Book picks similar to
The Summer Book by Susan Branch
cookbooks
non-fiction
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The Cornbread Gospels
Crescent Dragonwagon - 2007
Over time, she came to understand: Not only is hot, just baked cornbread delicious, it evokes—powerfully—the heart, soul, and taste of home. There is an abundance of satisfying cornbreads, as Crescent discovered when she followed the cornbread trail from the Appalachians to the Rockies to the Green Mountains. Traveling to family reunions, potlucks, tortilleras, stone-grinding mills, and the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, she heard the stories, tasted the breads, learned the secrets. Join her in this overflowing cornucopia: over 200 irresistible recipes for cornbreads, muffins, fritters, pancakes, and go-withs. Cornbreads from below the Mason-Dixon line (Skillet-Sizzled Buttermilk Cornbread, Truman Capote’s Family’s Alabama Cornbread) meet those from above (Durgin-Park Boston Cornbread, Vermont Maple-Sweetened Cornbread). Southwestern offerings—Chou-Chou’s Dallas Hot Stuff Cornbread, delectable homemade tamales, and tortillas from scratch—meet internationals like India’s Makki Ki Roti. A Thanksgiving with Crescent’s Sweet-Savory Cornbread Dressing is rapturous. Desserts like Very Lemony Gorgeous Cornmeal Pound Cake make any meal exceptional. Along with this, Crescent gives us the greens, the beans, the salads, stews, and soups that accompany cornbread to perfection. And she tells us the stories, too. Enthusiastic and heartfelt, this thoughtful, exuberant love song to America’s favorite breadstuff and all that goes with it will embrace readers and cooks everywhere.
The Happy Herbivore Cookbook: Over 175 Delicious Fat-Free and Low-Fat Vegan Recipes
Lindsay S. Nixon - 2011
It’s easy to make great food at home using the fewest number of ingredients and ones that can easily be found at any store, on any budget.The Happy Herbivore Cookbook includes:•-A variety of recipes from quick and simple to decadent and advanced•-Helpful hints and cooking tips, from basic advice such as how to steam potatoes to more specific information about which bread, tofu or egg replacer works best in a recipe•-An easy-to-use glossary demystifying any ingredients that may be new to the reader•-Healthy insight: Details on the health benefits and properties of key ingredients•-Pairing suggestions with each recipe to help make menu planning easy and painless•-Allergen-free recipes, including gluten-free, soy-free, corn-free, and sugar-freeWith a conventionally organized format; easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions; nutritional analyses, colorful photographs; funny blurbs at the beginning of each recipe; helpful tips throughout; and chef’s notes suggesting variations for each dish, even the most novice cook will find healthy cooking easy—and delicious!
Taste: My Life through Food
Stanley Tucci - 2021
He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the recipes and into the stories behind them.Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about growing up in Westchester, New York, preparing for and filming the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia, falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create conversation-starting meals for their children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burnt dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.Written with Stanley's signature wry humour and nostalgia, Taste is a heartwarming read that will be irresistible for anyone who knows the power of a home-cooked meal.
Cooking Italian with the Cake Boss: Family Favorites as Only Buddy Can Serve Them Up
Buddy Valastro - 2012
Now he shares 100 delicious, essential Italian-American recipes—from his grandmother’s secret dishes to his personal favorites—with his own signature touches that make dinner a family event.TLC’s beloved Buddy Valastro is not only a master baker, he’s also a great cook—the boss of his home kitchen as well as of his famous bakery, Carlo’s Bake Shop. Home cooking is even more vital for the Valastro family than the work they do at the bakery. Every Sunday, the whole clan gathers to cook and eat Sunday Gravy—their family recipe for hearty tomato sauce. These nourishing meals are the glue of their family. Cooking Italian with the Cake Boss shares 100 delicious Italian- American recipes beloved by Buddy’s family, from his grandmother’s secret dishes to Buddy’s personal favorites, with Buddy’s own signature touches that make dinner a family event. Buddy Valastro is renowned worldwide as the Cake Boss, but Buddy knows far more than just desserts. He makes classic dishes like Pasta Carbonara, Shrimp Scampi, and Eggplant Parmesan even more irresistible with his singular flair and with old-school tips passed down through generations. With his friendly charm, he guides even novice cooks from appetizers through more complicated dishes, and all 100 easy-to-follow recipes use ingredients that are obtainable and affordable. Your family will love sitting down at the table to eat Steak alla Buddy, Auntie Anna’s Manicotti, Mozzarella-and- Sausage-Stuffed Chicken, Veal Saltimbocca, Buddy’s Swiss Chard, and mouthwatering desserts like Lemon Granita, Apple Snacking Cake, Cocoa-Hazelnut Cream with Berries, and Rockin’ Rice Pudding. Buddy’s recipes allow home cooks to become the bosses of their own kitchens, and anyone will be able to whip up a tasty and nutritious Italian dinner. Filled with luscious full-color photography and with stories from the irrepressible Valastro clan, Cooking Italian with the Cake Boss shows how to create new takes on traditional dishes that will make your famiglia happy. *** My family, the Valastros, makes its living by baking and selling just about anything you can think of at Carlo’s Bake Shop. It’s what we’re known for. But there’s another side to our family and our relationship to food, and it’s just as personal, maybe even more personal, than what we do at the bakery. I’m talking about the recipes and dishes, meals and traditions that nourish our bodies and souls when we get home. Just like any other family, we enjoy chilling out and spending time together, and there’s no way we’d rather do that than around a table, a place that keeps us grounded and connected to each other as well as to the relatives who came before us. As proud as I am of our professional success, I’m just as proud that we’ve been able to continue making time for our family and extended family—and we’re talking a lot of people— to meet several times a week and eat together. And now I’m honored to share with you my family’s favorite recipes and to tell you the stories of what makes them so near and dear to our hearts. I hope they might become favorites for your family as well, that they help you create memories to last a lifetime, the same way they’ve done for us Valastros. -- Buon Appetito, Buddy Valastro
Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes
Maya Angelou - 2004
Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, " Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant-and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable. Angelou tells us about the time she was expelled from school for being afraid to speak-and her mother baked a delicious maple cake to brighten her spirits. She gives us her recipe for short ribs along with a story about a job she had as a cook at a Creole restaurant (never mind that she didn't know how to cook and had no idea what Creole food might entail). There was the time in London when she attended a wretched dinner party full of wretched people; but all wasn't lost-she did experience her initial taste of a savory onion tart. She recounts her very first night in her new home in Sonoma, California, when she invited M. F. K. Fisher over for cassoulet, and the evening Deca Mitford roasted a chicken when she was beyond tipsy-and created Chicken Drunkard Style. And then there was the hearty brunch Angelou made for a homesick Southerner, a meal that earned her both a job offer and a prophetic compliment: "If you can write half as good as you can cook, you are going to be famous." Maya Angelou is renowned in her wide and generous circle of friends as a marvelous chef. Her kitchen is a social center. From fried meat pies, chicken livers, and beef Wellington to caramel cake, bread pudding, and chocolate eclairs, the one hundred-plus recipes included here are all tried and true, and come from Angelou's heart and her home. "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table "is a stunning collaboration between the two things Angelou loves best: writing and cooking.
Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook: More Than 100 Classic Italian Dishes to Make at Home
Michael Ronis - 2008
Carmine's flavors are the tastes Americans love to cook and eat at home--fresh garlic, bubbling tomato sauce, and pasta boiled just to the perfect al dente. Try any of the recipes in Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook and bring home that classic Italian flavor to your family.
Bon Appetit, Y'all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking
Virginia Willis - 2008
These divergent influences come together splendidly in Bon Appétit, Y'all, a modern Southern chef's passionate and utterly appealing homage to her culinary roots. Espousing a simple-is-best philosophy, Virginia uses the finest ingredients, concentrates on sound French technique, and lets the food shine in a style she calls "refined Southern cuisine." More than 200 approachable and consistently delicious recipes are arranged by chapter into starters and nibbles; salads and slaws; eggs and dairy; meat, fowl, and fish main dishes; sides; biscuits and breads; soups and stews; desserts; and sauces and preserves. Collected here are stylishly updated Southern and French classics (New SouthernChicken and Dumplings, Boeuf Bourgignonne), rib-sticking, old-timey favorites (Meme's Fried Okra, Angel Biscuits), and perfectly executed comfort food (Mama's Apple Pie, Fried Catfish Fingers with Country Rémoulade). Nearly 100 photographs bring to life both Virginia's food and the bounty of her native Georgia. You'll also find a wealth of tips and techniques from a skilled and innovative teacher, and the stories of a Southern girl steeped to her core in the food, kitchen lore, and unconditional hospitality of her culinary forebears on both sides of the Atlantic. Bon Appétit, Y'all is Virginia's way of saying, "Welcome to my Southern kitchen. Pull up a chair." Once you have tasted her food, you'll want to stay a good long while.