Southern Italian Desserts: The Great Undiscovered Recipes of Sicily, Campania, Puglia, and Beyond


Rosetta Costantino - 2013
    These areas have a history of rich traditions and tasty, beautiful desserts, many of them tied to holidays and festivals. For example, in the Cosensa region of Calabria, Christmas means plates piled with grispelle (warm fritters drizzled with local honey) and pitta 'mpigliata (pastries filled with walnuts, raisins, and cinnamon). For the feast of Carnevale, Southern Italians celebrate with bugie("liars")--sweet fried dough dusted in powdered sugar, meant to tattle on those who sneak off with them by leaving a wispy trail of sugar. With fail-proof recipes and information on the desserts' cultural origins and context, Costantino illuminates the previously unexplored confectionary traditions of this enchanting region.

Pasta by Hand: A Collection of Italy's Regional Hand-Shaped Pasta


Jenn Louis - 2015
    From rising culinary star and 2012 Food & Wine Best New Chef Jenn Louis, this book includes more than 65 recipes for hand-shaped traditional pastas and dumplings, along with deeply satisfying sauces to mix and match. Louis shares her recipes and expertise in hand-forming beloved shapes such as gnocchi, orecchiette, gnudi, and spatzli as well as dozens of other regional pasta specialties appearing for the first time in an English-language cookbook. With photos of finished dishes and step-by-step shaping sequences, this beautiful book is perfect for DIY cooks and lovers of Italian food.

Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes from an Ancient City


Katie Parla - 2016
    Each is a mirror of its city’s culture, history, and geography. But cucina romana is the country’s greatest standout.  Tasting Rome provides a complete picture of a place that many love, but few know completely. In sharing Rome’s celebrated dishes, street food innovations, and forgotten recipes, journalist Katie Parla and photographer Kristina Gill capture its unique character and reveal its truly evolved food culture—a culmination of 2000 years of history. Their recipes acknowledge the foundations of Roman cuisine and demonstrate how it has transitioned to the variations found today. You’ll delight in the expected classics (cacio e pepe, pollo alla romana, fiore di zucca); the fascinating but largely undocumented Sephardic Jewish cuisine (hraimi  con couscous, brodo di pesce, pizzarelle); the authentic and tasty offal (guanciale, simmenthal di coda, insalata di nervitti); and so much more.   Studded with narrative features that capture the city’s history and gorgeous photography that highlights both the food and its hidden city, you’ll feel immediately inspired to start tasting Rome in your own kitchen.

The Italian Baker


Carol Field - 1985
    It is celebratory sweet holiday breads dense with fat raisins, toasted nuts and candied fruit peels. It is "new wave" wave" breads, recently invented by artisan bakers and studded with roasted peppers, sun. dried tomatoes and salty olive paste. It is imaginative multi-grain breads and rolls with tastes and shapes that vary dramatically from region to region.Recipes for the breads of all these regions, for the comforting rustic soups and salads and appetizers based on them, for breadsticks and rolls, pizza and focaccia, for holiday specialties, for pastries, cookies, cornetti and nut tortes, fruit tarts, cheesecakes and spice cakes and other confections-all are offered in this landmark volume which presents, for the first time in English or Italian, the diverse baking traditions of Italy.Knowing these regional specialties and the stories behind them is like taking a trip through the Italian countryside. Putting the recipes on paper as Carol Field has done is like preserving the villages in the Italian hillsides with their churches and frescoes, for they are part of a tradition that has never before been recorded. In preparing for this book, Carol Field spent two years working with the bakers of Italy, traversing the country again and again from Lugano and Como in the north to Lecce and Palermo in the south, tasting and testing, then going back to the States to rework the recipes in an American kitchen with American ingredients. The result is recipes that are impeccably written for utmost ease and flexibility. Some are simple and earthy, some elegant and refined, but all will be a revelation to Americans who have previously known Italian breads and desserts only from the limited and stereotyped range available until now. Each recipe offers instructions for making doughs by hand, by electric mixer, and by food processor. Illustrations provide clear step-by-step how-to, and chapters on ingredients, equipment and technique reveal all the whys and wherefores.

From a Polish Country House Kitchen: 90 Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food


Anne Applebaum - 2012
    Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum has lived in Poland since before the fall of communism, and this cookbook—nourished by her engagement with the culture and food of her adopted country—offers a tantalizing look into the turbulent history of this beautiful region. In a Polish Country House Kitchen celebrates long-distance friendships with a love of food at the core, bringing the good, sustaining foods of Anne's Polish country home into kitchens the world over.

Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: 90 Recipes for Making Your Own Ice Cream and Frozen Treats from Bi-Rite Creamery


Kris Hoogerhyde - 2012
    Guests young and old flock to the destination ice cream shop, craving a toasty banana split, a jewel-toned ice pop, a scoop of cooling sorbet, a mouthwatering ice cream sandwich, or one of the best ice cream cakes around.   Lucky for ice cream lovers, Bi-Rite Creamery’s secret is in plain sight: their irresistible goods are all made using top quality, farm-fresh, seasonal ingredients—locally sourced, whenever possible—and now you can bring their legendary creations into your home. This essential guide to making your own delicious ice cream and treats covers all the classic flavors and delectable variations, plus creative combinations like Orange-Cardamom, Chai-Spiced Milk Chocolate, Balsamic Strawberry, Malted Vanilla with Peanut Brittle and Milk Chocolate, and Honey Lavender.   Driven by the Creamery’s most popular flavors, each chapter in Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones serves as a meditation on a particular ingredient. Featuring recipes for Bi-Rite’s famed cakes, frostings, pie crusts, and cookies, you can easily mix and match to create an infinite array of delicious custom frozen treats. Filled with step-by-step techniques and insider’s secrets, this lavishly illustrated cookbook will turn your kitchen into a personal Bi-Rite Creamery (without the long line).

The Italian Slow Cooker: 125 Easy Recipes for the Electric Slow Cooker


Michele Scicolone - 2010
    Michele Scicolone, a best-selling author and an authority on Italian cooking, shows how good ingredients and simple techniques can lift the usual “crockpot” fare into the dimension of fine food. Pasta with Meat and Mushroom Ragu, Osso Buco with Red Wine, Chicken with Peppers and Mushrooms: These are dishes that even the most discriminating cook can proudly serve to company, yet all are so carefree that anyone with just five or ten minutes of prep time can make them on a weekday and return to perfection. Simmered in the slow cooker, soups, stews, beans, grains, pasta sauces, and fish are as healthy as they are delicious. Polenta and risotto, “stir-crazy” dishes that ordinarily need careful timing, are effortless. Meat loaves come out perfectly moist, tough cuts of meat turn succulent, and cheesecakes emerge flawless.

Great British Bake Off - Perfect Cakes & Bakes To Make At Home (Official tie-in to the 2016 series)


Linda Collister - 2016
    This essential baking book of recipes from the Great British Bake Off team is appropriate for any level of expertise. Each chapter includes favourite classics with a twist, recipes with simple ingredients to create something adventurous, and showstoppers that will guarantee you're crowned Star Baker in your own home.This cookbook is the perfect excuse to start baking like The Great British Bake Off - at home.Includes:* Recipes from the Bakers of 2016, including the finalists* Technical challenges from the show* Easy to follow, step by step baking instructions* Written to help you develop skills and bring out your creativity* Beautiful photography to help you visualize your bake* Clear advice on equipment, ingredients and quantities* Recipes highlighted for 'free-from' diets and special ingredients

The Vintage Baker: More Than 50 Recipes from Butterscotch Pecan Curls to Sour Cream Jumbles


Jessie Sheehan - 2018
    Blue-ribbon recipes inspired by baking pamphlets from the 1920s to the 1960s are rendered with irresistible charm for modern tastes in this sweet package. Here are more than 50 cookies, pies, cakes, bars, and more, plus informative headnotes detailing the origins of each recipe and how they were tweaked into deliciousness. For home bakers, collectors of vintage cookbooks or kitchenware—really, anyone who loves beautiful, quirky gifts—this is a gem.

The Foods of the Greek Islands: Cooking and Culture at the Crossroads of the Mediterranean


Aglaia Kremezi - 2000
    Over the centuries, Phoenicians, Athenians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottoman Turks, and Italians have ruled the islands, putting their distinctive stamp on the food. Aglaia Kremezi, a frequent contributor to GOURMET and an international authority on Greek food, spent the past eight years collecting the fresh, uncomplicated recipes of the local women, as well as of fishermen, bakers, and farmers. Like all Mediterranean food, these dishes are light and healthful, simple but never plain, and make extensive use of seasonal produce, fresh herbs, and fish. Passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, most have never before been written down. All translate easily to the American home kitchen: Tomato Patties from Santorini; Spaghetti with Lobster from Kithira; Braised Lamb with Artichokes from Chios; Greens and Potato Stew from Crete; Spinach, Leek, and Fennel Pie from Skopelos; Rolled Baklava from Kos. Illustrated throughout with color photographs of the islanders preparing their specialties and filled with stories of island history and customs, THE FOODS OF THE GREEK ISLANDS is for all cooks and travelers who want to experience this diverse and deeply rooted cuisine firsthand.

Making Artisan Chocolates


Andrew Garrison Shotts - 2007
    Today's chocolate candies use chocolates with high cocoa content and less sugar then previously available and are molded into highly decorated pieces of art. Once only accessible to pastry chefs and candy makers, home cooks can now purchase high-end domestic and imported chocolates in their local specialty stores. The recent availability of bittersweet chocolates coupled with our access to a global food market and unique ingredients has created an increased interest in artisanal chocolates. Drew Shotts has been at the forefront of this renaissance because of his daring use of unique flavor combinations not typically associated with chocolates, such as chili peppers, maple syrup, and spiced chai tea. Making Artisan Chocolates shows readers how to recreate Drew's unexpected flavors at home through the use of herbs, flowers, chilies, spices, vegetables, fruits, dairies and liquors.

United States of Pie: Regional Favorites from East to West and North to South


Adrienne Kane - 2012
    From long lost recipes to classic favorites, the irresistible desserts featured in this wonderful cookbook will be pastry nirvana for Mollie Katzen and Moosewood fans—hot and tasty treats sweetly illustrated, combined with  time-tested baking tips and secrets for preparing the perfect pie.

Hand-Crafted Candy Bars: From-Scratch, All-Natural, Gloriously Grown-Up Confections


Susie Norris - 2013
    Candy bar devotees Susie Norris and Susan Heeger show how to reinvent candy bars as they should be—thick and layered with nougat, crisp with toffee, and coated with fine chocolate. Familiar candy-store bars and other nostalgic favorites are re-created using the freshest ingredients, right down to the peanut-laden caramel and chocolate-drenched cookie crunch. A mix-and-match flavor chart inspires anyone with a sweet tooth to dream up custom treats of their own, such as covering marshmallows with molten chocolate. From the basics of candy making to tips on dressing up these luscious indulgences as elegant desserts, Hand-Crafted Candy Bars evokes the sweet memory of youth with simple, scrumptious sophistication.

My Sweet Mexico: Recipes for Authentic Pastries, Breads, Candies, Beverages, and Frozen Treats


Fany Gerson - 2010
    Skillfully weaving together the rich histories that inform the country’s diverse culinary traditions, My Sweet Mexico is a delicious journey into the soul of the cuisine. From yeasted breads that scent the air with cinnamon, anise, sugar, fruit, and honey, to pushcarts that brighten plazas with paletas and ice creams made from watermelon, mango, and avocado, Mexican confections are like no other. Stalwarts like Churros, Amaranth Alegrías, and Garibaldis—a type of buttery muffin with apricot jam and sprinkles—as well as Passion Fruit–Mezcal Trifle and Cheesecake with Tamarind Sauce demonstrate the layering of flavors unique to the world of dulces. In her typical warm and enthusiastic style, Gerson explains the significance of indigenous ingredients such as sweet maguey plants, mesquite, honeys, fruits, and cacao, and the happy results that occur when combined with Spanish troves of cinnamon, wheat, fresh cow’s milk, nuts, and sugar cane. In chapters devoted to breads and pastries, candies and confections, frozen treats, beverages, and contemporary desserts, Fany places cherished recipes in context and stays true to the roots that shaped each treat, while ensuring they’ll yield successful results in your kitchen. With its blend of beloved standards from across Mexico and inventive, flavor-forward new twists, My Sweet Mexico is the only guide you need to explore the delightful universe of Mexican treats.

Milk Cookies: 89 Heirloom Recipes from New York's Milk Cookies Bakery


Tina-Marie Casaceli - 2011
    In Milk & Cookies, pastry chef Tina Casaceli shares classic family recipes, as well as favorites from her bakery. More than 45 good-enough-to-eat photographs, can-do baking formulas, and a friendly Greenwich Village vibe make this cookbook too tantalizing to resist.