If you’re looking for a last-minute gift for the food fanatic on your list, consider rush delivery on one of these books. No, this is not your typical list of big-name titles from famous chefs and television food personalities. These admittedly idiosyncratic recommendations have little in common other than that they have thoroughly intrigued me. Of the hundreds of titles that have come across my desk this year, these six have managed to migrate to the bedside reading table and the kitchen.
“Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing” by Anya von Bremzen (Crown Publishers, $26)
How do you experience nostalgia for an imagined past? That is the question that drives the narrative of Anya von Bremzen’s unusual memoir and reflection on Russian identity. Von Bremzen — a celebrated cookbook author and travel writer whose byline can often be seen in magazines attached to stories about sumptuous dining in European capitals — emigrated from the U.S.S.R. to the United States as a teenager in the 1970s with her mother, Larisa Frumkin. She shares memories of her young life in Moscow, and of the communal kitchen shared by tenants of her apartment block. But the narrative action of the book is a progression of dinners she and Larisa make in New York, each one tied to a decade of Soviet history. This tidy structure works because von Bremzen is such an assured but unpredictable writer who can shift from cultural historian to memoirist without losing the thread. By the way, the title of this book is a fine, resonant joke, but don’t let it distract you from an engrossing read.
“Japanese Soul Cooking” by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat (Ten Speed Press, $27.50)
By this point most American food obsessives have gotten the memo that ramen isn’t merely a dehydrated package of high-sodium snack food, but rather a deeply pleasurable bowl of love when made as it is in Japanese specialty restaurants with long-cooked stocks and fresh-cut noodles. Get ready for the onslaught. Ramen is but one of the many dishes the authors of this fine book term “Japanese soul cooking.” Crunchy breaded pork cutlets (tonkatsu), voluptuous and decidedly non-Indian curries with rice (kari-raisu), and thick savory pancakes filled with cabbage and pork (okonomiyaki) are among the cheap and readily available dishes that fuel daily life in Japan. Ono, a New York chef, and Salat, a food writer, have put together a comprehensive collection of recipes. Whenever applicable, they work around the use of preservative-laden bottled sauces. If this kind of cooking interests you, this will be an important reference book.
“The New Midwestern Table” by Amy Thielen (Clarkson Potter, $35)
We live in a region, the South, that not only inspires people to rhapsodize about food, but to write it all down. There are many, many Southern cookbooks, some of them great. Midwesterners, by contrast, are a more practical lot who recognize the farm-fresh traditions that inspire their cooking, but are less concerned with telling their story. Thielen’s (pretty brilliant) new book fills a huge gap. A Midwestern native who cut her cooking chops in the New York restaurant world, she now lives in rural Minnesota. This glossy cookbook draws on both personal and written history, and the recipes show a keen sensitivity to both ingredients and technique. There are many revelations, from the Midwestern fried chicken (fried and then baked, served with a pan gravy) to English peas cooked in milk. Thielen does her region proud.
“Summerland: Recipes for Celebrating with Southern Hospitality” by Anne Stiles Quatrano (Rizzoli, $39.95)
Let me add my voice to the chorus of Atlantans who have developed a crush on this first cookbook from our greatest restaurateur. The book so perfectly captures the bespoke aesthetic and culinary sensibility that Quatrano shows at Bacchanalia, Star Provisions her other restaurants around town. Quatrano has developed the recipes with home cooks in mind, and they look by and large doable, with abbreviated ingredient lists and clear instruction. It is Quatrano’s eye — whether she’s walking you through an appetizer of deviled eggs in the shell or a decorated “stump de Noël” cake — that distinguishes the cooking. The book is named for the family farm outside of Atlanta where she and her husband/co-chef, Clifford Harrison, live. The organization around seasonal celebrations makes this a book you’ll want to consult throughout the year.
“Anything that Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture” by Dana Goodyear (Riverhead Books, $27.95)
If you’ve read any of Dana Goodyear’s writing in the New Yorker magazine, you know that she’s often attracted to stories that combine food and adventure. This often leads her to the extremes of restaurant culture. Her November piece, “The Animals We Love too Much to Eat,” looked at a Los Angeles restaurant that secretly served contraband meat, such as whale. A version of that story appears in this riveting dispatch from the edge. Goodyear spends time with raw-milk proselytizers, cutting-edge modernists, chefs who go crazy for offal, and fans of escamoles — or ant larvae. She sees all these stories from our food-obsessed times as the beginnings of a new food culture. She doesn’t have any pat answers, but she puts it all out there for us to interpret.
“Bourbon” by Kathleen Purvis (University of North Carolina Press, $18)
This slender volume packs a lot of charm in its 100 or so pages, along with a smartly curated list of recipes for bourbon cocktails and bourbon-spiked comestibles. The opening pages are filled with information about the history and fabrication of bourbon along with some smart observations on how it figures into Southern culture today. Purvis, the food editor of the Charlotte Observer, has also penned “Pecans,” another in this single-subject series of “Savor the South” cookbooks.
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