant, and I’m grateful to have her recipes for mana’eesh, ka’ak and muhammara (here’s that recipe). But Reem’s real reason for writing Arabiyya was to celebrate the culture of Arab hospitality - and for her that includes the personal, the social and the political. The pictures are beautiful, the food is vibrant, and there is passion on every page.

Fifteen years ago, when I was in Mexico taking cooking classes, I discovered that masa is the underpinning of almost every great Mexican meal. First I learned how to remove dried heirloom corn from the cob, grate it and nixtamilize it. Then I learned the equally difficult art of making really great tortillas on a comal. I returned home eager to use my new-found skills only to discover that heirloom corn was almost impossible to find.

Jose Gavira changed that when he opened his online shop, Masienda. The shop sells both the ingredients and the equipment to make a great tortilla (as well as astonishingly good black beans). Now he’s written Masa, a book for serious Mexican food nerds that tells the true story of corn. It’s a fascinating book, more technique and history than recipes, although it does includes a few terrific recipes from chefs: here’s one for Masa White Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Claudia Fleming is the pastry chef’s pastry chef, the one who invented the Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart (here’s the recipe), that influenced every pastry chef of the eighties and nineties.

Bon Appetit called Claudia’s first book, The Last Course, “the greatest dessert book in the history of the world.” Happily the twenty-year-old tome was reprinted last year. Now there is Delectable. It is, of course, wonderful in every way. If you like to bake, you want this book.

The Jones family has so much to teach everyone who eats vegetables, cooks vegetables or grows vegetables that I can’t understand why their book is not a runaway best seller. Every cook will learn from it.

Much more than a cookbook (although it’s packed with recipes), The Chef’s Garden. is an encyclopedia of vegetables, many of which may be new to you because the Jones’ grow the most extraordinary produce. You’ll find many herbs, flowers and vegetables you never knew existed at their online shop, The Chef’s Garden. (Look up ice spinach, one of the most delicious vegetables I’ve ever tasted).

I’ve never been to Africa, but a few months ago in Paris I spent a morning discovering how utterly ignorant I am about the cooking of that continent. Wandering the streets of La Goutte d’Or (the 18th Arrondissement), with Chef Anto Cocagne, I encountered foods I’ve never seen before: baobab juice, biondo, pois de terre. We ended up at Little Africa Village where Chef Anto cooked a fantastic meal incorporating the ingredients we’d purchased on our walk.

If you’re American, you have probably encountered the food of North Africa and Ethiopia but it’s unlikely you know much about the food south of the Sahara. Saka Saka, will change that. I highly recommend it.

Cheating a little here because this book came out in 2021, but I love it so much I have to mention it.

Mr Jiu’s is one of my favorite San Francisco restaurants, and in this very personal book Brandon Jew pays homage to the Chinatown he grew up in. The recipes in Mr. Jiu’s in Chinatown are cheffy, complicated and completely worth it. (The duck takes 14 days.) But I have to tell you that the book is so absorbing that my husband, who has no interest in cookbooks or cooking, opened it up, sat down and read the entire book from cover to cover. I think you will too.

LOOKING AHEAD…..

Here are a few books that are coming out in the near future. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend some time with them, and I think you’re going to want to as well.

Italy by Ingredient by Viola Buitoni, coming in the Fall from Rizzoli.

I am utterly charmed by this book by Viola Buitoni (yes, of that family), who teaches cooking in San Francisco. I’ve never met her, but reading her book certainly made me want to. The recipes go far beyond the usual range of Italian dishes. Mortadella and ricotta mousse topped with pistachios. Guancialle and tagliolini pasta cooked right in the fat. Pork tenderloin stuffed inside a baguette before going into the oven. A ragu alla bolagnese that doesn’t take hours.

The directions are precise. And the writing is…. wonderful. A few examples.

“Keep your ears pricked: if the sizzle becomes a screech, the vegetables are calling for help.”

“If you perceive rancidity or a note of dead mosquitoes and cobwebs (in the rice), toss it.”

And then there’s this: “No need for wine: a gin and tonic works wonderfully with spaghetti alla bottarga.”

The North African Cookbook by Jeff Koehler, coming from Phaidon in May.

Beautiful, encyclopedic and filled with fantastic recipes and beautiful photographs, this is a must-have book for anyone interested in the food of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The recipes are incredibly appealing: briks, briouats and pastillas abound, and while there are entire chapters on meat and fish, vegetarians will be charmed by the huge number of incredibly appealing vegetable and salad recipes. This book really made me hungry.

Food of Sicily by Fabrizia Lanza, coming in the fall from Artisan

Ana Tasca Lanza founded her Sicilian Cooking School in rural Sicily in 1989. After a long career as a museum curator her daughter Fabrizia returned to run the school in 2006.  Over the years she’s written many books, but this one - with beautiful pictures by Guy Ambrosino - is my favorite.  It’s filled with recipes I can’t wait to make: fava bean soup with poached eggs, borage risotto, swordfish stuffed with mint.  But the one I really want to make is the celebratory  annelletti timballo. Remember the timballo in Big Night?  It’s like that - only much more beautiful.

The Authentic Yukrainian Kitchen: Real Recipes from a Native Chef by Yevhen Klopotenko, coming from Little Brown in September. 

I haven’t seen this book, which the publisher describes this way:  “at a time when the country’s very identity is under attack, this comprehensive cookbook asserts the independent cuisine of Ukraine and was crafted at Klopotenko’s restaurant kitchen in Kyiv, often in total blackouts during missile strikes.”

The Peanut Butter Cookie that Changed My Life by Nancy Silverton, coming from Knopf in November

Nancy’s my friend, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt. But while I wrote the introduction to her first book, I think this one is her masterpiece.

Nancy decided to take on the recipes for the cakes, cookies and savory pastries we all like best and work out the very best way to make each one. She’s consulted dozens of bakers, and then tested and retested until she’s sure each recipe is as perfect as can be. This is going to be the birthday cake you’ll make over and over again, the best brownie you’ve ever encountered, an extraordinary banana bread. And yes, a life-changing peanut butter cookie.

Long before every chef and food writer on the planet began leading culinary tours, Colman Andrews took a group of us to Barcelona to explore the extraordinary world of Catalan food. As you can probably see from this photograph, it was one of the most memorable trips of my life. (I wrote about it in Comfort Me with Apples.)  

Even in its native land, Colman is considered the expert on Catalan food, and his book, Catalan Cuisine has become a bible. Now, 35 years later, Colman is once again taking a group to discover his favorite cuisine. The details are here:

If it’s anything like the last one, you will eat extraordinary food and have far too much fun. 

This is the best thing I ate this week: bone marrow and buttery potato puree at the wonderful Antico Nuovo. Pure delicious decadence.

Not sure when I picked up these menus from Rick Bayless’ iconic restaurant Frontera Grill, but I’m guessing the late nineties. The dishes on the current lunch menu aren’t that different, but the prices are about three times more expensive. When was the last time you saw a Margarita for $3.25?