The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science


J. Kenji López-Alt - 2015
    Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more. In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that often, conventional methods don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new—but simple—techniques. In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes with over 1,000 full-color images, you will find out how to make foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, how to make the crispiest, creamiest potato casserole ever conceived, and much more.

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution


Alice Waters - 2007
    Her simple but inventive dishes focus on a passion for flavor and a reverence for locally produced, seasonal foods.With an essential repertoire of timeless, approachable recipes chosen to enhance and showcase great ingredients, The Art of Simple Food is an indispensable resource for home cooks. Here you will find Alice’s philosophy on everything from stocking your kitchen, to mastering fundamentals and preparing delicious, seasonal inspired meals all year long. Always true to her philosophy that a perfect meal is one that’s balanced in texture, color, and flavor, Waters helps us embrace the seasons’ bounty and make the best choices when selecting ingredients. Fill your market basket with pristine produce, healthful grains, and responsibly raised meat, poultry, and seafood, then embark on a voyage of culinary rediscovery that reminds us that the most gratifying dish is often the least complex.

Momofuku


David Chang - 2009
    A once-unrecognizable word, it's now synonymous with the award-winning restaurants of the same name in New York City: Momofuku Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar, Ko, and Milk Bar. Chef David Chang has single-handedly revolutionized cooking in America with his use of bold Asian flavors and impeccable ingredients, his mastery of the humble ramen noodle, and his thorough devotion to pork.  Momofuku is both the story and the recipes behind the cuisine that has changed the modern-day culinary landscape. Chang relays with candor the tale of his unwitting rise to superstardom, which, though wracked with mishaps, happened at light speed. And the dishes shared in this book are coveted by all who've dined—or yearned to—at any Momofuku location (yes, the pork buns are here). This is a must-read for anyone who truly enjoys food.

Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook


Isa Chandra Moskowitz - 2007
    You'll find 25 new dishes and updates throughout for more than 250 recipes (everything from basics to desserts), stunning color photos, and tips for making your kitchen a vegan paradise. All the recipes in Veganomicon have been thoroughly kitchen-tested to ensure user-friendliness and amazing results. Veganomicon also includes meals for all occasions and soy-free, gluten-free, and low-fat options, plus quick recipes that make dinner a snap.

Myers+Chang at Home: Recipes from the Beloved Boston Eatery


Joanne Chang - 2017
    When Chang married acclaimed restaurateur Christopher Myers, she would make him Taiwanese food for dinner at home every night. The couple soon realized no one was serving food like this in Boston, in a cool but comfortable restaurant environment. Myers+Chang was born and has turned into one of Boston’s most popular restaurants, and will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2017, just in time for publication of this long-awaited cookbook. These recipes, all bursting with flavor, are meant to be shared, and anyone can make them at home—try Dan Dan Noodle Salad, Triple Pork Mushu Stir-fry, or Grilled Corn with Spicy Sriracha Butter. This is food people crave and will want to make again and again. Paired with the couple's favorite recipes, the photography perfectly captures the spirit of the restaurant, making this book a keepsake for devoted fans.

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs


Karen Page - 2008
    Drawing on dozens of leading chefs' combined experience in top restaurants across the country, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg present the definitive guide to creating "deliciousness" in any dish. Thousands of ingredient entries, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a treasure trove of spectacular flavor combinations. Readers will learn to work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients; experiment with temperature and texture; excite the nose and palate with herbs, spices, and other seasonings; and balance the sensual, emotional, and spiritual elements of an extraordinary meal.Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from America's most imaginative chefs, THE FLAVOR BIBLE is an essential reference for every kitchen.

Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes


Peter Meehan - 2015
      Your friends and lovers will marvel as you show off your culinary worldliness, whipping up meals with fish-sauce-splattered panache and all the soy-soaked, ginger-scalliony goodness you could ever want—all for dinner tonight.

The Chef and the Slow Cooker: A Cookbook


Hugh Acheson - 2017
    Hugh celebrates America's old countertop stalwart with fresh, convenient slow cooker recipes with a chef's twist, dishes like brisket with soy, orange, ginger, and star anise, or pork shoulder braised in milk with fennel and raisins. But where it gets really fun is when Hugh shows what a slow cooker can really do, things like poaching and holding eggs at the perfect temperature for your brunch party, or for making easy duck confit, or for the simplest stocks and richest overnight ramen broth. There's even a section of jams, preserves, and desserts, so your slow cooker can be your BFF in the kitchen morning, noon, and night.Introduction --Foundations: stocks, broths & a theory on the long cook --Beans & other band leaders & some session players --Soups --Vegetable-focused --Seafood --Chicken, duck & other birds... plus eggs --Here's the beef --Porcine dreams --Lamb & goat --Jams, butters, chutneys & one & a half desserts.

BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts


Stella Parks - 2017
    Whether down-home delights like Blueberry Muffins and Glossy Fudge Brownies or supermarket mainstays such as Vanilla Wafers and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream, your favorites are all here. These meticulously tested recipes bring an award-winning pastry chef’s expertise into your kitchen, along with advice on how to “mix it up” with over 200 customizable variations—in short, exactly what you’d expect from a cookbook penned by a senior editor at Serious Eats. Yet BraveTart is much more than a cookbook, as Stella Parks delves into the surprising stories of how our favorite desserts came to be, from chocolate chip cookies that predate the Tollhouse Inn to the prohibition-era origins of ice cream sodas and floats. With a foreword by The Food Lab’s J. Kenji López-Alt, vintage advertisements for these historical desserts, and breathtaking photography from Penny De Los Santos, BraveTart is sure to become an American classic.

Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine


Edward Lee - 2018
    In a nation of immigrants who bring their own culinary backgrounds to this country, what happens one or even two generations later? What does their cuisine become? It turns into a cuisine uniquely its own and one that Lee argues makes America the most interesting place to eat on earth. Lee illustrates this through his own life story of being a Korean immigrant and a New Yorker and now a Southerner. In Off the Menu, he shows how we each have a unique food memoir that is worthy of exploration. To Lee, recipes are narratives and a conduit to learn about a person, a place, or a point in time. He says that the best way to get to know someone is to eat the food they eat. Each chapter shares a personal tale of growth and self-discovery through the foods Lee eats and the foods of the people he interacts with—whether it’s the Korean budae jjigae of his father or the mustard beer cheese he learns to make from his wife’s German-American family. Each chapter is written in narrative form and punctuated with two recipes to highlight the story, including Green Tea Beignets, Cornbread Pancakes with Rhubarb Jam, and Butternut Squash Schnitzel. Each recipe tells a story, but when taken together, they form the arc of the narrative and contribute to the story we call the new American food.

Old-School Comfort Food: The Way I Learned to Cook


Alex Guarnaschelli - 2013
    The daughter of a respected cookbook editor and a Chinese cooking enthusiast, Alex developed a passion for food at a young age, sealing her professional fate. Old-School Comfort Food shares her journey from waist-high taste-tester to trained chef who now adores spending time in the kitchen with her daughter, along with the 100 recipes for how she learned to cook—and the way she still loves to eat.Here are Alex’s secrets to great home cooking, where humble ingredients and familiar preparations combine with excellent technique and care to create memorable meals. Alex brings her recipes to life with reminiscences of everything from stealing tomatoes from her aunt’s garden and her first bite of her mother’s pâté to being one of the few women in the kitchen of a renowned Parisian restaurant and serving celebrity clientele in her own successful New York City establishments. With 75 color photographs and ephemera, Old-School Comfort Food is Alex’s love letter to deliciousness.

Chinese Soul Food: A Friendly Guide for Homemade Dumplings, Stir-Fries, Soups, and More


Hsiao-Ching Chou - 2018
    Chinese Soul Food draws cooks into the kitchen with recipes that include sizzling potstickers, stir-fries that areunbelievably easy to make, saucy braises, and soups that bring comfort with a sip. These are dishes that feed the belly and speak the universal language of "mmm!" You'll find approachable recipes and plenty of tips for favorite homestyle Chinese dishes, such as red-braised pork belly, dry-fried green beans, braised-beef noodle soup, green onion pancakes, garlic eggplant, and the author's famous potstickers, which consistently sell out her cooking classes in Seattle. You will also find helpful tips and techniques, such as caring for and using a wok and how to cook rice properly, as well as a basic Chinese pantry list that also includes acceptable substitutions, making it even simpler for the busiest among us to cook their favorite Chinese dishes at home. Recipes are streamlined to minimize the fear factor of unfamiliar ingredients and techniques, and home cooks are gently guided toward becoming comfortable cooking satisfying Chinese meals. Any kitchen can be a Chinese kitchen!

Cravings: Hungry for More


Chrissy Teigen - 2018
    It’s a life of pancakes that remind you of blueberry pie, eating onion dip with your glam squad, banana bread that breaks the internet, and a little something called Pad Thai Carbonara. After two years of parenthood, falling in love with different flavors, and relearning the healing power of comfort food, this book is like Chrissy’s new edible diary: recipes for quick-as-a-snap meals; recipes for lighter, brighter, healthier-ish living; and recipes that, well, are gonna put you to bed, holding your belly. And it will have you hungry for more.

Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from An Unlikely Life on a Farm


Molly Yeh - 2016
    Like her award-winning blog My Name is Yeh, Molly on the Range chronicles her life through photos, more than 100 new recipes, and hilarious stories from life in the city and on the farm.Molly’s story begins in the suburbs of Chicago in the 90s, when things like Lunchables and Dunkaroos were the objects of her affection; continues into her New York years, when Sunday mornings meant hangovers and bagels; and ends in her beloved new home, where she’s currently trying to master the art of the hotdish. Celebrating Molly's Jewish/Chinese background with recipes for Asian Scotch Eggs and Scallion Pancake Challah Bread and her new hometown Scandinavian recipes for Cardamom Vanilla Cake and Marzipan Mandel Bread, Molly on the Range will delight everyone, from longtime readers to those discovering her glorious writing and recipes for the first time.

Heart of the Artichoke: and Other Kitchen Journeys


David Tanis - 2010
    Nobody better embodies the present-day mantra "Eat real food in season" than David Tanis, one of the most original voices in American cooking. For more than a quarter-century, Tanis has been the chef at the groundbreaking Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, where the menu consists solely of a single perfect meal that changes each evening. Tanis’s recipes are down-to-earth yet sophisticated, simple to prepare but impressive on the plate. Tanis opens this soulful, fun-to-read cookbook with his own private food rituals, those treats—jalapeño pancakes, beans on toast, pasta for one—for when you are on your own in the kitchen with no one else to satisfy. Then he follows with twenty incomparable menus (five per season) that serve four to six. Each transports the reader to places far and wide.  And for grand occasions, a time for the whole tribe to gather around the table, Tanis delivers festive menus for holiday feasts. So in one book, three kinds of cooking: small, medium, and large.