Molto Batali: Simple Family Meals from My Home to Yours


Mario Batali - 2011
    One of America’s favorite chefs and a popular fixture on cable television’s Food Network, Mario offers up simple and simply delicious seasonal recipes in month-by-month menus, perfect for celebrating with family and friends.

Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin: A Cookbook


Kenny Shopsin - 2008
    That’s why I came up with the names Ho Cakes and Slutty Cakes. These are extra decadent, but in a way, every pancake is a Ho Cake.” Thus speaks Kenny Shopsin, legendary (and legendarily eccentric, ill-tempered, and lovable) chef and owner of the Greenwich Village restaurant (and institution), Shopsin’s, which has been in existence since 1971.Kenny has finally put together his 900-plus-item menu and his unique philosophy—imagine Elizabeth David crossed with Richard Pryor—to create Eat Me, the most profound and profane cookbook you’ll ever read. His rants—on everything from how the customer is not always right to the art of griddling; from how to run a small, ethical, and humane business to how we all should learn to cook in a Goodnight Moon world where everything you need is already in your own home and head—will leave you stunned or laughing or hungry. Or all of the above.With more than 120 recipes including such perfect comfort foods as High School Hot Turkey Sandwiches, Cuban Bean Polenta Melt, and Cornmeal-Fried Green Tomatoes with Comeback Sauce, plus the best soups, egg dishes, and hamburgers you’ve ever eaten, Eat Me is White Trash Cooking for the twenty-first century, as unforgettable and mind-boggling as its author.

Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen


Amy Pennington - 2010
    A guide to stocking a small kitchen that explains the essential spices, ingredients, and equipment to have in order to create nutritious, easy meals, with more than sixty recipes to fit the urban lifestyle.

Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes


Andrea Reusing - 2011
    And her recipes in Cooking in the Moment are so approachable and her stories so insightful that they blaze a path toward great home cooking.” —David Chang“I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying many fine meals at Lantern. Andrea Reusing’s food is always fresh, seasonal, and as local as possible. Her recipes are creative and downright delicious.”—John GrishamFor Andrea Reusing—an award-winning chef, a leader in the sustainable agriculture movement, and a working mother—“cooking in the moment” simply means focusing on one meal at a time. Tender spring broccoli given a smoky char on the grill, a summer berry pudding with cold cream, or a cider-braised pork shoulder served with pan-fried apples on a frosty night—cooking and eating this way allows food in season to become the foundation of a full life. Cooking in the Moment is a rich, absorbing journey through a year in Reusing’s home kitchen as she cooks for family and friends using ingredients grown nearby. When seasonality is reimagined as a grocery list rather than a limitation, everyday meals become cause for celebration—a whole week of fresh sweet corn; a blue moon autumn asparagus harvest; a rich, spicy soup made with the last few sweet potatoes of winter. Reusing seamlessly blends down-to-earth kitchen advice with delicious, doable recipes, including childhood favorites (chicken and dumplings), simple one-pot dinners (shrimp, pea, and rice stew), as well as feasts to satisfy a crowd (roast fresh ham with cracklings). And while the action takes place in North Carolina, the kinds of producers and places that animate these pages—farmers, ranchers, cheesemakers, butchers, bakers, orchards, backyard henhouses, and fishing holes—can be found all over, producing the flavors that we crave. With gorgeous photography throughout and more than 130 recipes, Cooking in the Moment will inspire cooks everywhere to embrace the flavors and bounty of each season.

The Tassajara Bread Book


Edward Espe Brown - 1970
    It requires nurturing and care. In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the international best-seller that started a generation of Americans baking, Ed Brown shows how to make—and enjoy—breads, pastries, muffins, and desserts for today's sophisticated palates. And in a new afterword, he reflects on the widespread influence of the book and offers five new recipes.This is 2010. I have just purchased a new copy of this book, which I first owned back in 1970 or 1971. I love them and use them until they fall apart. I believe they are a GREAT introduction to breakmaking for a new baker, and an excellent wedding gift.

Brown Eggs and Jam Jars: Family Recipes from the Kitchen of Simple Bites


Aimée Wimbush-Bourque - 2015
    Raising three young children with husband Danny, Aimée traded her tongs and chef whites for a laptop and camera, married her two passions—mothering and cooking—and has since been creating recipes with an emphasis on whole foods for the family table, sharing stories and tips, and inspiring readers to make the family–food connection on the Simple Bites blog.Brown Eggs and Jam Jars is Aimée’s long-awaited cookbook, inspired by her urban homesteading through the seasons and the joyous events they bring. It embraces year-round simple food with fresh flavours, from celebrating spring with a stack of Buttermilk Buckwheat Pancakes and pure maple syrup, to a simple late-summer harvest dinner with Chili-Basil Corn on the Cob and Lemon Oregano Roast Chicken. Autumn favourites include Apple Cinnamon Layer Cake with Apple Butter Cream Cheese Frosting, while Slow Cooker Cider Ham is the perfect comfort food for those cold winter nights. But that’s just a few of the more than one hundred recipes (like melt-on-your-tongue maple butter tarts and tangy homemade yogurt) that have a touch of nostalgia, feature natural ingredients, and boast plenty of love.Brown Eggs and Jam Jars will inspire readers to connect family and food right where they are in life—from growing their own tomatoes to making a batch of homemade cookies. Enjoy your urban homestead.

Good Eats: The Early Years


Alton Brown - 2009
    (Well, almost.) Here, finally, are the books that Brown’s legion of fans have been salivating for—two volumes that together will provide an unexpurgated record of his long-running, award-winning Food Network TV series, Good Eats.  From “Pork Fiction” (on baby back ribs), to “Citizen Cane” (on caramel sauce), to “Oat Cuisine” (on oatmeal), every hilarious episode is represented. Each book—the second will be published in fall 2010—is illustrated with behind-the-scenes photos taken on the Good Eats set. Each contains more than 140 recipes and more than 1,000 photographs and illustrations, along with explanations of techniques, lots of food-science information (of course!), and more food puns, food jokes, and food trivia than you can shake a wooden spoon at.

The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom


Melissa Hartwig Urban - 2014
    Get started on your Whole30 transformation with the #1 New York Times best-selling The Whole30. Since 2009, Melissa Hartwig Urban's critically-acclaimed Whole30 program has quietly led hundreds of thousands of people to effortless weight loss and better health—along with stunning improvements in sleep quality, energy levels, mood, and self-esteem. The program accomplishes all of this by specifically targeting people’s habits and emotional relationships with food. The Whole30 is designed to help break unhealthy patterns of behavior, stop stress-related comfort eating, and reduce cravings, particularly for sugar and carbohydrates. Many Whole30 participants have described achieving “food freedom”—in just thirty days.   Now, The Whole30 offers a stand-alone, step-by-step plan to break unhealthy habits, reduce cravings, improve digestion, and strengthen your immune system. The Whole30 prepares participants for the program in five easy steps, previews a typical thirty days, teaches the basic meal preparation and cooking skills needed to succeed, and provides a month’s worth of recipes designed to build confidence in the kitchen and inspire the taste buds. Motivating and inspiring with just the right amount of signature tough love, The Whole30 features real-life success stories, an extensive quick-reference FAQ, detailed elimination and reintroduction guidelines, and more than 100 recipes using familiar ingredients, from simple one-pot meals to complete dinner party menus.

Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock


Isa Chandra Moskowitz - 2005
    Ten years ago a young Brooklyn chef was making a name for herself by dishing up amazing vegan meals -- no fuss, no b.s., just easy, cheap, delicious food. Several books -- including Veganomicon, Appetite for Reduction, Isa Does It, and Superfun Times Holiday Cookbook -- later, the punk rock priestess of all things tasty and animal-free returns to her roots-and we're not just talking tubers. The book that started it all is back, with new recipes, ways to make those awesome favorites even awesomer, more in-the-kitchen tips with Fizzle--and full-color photos of those amazing dishes throughout. With tips for taming your tofu, doing away with dairy, and getting rid of the eggs, you'll find recipes for: "Fronch" Toast; Biscuits and White Bean Sausage Gravy; Chile sin Carne al Mole; Apple Pie-Crumb Cake Muffins; Three Kinds of Knishes (Knish Madness!); Revolutionary Spanish Omelet; Tempeh Reuben; Braised Cauliflower with Three-Seed Sauce; Ethiopian Seitan and Peppers; No-Bake Black Bottom-Peanut Butter Silk Pie; Coconut Heaven Cupcakes . . . and more. So much more.

Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented


Gesine Bullock-Prado - 2012
    Someone’s hankering for pie; you can see the pie-longing in their eyes. They want a delicious flaky crust, something with buttery overtones. They want fresh fruit—not a vague whisper of berry in a butter cream, but overt chunks of apple, discernible bites of berry. But it’s just not done. You don’t serve pie at special events like fiftieth birthdays, dinner parties, silveranniversaries, or, God forbid, at a wedding. To which I reply, ‘Bullpuckies.’" And so begins Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented. Pie has always been a popular cookbook topic, yet in Pie It Forward, baker, confectioner, and pastry master Gesine Bullock-Prado unveils an entirely new frontier of pies, redefining what can be done with a piecrust and pastry shell. Expect lattice and cutouts with an entirely modern twist. Homemade puff pastry made easy. Individual pie pops to replace tiredcupcakes. Surprising and wildly successful explorations with beer (Chocolate Stout Pudding Pie), exotic fruits (Yuzu-Ginger Rice Pudding Meringue Pie), and candy making (Earl Grey Truffle Tart). And there are the classics too—riffing on her German roots, her Hollywood background, and life on her Vermont farm—a Blueberry Brown Butter Tart, an Italian Plum Tart with a yeasted-dough crust, a tiramisu-inspired Espresso Tart, a Vermont Pizza Pie, and more. Including sweet, savory, layered, and miniature pies and tarts, Bullock-Prado presents these recipes with a voice that removes the intimidation factor and inspires readers to break out of the double-crust straitjacket and try her signaturecreations—and to laugh out loud along the way. For additional information, technique demonstrations, and more, please visit www.pieitforwardcookbook.com. Praise for Pie it Forward: “Delicious reworkings and inventions from Sandra Bullock’s sister, including a truly quick puff pastry that’s worth the price of the book.” —New York Times Book Review "A slice of heaven." —US Weekly "In Pie it Forward, Gesine Bullock-Prado satisfies even the most demanding sweet tooth." —National Examiner "Pie it Forward by Gesine Bullock-Prado grabs you with the delectable cover, and holds you with its mouth-watering recipes. My favorite so far, the unbearably amazing pear and rhubarb cardamom custard pie, tastes both cozy and original in the best way possible." —Campus Circle “Work your way through her beginning section on crusts—the thing that scares bakers off pies—and you will be an expert from puff pastry to pizza dough. . . . When you’ve conquered these, it really is time to “pie it forward” with Bullock-Prado’s compositions that turn pie into art. To see them and her technique go to pieitforwardcookbook.com because words don’t do them justice.” —Cookbook Digest

Aida Mollenkamp's Keys to the Kitchen: The Essential Reference for Becoming a More Accomplished, Adventurous Cook


Aida Mollenkamp - 2012
    This comprehensive manual collects more than 300 innovative, contemporary recipes as well as color photographs, plenty of informative illustrations, a substantial technique primer, and helpful how-to information on subjects as wide-ranging as rust removal, throwing a cocktail party, and knife skills. For members of the tech-savvy new generation who can't cook but want to, this essential reference guide makes an ideal starting place and for those already at ease in the kitchen it's full of "who knew" moments for expanding their repertoire of great recipes.

The Pleasures of Cooking for One


Judith Jones - 2009
    It’s a fulfilling and immensely economical process, one perfectly suited for our times—although, as Jones points out, cooking for one also means we can occasionally indulge ourselves in a favorite treat.Throughout, Jones is both our instructor and our mentor, suggesting basic recipes—such as tomato sauce, preserved lemons, pesto, and homemade stock—that all cooks should have on hand; teaching us how to improvise using an ingenious strategy of building meals through the week; and supplying us with a lifetime’s worth of tips and shortcuts. From Child’s advice for buying fresh meat to Beard’s challenge to beginning crêpe-makers and Lidia Bastianich’s tips for cooking perfectly sauced pasta, Jones’s book presents a wealth of acquired knowledge from our finest cooks.The Pleasures of Cooking for One is a vibrant, wise celebration of food and enjoying our own company from one of our most treasured cooking experts.

Food Drying with an Attitude: A Fun and Fabulous Guide to Creating Snacks, Meals, and Crafts


Mary T. Bell - 2008
    Children will love the yummy fruit roll-ups. Everyone will be thrilled at how easy it is to preserve fruits, vegetables, and herbs without chemicals or preservatives. Animal lovers will enjoy making treats for dogs, cats, and birds.   With more than thirty years of food drying experience, author Mary T. Bell offers straightforward and practical instructions for drying everything from apples to zucchini, without ignoring traditional favorites such as jerky, mushrooms, and bananas. Readers will also find innovative and delicious recipes for cooking and baking with dried foods. Food Drying with an Attitude gives readers the recipes, instructions, and inspiration they need to get the most out of their home food dehydrators.

The Taste of Country Cooking


Edna Lewis - 1976
    With menus for the four seasons, she shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year:• The fresh taste of spring—the first shad, wild mushrooms, garden strawberries, field greens and salads . . . honey from woodland bees . . . a ring mold of chicken with wild mushroom sauce . . . the treat of braised mutton after sheepshearing.• The feasts of summer—garden-ripe vegetables and fruits relished at the peak of flavor . . . pan-fried chicken, sage-flavored pork tenderloin, spicy baked tomatoes, corn pudding, fresh blackberry cobbler, and more, for hungry neighbors on Wheat-Threshing Day . . . Sunday Revival, the event of the year, when Edna’s mother would pack up as many as fifteen dishes (what with her pickles and breads and pies) to be spread out on linen-covered picnic tables under the church’s shady oaks . . . hot afternoons cooled with a bowl of crushed peaches or hand-cranked custard ice cream.• The harvest of fall—a fine dinner of baked country ham, roasted newly dug sweet potatoes, and warm apple pie after a day of corn-shucking . . . the hunting season, with the deliciously “different” taste of game fattened on hickory nuts and persimmons . . . hog-butchering time and the making of sausages and liver pudding . . . and Emancipation Day with its rich and generous thanksgiving dinner.• The hearty fare of winter—holiday time, the sideboard laden with all the special foods of Christmas for company dropping by . . . the cold months warmed by stews, soups, and baked beans cooked in a hearth oven to be eaten with hot crusty bread before the fire.The scores of recipes for these marvelous dishes are set down in loving detail. We come to understand the values that formed the remarkable woman—her love of nature, the pleasure of living with the seasons, the sense of community, the satisfactory feeling that hard work was always rewarded by her mother’s good food. Having made us yearn for all the good meals she describes in her memories of a lost time in America, Edna Lewis shows us precisely how to recover, in our own country or city or suburban kitchens, the taste of the fresh, good, natural country cooking that was so happy a part of her girlhood in Freetown, Virginia.

The CSA Cookbook: No-Waste Recipes for Cooking Your Way Through a Community Supported Agriculture Box, Farmers' Market, or Backyard Bounty


Linda Ly - 2014
    How many times has a CSA share arrived with things you've never seen before or not known what to do with?The CSA Cookbook will help you cook your way through a CSA box (or farmers' market or backyard bounty) with 105 seasonal recipes that utilize every edible part of the plant, from leaves and flowers to stems and seeds. Think of it as a nose-to-tail approach—for vegetables!With innovative ideas for preparing the lesser-known but no-less-delicious parts of plants, tips for using the odds and ends of vegetables, and easy preservation techniques, Linda Ly helps you get from farm to table without a fuss. Chapters include tomatoes and peppers, leafy greens, peas and beans, bulbs and stems, roots and tubers, melons and gourds, and flowers and herbs. You'll find globally-inspired, vegetable-focused recipes that turn a single plant into several meals—take squash, for instance. This year-round vegetable brings a variety of tastes and textures to the table: Sicilian Squash Shoot Soup, Squash Blossom and Roasted Poblano Tacos, Autumn Acorn Squash Stuffed with Kale, Cranberries, and Walnuts, and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds. If you grow your own food at home, you might be surprised to learn you can eat the leaves from your pepper plants, or pickle the seed pods from your radishes.The CSA Cookbook aims to inspire curiosity in the garden and creativity in the kitchen. You'll look at vegetables in a whole new way and think twice before you discard your kitchen "scraps"!