Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking


Samin Nosrat - 2017
    Chef and writer Samin Nosrat has taught everyone from professional chefs to middle school kids to author Michael Pollan to cook using her revolutionary, yet simple, philosophy. Master the use of just four elements—Salt, which enhances flavor; Fat, which delivers flavor and generates texture; Acid, which balances flavor; and Heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food—and anything you cook will be delicious. By explaining the hows and whys of good cooking, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach and inspire a new generation of cooks how to confidently make better decisions in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients, anywhere, at any time. Echoing Samin’s own journey from culinary novice to award-winning chef, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat immediately bridges the gap between home and professional kitchens. With charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone. Refer to the canon of 100 essential recipes—and dozens of variations—to put the lessons into practice and make bright, balanced vinaigrettes, perfectly caramelized roast vegetables, tender braised meats, and light, flaky pastry doughs. Featuring 150 illustrations and infographics that reveal an atlas to the world of flavor by renowned illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will be your compass in the kitchen. Destined to be a classic, it just might be the last cookbook you’ll ever need. With a foreword by Michael Pollan.

Rose Water and Orange Blossoms: Fresh Classic Recipes from my Lebanese Kitchen


Maureen Abood - 2015
    Floral waters and cinnamon. Bulgur wheat, lentils, and succulent lamb. These lush flavors of Maureen Abood's childhood, growing up as a Lebanese-American in Michigan, inspired Maureen to launch her award-winning blog, Rose Water & Orange Blossoms. Here she revisits the recipes she was reared on, exploring her heritage through its most-beloved foods and chronicling her riffs on traditional cuisine. Her colorful culinary guides, from grandparents to parents, cousins, and aunts, come alive in her stories like the heady aromas of the dishes passed from their hands to hers. Taking an ingredient-focused approach that makes the most of every season's bounty, Maureen presents more than 100 irresistible recipes that will delight readers with their evocative flavors: Spiced Lamb Kofta Burgers, Avocado Tabbouleh in Little Gems, and Pomegranate Rose Sorbet. Weaved throughout are the stories of Maureen's Lebanese-American upbringing, the path that led her to culinary school and to launch her blog, and life in Harbor Springs, her lakeside Michigan town.

100 Great Breads


Paul Hollywood - 2004
    From basic to Mediterranean, traditional and ancient bread, the recipes throw a fresh light on this seemingly simple food with a multitude of flavours, and a twist on the older ones.

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.

Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs


Julia Turshen - 2016
    The process of truly great home cooking is demystified via more than a hundred lessons called out as "small victories" in the funny, encouraging headnotes; these are lessons learned by Julia through a lifetime of cooking thousands of meals. This beautifully curated, deeply personal collection of what Chef April Bloomfield calls "simple, achievable recipes" emphasizes bold-flavored, honest food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. More than 160 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed photographers Gentl + Hyers provide beautiful instruction and inspiration elevate this entertaining and essential kitchen resource for both beginners and accomplished home cooks.

Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious


Michael Solomonov - 2018
    Usually served from tiny eateries, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or market stalls, these specialties have passed from father to son or mother to daughter for generations. To find the best versions, the authors scoured bustling cities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and sleepy towns on mountaintops. They visited bakeries, juice carts, beaches, even weddings.    Their finds include meals in the hand like falafel and pita; juicy, grilled and roasted spice-rubbed meats; stuffed vegetables; a wealth of chopped vegetable salads; a five-minute fluffy hummus with more than two dozen toppings; pastries, ice creams, and shakes. Solomonov has perfected and adapted every recipe for the home kitchen.   Each chapter weaves history with contemporary portrayals of the food. Striking photographs capture all its flavor and vitality, while step-by-step how-tos and closeups of finished dishes make everything simple and accessible.

Dinner: Changing the Game: A Cookbook


Melissa Clark - 2017
    With more than 200 all-new recipes, Dinner is about options: inherently simple recipes that you can make any night of the week.Each recipe in this book is meant to be dinner--one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone--maybe with a little salad or some bread on the side. This is what Melissa Clark means by changing the game. Organized by main ingredient--chicken, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, pasta and noodles, tofu, vegetable dinners, grains, pizza, soups, and salads that mean it--Dinner covers an astonishing breadth of ideas about just what dinner can be. There is something for every mood, season, and the amount of time you have: sheet pan chicken laced with spicy harissa, burgers amped with chorizo, curried lentils with poached eggs, to name just a few dishes in this indispensable collection. Here, too, are easy flourishes that make dinner exceptional: stir charred lemon into pasta, toss creamy Caesar-like dressing on a grain bowl.Melissa Clark's mission is to help anyone, whether a novice or an experienced home cook, figure out what to have for dinner without ever settling on fallbacks.

What's a Cook to Do?: An Illustrated Guide to 484 Essential Tips, Techniques, and Tricks


James Peterson - 2007
    Culinary students everywhere rely on the comprehensive and authoritative cookbooks published by chef, instructor, and award-winning author Jim Peterson. And now, for the first time, this guru-to-the-professionals turns his prodigious knowledge into a practical, chockablock, quick-reference, A-to-Z answer book for the rest of us. Look elsewhere for how to bone skate or trim out a saddle of lamb, how to sauté sweetbreads or flambé dessert. Look here instead for how to zest a lemon, make the perfect hamburger, bread a chicken breast, make (truly hot) coffee in a French press, make magic with a Microplane. It’s all here: how to season a castiron pan, bake a perfect pie, keep shells from sticking to hardcooked eggs. How to carve a turkey, roast a chicken, and chop, slice, beat, broil, braise, or boil any ingredient you’re likely to encounter. Information on seasoning, saucing, and determining doneness (by internal temperatures, timings, touch, and sight) guarantee that you’ve eaten your last bland and overcooked meal. Here are 500 invaluable techniques with nearly as many color photographs, bundled into a handy, accessible format.

Thanksgiving 101: Celebrate America's Favorite Holiday with America's Thanksgiving Expert


Rick Rodgers - 1998
    From shopping through chopping, from making flawless gravy to fearlessly carving the bird, he offers tips, insight, and inspiration every steop of the way. Whether it a tradition holiday feast with turkey and all the traditional trimming, chutneys, and chowders; a vegetarian dinner with just the trimmings; or new ideas for regional classics, including Cajun- or Italian-inspired tastes, Thanksgiving 101 serves up a delicious education for novice and experienced cooks alike.

Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat


Chrissy Teigen - 2016
    Maybe she’s making people laugh on TV. But all Chrissy Teigen really wants to do is talk about dinner. Or breakfast. Lunch gets some love, too.For years, she’s been collecting, cooking, and Instagramming her favorite recipes, and here they are: from breakfast all day to John’s famous fried chicken with spicy honey butter to her mom’s Thai classics. Salty, spicy, saucy, and fun as sin (that’s the food, but that’s Chrissy, too), these dishes are for family, for date night at home, for party time, and for a few life-sucks moments (salads). You’ll learn the importance of chili peppers, the secret to cheesy-cheeseless eggs, and life tips like how to use bacon as a home fragrance, the single best way to wake up in the morning, and how not to overthink men or Brussels sprouts. Because for Chrissy Teigen, cooking, eating, life, and love are one and the same.

The Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Revolutionary Recipes for Better Living


Mark Bittman - 2010
    The Food Matters Cookbook is the essential encyclopedia and guidebook to responsible eating, with more than 500 recipes that capture Bittman’s typically relaxed approach to everything in the kitchen. There is no finger-wagging here, just a no-nonsense and highly flexible case for eating more plants while cutting back on animal products, processed food, and of course junk. But for Bittman, flipping the ratio of your diet to something more virtuous and better for your body doesn’t involve avoiding any foods—indeed, there is no sacrifice here. Since his own health prompted him to change his diet, Bittman has perfected cooking tasty, creative, and forward-thinking dishes based on vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Meat and other animal products are often included—but no longer as the centerpiece. In fact the majority of these recipes include fish, poultry, meat, eggs, or dairy, using them for their flavor, texture, and satisfying nature without depending on them for bulk. Roasted Pork Shoulder with Potatoes, Apples, and Onions and Linguine with Cherry Tomatoes and Clams are perfect examples. Many sound downright decadent: Pasta with Asparagus, Bacon, and Egg; Stuffed Pizza with Broccoli, White Beans, and Sausage; or Roasted Butternut Chowder with Apples and Bacon, for example.There are vegetarian recipes, too, and they have flair without being complicated—recipes like Beet Tartare, Lentil "Caviar" with All the Trimmings, Radish-Walnut Tea Sandwiches, and Succotash Salad. Bittman is a firm believer in snacking, but in the right way. Instead of packaged cookies or greasy chips, Bittman suggests Seasoned Popcorn with Grated Parmesan or Fruit and Cereal Bites. Nor does he skimp on desserts; rather, he focuses on fruit, good-quality chocolate, nuts, and whole-grain flours, using minimal amounts of eggs, butter, and other fats. That allows for a whole chapter devoted to sweets, including Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies, Apricot Polenta Cake, Brownie Cake, and Coconut Tart with Chocolate Smear.True to the fuss-free style that has made him famous, Bittman offers plenty of variations and substitutions that let you take advantage of foods that are in season—or those that just happen to be in the fridge. A quick-but-complete rundown on ingredients tells you how to find sustainable and flavorful meat and shop for dairy products, grains, and vegetables without wasting money on fancy organic labels. He indicates which recipes you can make ahead, those that are sure to become pantry staples, and which ones can be put together in a flash. And because Bittman is always comprehensive, he makes sure to include the building-block recipes for the basics of home cooking: from fast stocks, roasted garlic, pizza dough, and granola to pots of cooked rice and beans and whole-grain quick breads.With a tone that is easygoing and non-doctrinaire, Bittman demonstrates the satisfaction and pleasure in mindful eating. The result is not just better health for you, but for the world we all share.

Slow Cooker Revolution


America's Test Kitchen - 2011
    A team of ten test cooks at America's Test Kitchen spent a year developing recipes, and what they discovered will change the way you use your slow cooker.Did you know that onions garlic, and spices should be bloomed in the microwave for five minutes before they go into the slow cooker? This simple step intensifies their flavor and requires no extra work. Did you know that a little soy sauce mixed with tomato paste adds meaty flavors to almost any stew and can often replace the tedious step of browning the meat? And do you know the secret to a moist slow-cooker chicken? Start the bird upside down to protect the delicate white meat from drying out.

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.

Madhur Jaffrey's Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook


Madhur Jaffrey - 2019
    Now, Madhur Jaffrey, the beloved authority on Indian cooking, shares more than seventy fabulous recipes--some entirely new, others reworked from her previous, acclaimed cookbooks--for the Instant Pot. Here are recipes for Saffron Rice with Golden Raisins; Mung Dahl Rice and Cabbage Soup; Sweet Hot and Sour Eggplant; Chicken Cooked in a Kerala Style; and Pork Vindaloo. Also included are a selection of side dishes including chutneys, yogurts, and salads (think Baby Arugula Salad with Mustard Oil; Quick Tamarind Chutney; Onion and Tomato Salad; and Spicy Mushroom Chips). Here too is a primer on how to best use the Instant Pot to maximize flavor. And while these recipes are quick and easy to prepare, they retain all the rich complexity for which Jaffrey's food has always been known. Here is the only Indian Instant Pot cookbook the home cook will ever need.

How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart


Pam Anderson - 2000
    Times have changed. Today we have an overwhelming array of ingredients and a fraction of the cooking time, but Anderson believes the secret to getting dinner on the table lies in the past. After a long day, who has the energy to look up a recipe and search for the right ingredients before ever starting to cook? To make dinner night after night, Anderson believes the first two steps--looking for a recipe, then scrambling for the exact ingredients--must be eliminated.  Understanding that most recipes are simply "variations on a theme," she innovatively teaches technique, ultimately eliminating the need for recipes.Once the technique or formula is mastered, Anderson encourages inexperienced as well as veteran cooks to spread their culinary wings.  For example, after learning to sear a steak, it's understood that the same method works for scallops, tuna, hamburger, swordfish, salmon, pork tenderloin, and more. You never need to look at a recipe again. Vary the look and flavor of these dishes with interchangeable pan sauces, salsas, relishes, and butters.Best of all, these recipes rise above the mundane Monday-through-Friday fare.  Imagine homemade ravioli and lasagna for weeknight supper, or from-scratch tomato sauce before the pasta water has even boiled.  Last-minute guests? Dress up simple tomato sauce with capers and olives or shrimp and red pepper flakes. Drizzle sautéed chicken breasts with a balsamic vinegar pan sauce. Anderson teaches you how to do it--without a recipe. Don't buy exotic ingredients and follow tedious instructions for making hors d'oeuvres. Forage through the pantry and refrigerator for quick appetizers. The ingredients are all there; the method is in your head. Master four simple potato dishes--a bake, a cake, a mash, and a roast--compatible with many meals. Learn how to make the five-minute dinner salad, easily changing its look and flavor depending on the season and occasion. Tuck a few dessert techniques in your back pocket and effortlessly turn any meal into a special occasion.There's real rhyme and reason to Pam's method at the beginning of every chapter: To dress greens, "Drizzle salad with oil, salt, and pepper, then toss until just slick. Sprinkle in some vinegar to give it a little kick." To make a frittata, "Cook eggs without stirring until set around the edges. Bake until puffy, then cut it into wedges." Each chapter also contains a helpful at-a-glance chart that highlights the key points of every technique, and a master recipe with enough variations to keep you going until you've learned how to cook without a book.