“Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from my Paris Home to your Home Anywhere”
By Dorie Greenspan
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40
Home bakers bored with overwrought, fondant-cloistered sweets will devour the tarts, petite pastries, cakes and cookies renowned author Greenspan has coaxed from friends and bakers throughout France. She’s an enthusiastic guide, embracing all aspects of the art, from sables (shortbread) to gateau (cake) and macarons to desert roses (a chocolate, cornflakes and dried fruit creation). A basics chapter augments recipes that “the French bake at home for their families,” she writes, “for the joy of making them happy.”
“Inside the Test Kitchen”
By Tyler Florence
Clarkson Potter, $35
The latest cookbook from Florence, a noted chef and Food Network star, looks like a student’s notebook with ruled columns, jotted notes, underlines and arrows. It works because this book is all about learning by experimenting and sharing the results in 120 clearly written recipes. Basic techniques, innovative twists — baking and rolling an omelet on a sheet pan is one of the more striking examples — and Florence’s can-do enthusiasm enliven the book.
“Mad Delicious: The Science of Making Healthy Food Taste Amazing”
By Keith Schroeder
Oxmoor House, $35
If you don’t chuckle a dozen pages into Schroeder’s book, move on. Otherwise, pick a page (any page) and let Schroeder (culinary educator, chef and Cooking Light magazine’s Cooking Class columnist) ditch the blah reputation tagged on so-called healthy cooking with his lively, fun approach. The 126 recipes (like carnitas de pollo or buttermilk ricotta) list ingredients chart-style, which lets him explain the why of each element. Colorful illustrations help cooks visualize some science and techniques. Recipe photos are mouthwatering and the recipes richly flavored.
“My Paris Kitchen”
By David Lebovitz
Ten Speed, $35
Lebovitz is a chef and baker turned cookbook author who moved to Paris about 10 years ago. His adventures in France are recounted on his popular eponymous website. Lebovitz now shares his recipes and stories in a very handsome book. Don’t be turned off by the francocentric focus. Lebovitz’s clear recipes, practical advice and keen sense of humor make this book universally appealing.
“1,000 Spanish Recipes”
By Penelope Casas
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35
The author died just five days after finishing this book for the 1,000 Recipes series. Casas, a noted authority on Spanish cooking, covered all the bases, from tapas to entrees to dessert. There’s not a lot of chat here but the short headnotes are informative. There are menu suggestions and a glossary of ingredients, and recipes that are vegetarian, or could be with one change, are noted.
“Pork”
By Cree LeFavour
Chronicle, $27.50
The topic might seem late to the yearslong chef-and-cookbook-driven pork madness game. Yet LeFavour’s work doesn’t need a plateaued trend to hang itself on. It stands on its own for her flavor-packed pork preparations. But the Idaho ranch-raised cookbook writer (“Poulet,” “Fish”) really captures our appetites with accompaniments developed to bolster each pork recipe (like tenderloin and salsa verde with celeriac-potato mash and fennel-parsley salad). The sides themselves will become standards on your table.
“Saveur: The New Classics Cookbook”
By the editors of Saveur
Weldon Owen, $40
Saveur magazine, that chronicler of food from far-flung corners of the world, gathers here more than 1,000 of its recipes, a celebration of 20 years in print. The editors boldly aim to make this 600-plus-page work your go-to cookbook. By labeling the recipes as classics, Saveur puts forth that each is THE version of the dish, from butternut squash ravioli to rhubarb upside-down cake. Quite a boast, yet we see ourselves reaching past other books to grab “Saveur” again and again.
“The Cuban Table”
By Ana Sofia Pelaez and Ellen Silverman
St. Martin’s Press, $35
Pelaez searched Cuba, New York and her native Miami to gather recipes from family, friends and friends of friends, and restaurant, lunch counter and shop owners. What emerges from the stories behind those recipes (often copied from tattered cookbooks carried from Cuba as families fled) is a portrait of an inventive, resourceful people. Photographer Silverman, through her soulful images, is a full partner in the chronicling. Recipes from croquetas to cafe cubano to ropa vieja reflect the Spanish, French, Creole and African influences. Like the fricases, which “came to Cuba from France by way of Haiti” along the way picking up verve from citrus and sofrito.
“The Vegetarian Flavor Bible”
By Karen Page
Little, Brown and Co., $40
Don’t expect recipes. Dig, instead, into flavor inspirations for plant-based cooking (vegetables, fruits, legumes, etc.) offered by Page, her photographer-chef-husband Andrew Dornenburg and dozens of chefs. Page tackles some science (i.e. how we taste, smell) and culinary cravings (Miss bacon? Try smoked paprika. Need creaminess without the cow? Try coconut milk.). For those who love to cook (and maybe only dabbled in vegetarian cooking), Page presents an encyclopedic approach to ingredients (acai to zucchini flowers), explaining how to use them and their “flavor affinities.”
“What to Bake & How to Bake It”
By Jane Hornby
Phaidon, $35
Befuddled by baking jargon yet long to bake? Baking expert-cooking teacher Hornby’s book features 50 recipes buttressed by 500 overhead color photographs illustrating baking terms and techniques. She’s a patient coach for novices, stirring her love of baking into recipes from classic crusty bread to chocolate profiteroles. She goes easy on food science, instead offering some basics (i.e. what-to-look-for visuals of correctly beaten egg whites, whipped cream, etc.) and simplifies explanations of the whys of some techniques.
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