All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, by Ruby Tandoh

How many of these do you have in your pantry? Preserved lemon, cumin, za’atar, sumac, gochujang, sriracha, Aleppo pepper, dates, rose harissa, hot honey, whipped feta…and do you really know how they got there?

With a light touch, Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Tandoh takes readers of All Consuming on a tour of obvious and hidden forces that influence your next move when you step into your kitchen. She looks at how, over the past 75 years, we talk and think about food—from food influencers (ugh) to “content creators” (ugh ugh) to magic wellness drinks (ugh ugh are you kidding me), with a hefty dose of manipulation from supermarkets, TV, hype restaurants, and others with all levels of expertise.

Having fallen in love with cookbooks at a young age, I was most drawn to Tandoh’s deep look at them and at recipe creation generally.

“Craveable, suckerpunch recipes”—in a year-plus of returning to cookbook reviewing, I’ve not seen a better description of what authors seem compelled to write now. Sometimes it’s fun, inspiring, and deeply delicious. Sometimes, it’s just exhausting.

No longer, Tandoh writes, can a recipe promise to be simply practical, possible, or authentic. Instead, it must be the thing that “will make you see God.” And apparently we see God in a lot of words that end in y—creamy, dreamy, lemony, buttery, crunchy, chewy, crispy.

But the reality is that much of the time, cooks read new recipes, get excited about a new-to-them ingredient, and then return to their old favorites, maybe with a dash of one of the trendy ingredients thrown in.

And while I know many, if not most, readers will just read recipes far more than they’ll ever make them, I approach each review with the assumption that the author genuinely wants you to cook each recipe. But with so many of the new books I peruse (most of which I don’t write about, or give scant space to), I come away deeply skeptical that indeed, that was the intention—a feeling Tandoh reinforces.

And then there’s social media’s insidious influence on cookbooks, how we eat, and food photography, and how it eats away at your brain. She notes that as the landscape shifted from the explosion of blogs to hyping the latest food fad on Instagram, “you shared a photo of the food with an explanatory caption, rather than a blog post about the food with an illustrative photo. This allowed you to bypass thinking altogether and just look: burgers, hotdogs, fries, pizza, ice cream, cake, bubble tea—all those foods that instantly register as delicious.”

When I shifted away from food writing many years ago as I struggled with the point of writing new recipes—for sure, it was fun, but it was hardly living up to my expectations that my work would somehow contribute to making the world a better, safer, kinder, or more equitable place—I still viewed guiding people to be better cooks as valuable.

But with so many eyeballs glazing over now on food ridiculousness by people like Nara Smith, to whom Tandoh devotes several pages, it’s no surprise that even Tandoh confesses that she has lost almost all curiosity about cooking, and that she, a cookbook author, has caught cookbook fatigue.

There’s much more here, including chapters on the “ice cream age,” on the fast-food burger bar Wimpy in Britain (which fascinated me on a trip to England when I was 9), and on the very different restaurant travel guides written by Duncan Hines and Victor Hugo Green beginning in 1936. She sets us straight on some origin stories (no, Elizabeth David didn’t transform British cooking—though she did transform British cookbooks by sparking the notion that “a cookbook can, and even should, be a work of fantasy”), and lays a good bit of credit/blame at the feet of Yotam Ottolenghi, where “cooking is modular and iterative.”

All Consuming will consume readers’ time and provoke their thinking—in this case, just as intended.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

*The Talisman of Happiness, by Alda Boni

First published 100 years ago in Italy and never out of print, The Talisman of Happiness is traditionally as common in Italian kitchens and wedding gifts as The Joy of Cooking in the U.S. Now available for the first time in a full English translation, with nearly 1,700 recipes, the book will appeal most to confident cooks who need only a modicum of hand-holding for success.

A fascinating artifact of regional recipes across the country, from a notably limited set of ingredients, The Talisman of Happiness provides many brief (sometimes deceptively so) recipes that beginners should take on with trust in the results, and in themselves. But today’s cooks are conditioned to expect far greater detail and precision.

The ingredient list for a recipe for swordfish with tomato, for example, provides specific amounts for only three of its 13 ingredients—6 swordfish steaks, 6 tomatoes, 1 onion, versus simply “celery,” “white wine,” “parsley”—leaving the directions to call for the still-imprecise “the chopped celery,” “the crushed garlic,” “a lot of parsley.” Other recipes, such as Neapolitan skewers, call for putting skewers in the pan “to fry with plenty of oil”—but does that actually mean deep-frying? And all of the skewer lack consistency on oil temperature, citing variously “with plenty of oil,” “in a lot of hot oil,” “in plenty of very hot oil,” “in plenty of hot oil,” and and “in plenty of boiling oil.”

Maybe nervous cooks should pretend to be their great-grandmothers, cooking successfully with instructions just like this from their grandmothers.

With so many old favorites to choose from, cooks open to experimentation will find plenty of sweet spots between inspiration and frustration. Think arancini, simple fish and seafood, meatballs, meatloaf, fried eggplant, pizza, calzones, minestrone, bruschetta (calling for not the “rustic bread” we expect now but “12 slices sandwich bread”), candied orange cake, Neapolitan Easter pie, and zabaglione pudding, to name just a few, alongside many less-familiar foods worth getting to know.

*Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste The Nation and Beyond, by Padma Lakshmi.

Drawing on stories and recipes from Padma Lakshmi’s TV show Taste the Nation plus her own immigrant experience, Padma’s All American pushes back on anti-immigrant fury to highlight the stories of Thai, Lebanese, Gullah, Peruvian, Apache, and other cooks whose recipes make up the true “All-American” palate.

From jollof rice to sweet and sour cabbage to spicy goat bites, green papaya salad to Afghani leek and scallion dumplings to chicken with sumac and agave, Lakshmi provides deeply flavored, clear recipes that are largely doable for average cooks, though not necessarily quick.

Attractively photographed (especially if you want lots of Lakshmi photos), with heartfelt, poignant profiles of people from her show, the book makes a strong argument for breaking out of culinary ruts to appreciate all the flavors of our melting pot.

Galette! Sweet and Savory Recipes as Easy as Pie, by Rebecca Firkser

This book slipped past as much notice as it deserves when it came out in June, but what a sweet discovery now. Rebecca Firkser offers 50 recipes and many tips for these flat, free-form, rustic tarts with a pleated rim, based on one crust recipe with variations such as cocoa, cornmeal, and buckwheat. Interesting flavor combinations invite riffing, and absent the fear that true pie seems to strike in so many hearts, cooks will find galettes appearing weekly for supper or dessert.

Chapters on stone fruit; apples, pears, and citrus; berries; chocolate and other non-fruit options; winter squash and roots; nightshades and summer squash; greens and alliums; and pantry-staple galettes each offer five or six recipes.

A sweet sampling: apricot and pepita-sesame frangipane; sour cherry and Campari; pear with sumac and ginger; preserved lemon curd; minty blueberry-chamomile; figgy miso; and cocoa and toasted pecan.

On the savory side: buttered, salted radish; roasted and raw fennel; spicy eggplant Parm; scallion and asparagus with miso; sticky onion with anchovies and black olives; marinated artichoke and tomato; and chopped mushroom and kimchi. Firkser also provides useful templates for “anything goes” sweet and savory galettes.

Of course, it all starts with the crust, for which Firkser walks bakers through hand-mixing and food processor options, shaping, and extras (a crumble topping and sweet and savory toppings and sauces). She offers additional instructions for individual, muffin tin, and supersized sheet-pan galettes, as well as some formed in a tart pan to provide more structure.

One quibble: Her doughs require at least a two-hour chill before being rolled out (then back in the freezer, filled, for 10 minutes before baking). But as long as bakers work quickly and start with cold butter and ice water, it can be far quicker to immediately roll out the dough, then chill it to allow the gluten to relax, with no appreciable change in the final quality. Chilling a dough to a firm state only to wait for it to soften enough to roll out has never really made sense.

One of the tart pan options, the not-quite galette des rois, fills a crust with a delicate frangipane quickly stirred together from almond flour, eggs, butter, and amaro or other liquor. A recipe test using the suggested buckwheat crust variation produced a crisp crust with a tender rum-spiked filling nicely offset by a sprinkling of flaky salt. The tip here to place the tart on a preheated sheet pan is especially valuable for avoiding a soggy bottom (a problem usually solved for pies by prebaking the shell, but not an option for a galette).

The sweet cherry and lime galette, also in a buckwheat crust, includes a hit of grated ginger that pumped up the impact and tasted as appropriate in cool weather as warm. Once the crust is made, everything comes together quickly, goes light on the sugar (1/3 cup in the filling, with more for sprinkling on the crust, which can easily be omitted), and takes advantage of frozen fruit for year-round baking—typical for many of the recipes here.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

*Sabzi: Vibrant Vegetarian Recipes, by Yasmin Khan

The author of Zaitoun, The Saffron Tales, and Ripe Figs, Yasmin Khan produces beautiful cookbooks, with sumptuous photos and illustrations that actually add meaning, unlike much food photography. In her latest, named for the Persian word for herbs, Khan pulls together recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean, and South Asia for breakfasts, salads, mezzes, soups, mains, and desserts.

The breakfast chapter is the weak link here—truly, no one needs to be told anymore how to make avocado toast, or how to top toast with ricotta, figs, and honey. The granola is a completely standard recipe with no interesting tweaks, and even your grandma probably knows by now how to make overnight oats.

Move along, then, to the salads—which will grab you from the opening recipe, mixing roasted broccoli and radishes with lentils in a curried tahini sauce, all topped with dates. A pilaf with roasted cauliflower, sumac, dried cherries, and a yogurt sauce offers a good introduction to freekeh. Spicy tomatoes with walnuts and pomegranates seems misnamed—with just a touch of pomegranate molasses and mild chile flakes—but still brings in big flavors with walnuts, mint, and sumac.

Mezze recipes include roasted carrots over a swirl of hummus-like lentil-tahini puree, topped with a basil-parsley paste; Punjabi spiced vegetable medley; and a dip of labneh topped with persimmon flavored with harissa. Main courses include smoky chickpeas with orzo; eggplant fesenjan; mung bean, spinach, and tomato dal; lentil and mushroom ragu; and eggplant and lentil tahchin (a layered rice cake).

Like the breakfast chapter, desserts offer less of interest overall, but include an intriguing dark chocolate and dried lime tart.

Have a book you’d like to see reviewed? Let me know in the comments, and please hit that like button to help others find this post. And share it with other cookbook lovers you know!

Share

*Sesame: Global Recipes & Stories of an Ancient Seed, by Rachel Simons

If you’ve ever found yourself with a large, barely used jar of tahini on the shelf, then open Sesame. Written by the owner of Seed + Mill, a small shop focused on tahini and halva in New York’s Chelsea Market, Sesame offers up a solid, if not especially unusual, variety of recipes for seasonings, breakfasts, dips, crackers, salads, vegetables, main dishes, and sweets.

Why “not especially unusual”? Well, start with smoothies and granola, or move on to roasted potatoes and carrot salad, mushrooms on toast, sesame noodles, and benne wafers—and truly, has it become illegal to publish a cookbook without a focaccia recipe? But the granola recipe includes the interesting touch of espresso, the potatoes get served with muhammara spiked with tahini, and the salad coats carrot ribbons in a dressing with ground sesame seeds, sesame oil, dashi powder, and mirin.

Look out for recipe issues; though this may be an anomaly, the pear and pistachio breakfast loaf with sesame streusel caught my eye for the streusel’s lack of sesame in either the ingredient list or the instructions.

*The Simple Dinner Edit: Simplify your cooking with 80+ fast, low-cost dinner ideas, by Nicole Maguire

Looking for fresh ideas to get dinner on the table, without breaking the bank? And do you love chicken? The Simple Dinner Edit provides a decent selection of recipes to get you started, though without much new in the way of ideas for saving money.

A page of supposed tips on saving money offers little more than advice to take inventory of your pantry and make a grocery list. Batch-cooking, prepping produce as soon as you bring it into the kitchen, and understanding how to store produce to make it last also get a nod. She does provide useful tips on using leftovers or making extras to use later, plus how to freeze leftovers.

Based in Sydney, Maguire shows the influence of some prominent cuisines in Australia, with dishes such as Hainanese chicken, coconut dal, braised sticky soy pork belly, barbecue brisket, Panang coconut and peanut beef curry, and chicken laksa. Other recipes include nachos, quesadillas, roasted pumpkin soup, spanakopita pie, sesame chicken, peanut butter pork and noodles, teriyaki chicken bowl, spring roll salad with sticky pork and noodles, and tuna bowl (with canned tuna) with miso dressing. The book offers chapters on stovetop and oven dishes, pasta, rice and noodles, salads, long-cooking meals, and “fun”—recipes intended to share with a crowd (though most serve only four people) and be eaten with your hands.

One warning: If you don’t prefer poultry, don’t get this book—the index lists 31 recipes under chicken, out of about 80 total.

Subscribe now

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

*Linger, by Hetty Lui McKinnon

As the mother of three young children, Hetty Lui McKinnon started her culinary career by making and delivering salads from her bike basket in Sydney, Australia. Although she moved well on from salads—becoming an award-winning cookbook author and frequent New York Times contributor—McKinnon retained her love for salad and a vision of how sharing salads around a table could bring people together to linger and find community, especially post-pandemic.

Now, in Linger, a warm, gentle book, McKinnon offers about 100 recipes for salads of all sorts, with an “anything can be a salad” take on the word. (Sadly, the book offers few new takes on her delicious dumpling salads, such as this summer-perfect dumpling tomato salad; there’s no entry “dumplings” in the index, but there is one recipe.)

Twelve chapters each provide a complete menu, generally serving four to six people, though cooking any of these menus would be a feat for most hosts, with recipes for around seven salads plus desserts and breads. (McKinnon writes that she expects most people will cook the recipes singularly.) Each chapter opens with a quietly thoughtful, personal essay and a QR code to a playlist curated by her daughter.

The first menu, for example, includes ginger-roasted kabocha with black rice and ginger-miso dressing; a vegan prosperity toss; charred gai lan with black-eyed peas and chile crisp vinaigrette; curry potato and pea dumpling salad; yo po spicy rice cake salad; soba noodles with crunchy vegetables and fu yu sesame sauce; and hot and sour potato salad.

Although McKinnon says in the introduction that one benefit to salads is they can be largely prepped ahead of time, she offers few do-ahead pointers in most recipes or any day-by-day timetable for preparing so many dishes. While the recipes are rarely complicated, not all the ingredient lists are short nor the work quick—those dumplings, for example, are homemade, not purchased as in the Times tomato salad. (Also, why in a menu of recipes that mostly serve two to four, does the dessert serve eight? Generally, the menu concept felt like it came close but didn’t quite work here.)

Those issues aside, these are, as usual for McKinnon, recipes that will propel many cooks straight to the stove. Oyster mushroom shawarma with farro and lemon cashew cream; fennel salad with pickly dressing (with fennel, apple, grapes, almonds, and raisins); pan-fried mapo tofu salad; bibimbap-style gnocchi with gochujang vinaigrette; peaches and cream with chile crisp; Gruyère, jalapeño, and scallion mochi balls; black sesame tofu Basque cheesecake; and tofu bread rolls make up a very short selection of the eye-catching, mouth-watering recipes here.

The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, 2001-2026, by America’s Test Kitchen

I felt weary just looking at this book, even before hefting all 7 pounds of it. With 1,400 recipes and all the product recommendations from 2001 to a year we haven’t even gotten to yet, in a small point size despite taking up 1,120 pages, this might stay on the shelf more often than not. But the show’s many devoted fans may be thrilled to have every single thing they ever saw in one reference book.

The recipes, while rarely cutting-edge, are reliable, provide useful troubleshooting advice, and often feature interesting, well-tested tweaks, such as brining ground meat in baking soda and salt to keep it tender and juicy, or briefly cooking fried chicken in minimal oil before finishing it in the oven (but if you’re a Southerner who knows good biscuits, skip the misbegotten tweak of melted butter in the breakfast chapter). And, if you’ve been reading anything else on Cook These Books, you’ll guess how I felt about the inconsistency in measures, with some recipes using cups and table/teaspoons only, and some also including ounces for some but not all ingredients (such as chocolate hazelnut spread, offering weight by ounces for the sugar and cocoa but not the nuts).

That homemade Nutella was fine but not outstanding; go well beyond the time given in the final step of processing to get a truly glossy spread, for the best texture. The choice of bread flour instead of all-purpose was a good one in the no-knead brioche dough (tested in brioche à tête instead of full loaves). Although it’s a no-knead dough, don’t skip the folding steps for a tighter crumb.

*Sally’s Baking 101, by Sally McKenney

I ended up of two minds about this book. While the recipes were decently detailed, sometimes more so than usual, and were labeled by skill level, it didn’t really seem to deserve the “baking 101” moniker.

The opening recipe, for chocolate chip cookies, includes a tips for success section, but that isn’t standard. In many places new bakers would appreciate more tips, such as the recipe for pepper-Parmesan cookies, which calls for rolling the dough into a slice-and-bake log. As simple as these always look, the logs can be frustrating—no matter how well you think you’ve rolled a compact, perfectly round log, you can end up with center fissures and lopsided, sort-of square cookies.

But many of the standards are here—shortbread, strawberry crumb bars, cheesecake squares, brownies, sugar cookies, marble cake, apple pie with salted caramel sauce, lemon curd tart, popovers, bagels, rough puff pastry dough, cinnamon swirl quick bread, and banana Nutella muffins, stromboli, and cinnamon raisin swirl bread.

*Plant to Plate, by Gaz Oakley

From a kitchen garden in Wales, Gaz Oakley has focused in his first cookbook on commonly grown vegetables and fruit, including carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, beets, apples, and strawberries. Even if your kitchen garden is actually the local farmers market or supermarket, you’ll find recipes to take your imagination far afield from everyday produce.

A strawberry and watermelon salad tosses the fruit with a paste of onion, ginger, tahini, za’atar, miso, chili flakes, and vinegar, then bakes the fruit to concentrate the flavors before serving them over pearl couscous mixed with green tomatoes and pistachios. Homemade dried strawberries and dried lavender flavor stovetop-cooked Welsh cakes (somewhat akin to a scone).

Hummus, steamed spinach, and spice-infused milk flavor mashed potatoes topped with black beans cooked with, among other things, cumin, oregano, thyme, bay, celery salt, ancho chilies, soy sauce, miso, and dried mushrooms. Taking inspiration from massaman curry, cream of tomato soup is far from the ordinary, flavored with fennel and lemongrass as well as ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, peanut butter, nori, and coconut milk (again, among other ingredients!).

Or how about a beet and cardamom “ice cream” made from coconut milk and flavored with maple syrup? Oakley includes many recipes for fermented foods, such as tomato and nasturtium kimchi, fermented nut (think cashew “cheese”) stuffed squash flowers, and strawberry kombucha.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

Following Covid isolation, many cookbook authors seem to have had the same idea: Dinner parties! That’s coming to fruition this fall.

Eat Small Plates marries the Israeli and Ukranian backgrounds of Ben and Zikki Siman-Tov to offer up a cheerful, accessible way to host friends regularly, with a table laden with small plates to share. They provide advice on food to offer as soon as guests arrive, sample menus, and an array of dips, breads, salads, and vegetable dishes. Their short list of seafood and meat options includes many raw ones, such as tuna nectarine tartare, Arabic ceviche, and mackerel, cucumber, and arugula crudo. Many of the same ingredients pop up repeatedly, including beets, cucumbers, and eggplant, in recipes that skew light and healthy without feeling abstemious. Think amba, chopped liver, beet and goat cheese dip, beet and cherry salad, chicken shawarma salad, a salad of pears, mustard greens, mint, and challah croutons, and shrimp in grated tomato butter. Cilantro pistachio artichoke dip made a quick, lusciously smooth spread of an unexpected ingredient combination for bread or bagels (with a few modifications—I used roasted and salted pistachios to speed up the recipe, which called for roasting raw pistachios, and I subbed regular canned artichokes plus oregano and lemon zest after realizing I failed to buy marinated artichokes). Nine recipes for sweets close the collection.

*Let’s Party, by Dan Pelosi

Continuing on the dinner party theme, Dan Pelosi organizes 100-plus recipes into 16 themed dinner party menus—including Thanksgiving, breakfast for dinner, an Oscar-watching (or Olympics, or Super Bowl) party, a cookie swap, a cookout, and “Joyuary.” He walks readers through a week-ahead timetable for each menu, with advice on cleaning, decorating, and creating a guest list. The very bubbly Pelosi celebrates abundance: Each recipe is meant to serve six to eight people, and each menu has about six dishes. Fewer recipes in here feel as interesting as those in Eat Small Plates, but they make up solid menus of appealing food. The one menu that readers might either love or hate? The pumpkin carving party, with seemingly enough pumpkin and calories to get you through a full hibernation—with a cheese ball with pumpkin puree, roasted squash with crispy chickpeas and feta, pumpkin cider-braised pork shoulder, ravioli dressed in creamy pumpkin sauce, and ginger pumpkin pie, the only respite from pumpkin in this menu is the salad.

*In for Dinner, by Rosie Kellett

Using her London experience of communal cooking with six housemates, who each chip in about $30 a week for groceries and take turns cooking each night, Rosie Kellett focuses In for Dinner on affordable recipes for six to eight people. This book will especially appeal to 20-something cooks newly on their own, but in today’s economy, the recipes will find a wide audience. Chapters broken down by breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sweets offer mostly vegetarian dishes (many of which can be made vegan, and many of which are also gluten-free), plus a few with fish. They include plenty of tips on making dishes ahead, scaling recipes up or down, cooking for large groups, and keeping costs down (such as highlighting other recipes to use up leftover ingredients like an egg white). Affordable doesn’t mean boring; Kellett offers cheddar, jalapeno, and chive cornbread with maple harissa butter; savory corn French toast with cherry tomato salsa; citrus mackerel spaghetti with pangrattato (breadcrumbs); hasselback potatoes with massaged kale and a miso almond sauce and lemon salsa; brown sugar vanilla blackberry sheet cake; and masala chai shortbread. Do the recipes work? Most look reliable, but I noted issues in her sourdough recipes. A pikelet recipe clearly intends, from both the headnote and a page about sourdough, for cooks to use sourdough discard, but it calls simply for sourdough starter; sourdough pancakes had a similar issue.

*Nights and Weekends, by Alexis de Boschnek

Subtitled “recipes that make the most of your time,” Nights and Weekends aims to help readers get dinner on the table with fast, accessible, flavorful meals. Weeknight recipes lean on pantry staples and a few ready-made ingredients, using as few pans and utensils as possible and simple shortcuts to pare a few seconds or minutes off the prep, such as slicing an onion instead of dicing it. As an impatient cook, I’m always looking for speed and ease in my own kitchen, and I notice when cookbook authors fail to get from point A to B as easily as possible. This book opens with a simple recipe for crab pasta with pistachios and olives, topped with a hefty cup of chopped mint—an intriguing combination for a 15-minute supper. (De Boschnek notes that canned tuna can sub for the crab.) Other interesting options include tofu in miso butter sauce with corn and scallions, roasted broccolini and banana peppers with hazelnuts over ricotta, and halloumi fattoush. Cooks will appreciate even the ordinary recipes, such as udon noodles with peanut sauce or roasted tomato and red pepper soup, for their emphasis on ease and speed. Recipes nicely skew toward vegetarian options. The meat chapter is somewhat less interesting, but the fish chapter perks back up, opening with chile crisp salmon with a quick salad of pickled carrots, cucumber, and fennel. In the “weekends” section, simple starters include soy-blistered shishitos, fried okra, gochujang almond butter dip, and salmon ceviche with cucumber and Tajin. Brunch and dinner recipes follow; most take more time than the weeknight section but are not complex. They include French onion soup strata, crepes with mushrooms and gremolata, tofu schnitzel with braised cabbage, and slow-roasted salmon with grapefruit and crispy shallots. Desserts such as lemon bars, apple crumble, and chocolate mousse make up the least interesting chapter.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

*Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip, by B. Dylan Hollis

B. Dylan Hollis decided to map out a road trip across America using his collection of vintage community cookbooks as a guide; in this retro-themed, Betty Crocker-pink book, he follows that with the hook of baking and photographing half the recipes on location—peach cobbler in Georgia, pralines in New Orleans, Boston Cream Pie in Boston.

That starting point means the recipes here are standard regional specialties largely from the heyday of industrialized food in the 20^th century—think hefty doses of shortening, Jello-O and instant pudding, Cool Whip, canned pie filling, imitation flavorings, and lots of sugar. Many, though, stay with more simple, less processed ingredients. Lacking your own community cookbook collection, Baking Across America provides a decent look at some of the most common creations, pairing them with a few paragraphs of history about or related to each recipe.

Thus you get cranberry quick bread, shoofly pie, black & white cookies, hush puppies, hummingbird cake, Texas sheet cake, bourbon bread pudding, buckeyes, kringle, gooey butter cake, runzas, huckleberry ice cream, bizcochitos, prickly pear cheesecake, nanaimo bars, and baked Alaska.

Hollis made his name on social media, and this bubbly book fits that feel, with its strings of photos of a posing Hollis that his fans will appreciate.

*The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World, by Lisa Kyung Gross and the Women of the League of Kitchens Cooking School

In New York City, Lisa Kyung Gross founded the League of Kitchens in 2014, offering cooking classes in the homes of recent immigrants from around the world. The intimate setting of the women’s homes and introduction to a variety of cuisines proved popular, imparting cultural context and wisdom along with recipes. This lovely, hopeful book compiles their stories and very detailed recipes, including some from Persia, Argentina, Greece, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Mexico, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japan, and Nepal.

When even a simple corn and shrimp fritter recipe runs two and a half pages, cooks may feel too overwhelmed to bother. But Gross explains that the goal is to give readers the same experience as being in a class. To that end, an ingredient list will not say “1 onion, chopped” but simply call for an onion and detail how to chop it in the instructions. Notably, the recipe will also specify ounces and grams for that onion, unusual even for books that list both volume and weight. Additionally, to help cooks avoid having to flip back a page or two, the instructions repeat the amount for each ingredient.

Reading the recipes, cooks may be struck by how much all cuisines have in common. Those corn fritters are marked by the inclusion of a hot pepper and lime leaves from a specific Indonesian tree, but otherwise are typical of fritters found around the world. Lebanese green beans stewed with tomatoes and garlic bear a strong resemblance to long-cooked green beans in a typical meat-and-three plate in the southern U.S. Afghan red beans in gravy feel likewise familiar, but with the twist of a topping of sliced raw onion tossed with lemon juice, dried mint, and dried and fresh chiles. As with many of the recipes, this one also includes specific tips and techniques that the instructors insist makes a difference in the final taste, such as blanching the beans before a long, slow cook in preheated water.

Cookbook readers have come to expect a plethora of photos no matter how big or small the book, leading to a deadening sameness in so many books, and a lack of imagination for cooks to envision how they want their own version to look. But the photos here make a better argument for their inclusion, instructing and creating a warm sense of place in the women’s kitchens.

*Garlic, Olive Oil + Everything Mediterranean: Simple Recipes for the Home Cook, by Daen Lia

“Everything Mediterranean” is too big of a claim for this book. Drawing on blogger and social media influencer Daen Lia’s Spanish and Italian heritage, with chapters on garlic, olive oil, butter, bread, crumbs, and eggs, many of the recipes offer little that’s truly new—such as ricotta gnocchi with pesto or mussels with French fries. But, especially for newer cooks, it offers a reassuring tone, multiple ways to use up its building-block recipe, and tweaks to some standards that more experienced cooks will appreciate.

Lia opens with a recipe for garlic confit (garlic cloves submerged in olive oil and cooked at a low temperature for two hours) that she uses in 14 other recipes, including mixing them into a quick version of puff pastry. She uses the same technique for cherry tomatoes, olives, and salmon.

Pasta with vodka sauce tweaks the usual by calling for tomato paste instead of the more common can of tomatoes and adds a half-stick of butter at the end on top of the cup of cream for an extra-rich sauce. Slow-roasted lamb shoulder uses a paste of garlic, oregano, and anchovies for a flavor boost.

Other recipes include smashed potatoes; garlic bread; garlic confit ragu Bolognese; chicken pot pie; roasted chicken rubbed with olive oil and seasoned with fennel seeds; fennel and lemon risotto; roasted snapper with green anchovy butter; focaccia; no-knead bread; breadcrumbs tossed with parsley and rosemary; mac and cheese; Caesar salad with croutons cooked in bacon fat; and spinach, feta, and pine nut quiche.

Along with the small “also used in” notes (such as using the salmon confit as a filling for her bagel recipe), some recipes offer “serve with” suggestions to pair recipes for a more complete meal, such as her grilled peach salad and roasted snapper.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

*Our South: Black Food Through My Lens, by Ashleigh Shanti

Recent winner of a James Beard award, Asheville chef and Good Hot Fish owner Ashleigh Shanti has written a lyrical, deeply personal book that takes readers through her mix of family history, personal experience, and the Black culture of the Southern and Appalachian regions that she wants to highlight: backcountry, lowcountry, midlands, lowlands, and finally, “homeland.” Filled with vibrant photos, Our South includes basics such as cornbread and stewed tomatoes and old (or old-inspired) recipes such as fermented sour corn or salt-rising bread with butter flavored with country ham and ramps. (Sour is a recurring theme in this book, as in vinegar-cured trout with pickled Granny Smith apples.)

Though most recipes are eminently doable, Shanti doesn’t shy away from challenging ones, such as rosin-cooked potatoes with spruce tip butter. It’s hard to imagine many readers actually making that, as it requires a pine rosin cooker, 5 pounds of rosin, and fresh spruce tips, along with cooking outside because the rosin is highly flammable, with toxic fumes. But, Shanti argues, this lesser-known foodway of Black culture, while a massive undertaking, deserves recognition and creates “the most pure, potato-y potato.”

The juxtaposition of that recipe with one, two pages later, for a bologna schnitzel sandwich with sour collards, and another a page later for spaetzle with squash—part of the melting pot of Appalachian cuisine—brings home the book’s “Black food through my lens” subtitle.

So many recipes will beckon readers. Here’s just a sampling, which doesn’t really do the book’s breadth justice:

A takeoff on vinegar pie, which she traces to Depression-era make-do foods—creates a cider vinegar version of lemon bars, drizzled with sorghum molasses. A lowcountry recipe for benne seed crab toast, served with yellow mustard mixed with sorghum molasses, miso, and gochujang, seems to incorporate new and old ingredients both robustly and delicately. Crab appears again as a filling for deviled eggs, drizzled with a roasted red pepper vinaigrette flavored with lime, sorghum molasses, cilantro, chives, and peanuts. A puff pastry croustade is filled with a simple mix of crawfish, cheddar, and Muenster.

Chunks of day-old cornbread go on a platter to soak up a pour of buttermilk and a thick fennel and blueberry vinaigrette. Country sausage and rice-stuffed eggplant gets served with a tomato and peanut gravy. And sweet potato consommé, flavored with cinnamon and cloves, allows Shanti to merge her culinary training with a standard Southern ingredient.

By Heart: Recipes to Hold Near and Dear, by Hailee Catalano

By Heart is not a book that seems to fit its title; these aren’t recipes you’ll come to know “by heart.” But they hold meaning for the author, and many may come to do so for readers, too. Hailee Catalano’s culinary school and restaurant training shine through in varied recipes that lack a through-line—except for being generally interesting and accessible.

She takes cooks through chapters on everything from pickles to salads to pizza to her grandmother’s Italian-American creations, and to sourdough and a few breads plus many flavored butters. While some recipes are simple enough to memorize (an eye-catching platter of watermelon radish and persimmon slices topped with ricotta salata), many are more involved or have longer ingredient lists, such as “mozzarella sticks” of zucchini blossoms, sunchoke clam chowder, and handmade goat cheese ravioli in a mushroom broth. But readers will appreciate the layered flavors.

A recipe for hot cherry pepper jam, for example, starts with a jar of sliced, pickled hot peppers, ups the ante with chopped Fresno peppers, and spices it further with fresh ginger. A tiny note below the recipe suggests topping ricotta with the jam, olive oil, and herbs for a focaccia dip, or using it to top pizza. (Many recipes have these tiny, easily overlooked notes—not the best design choice, since they often contain useful information better suited to a headnote, or at least a more prominent point size.)

She puts a peach vinaigrette seasoned with maple syrup and urfa biber on charred, twice-cooked sweet potato slices topped with mint leaves fried in brown butter.

One especially fun recipe, and the only one I tested, is her mortadella “nduja”—a paste of mortadella and prosciutto for cooks who lack access to true nduja. Rich and spicy with Calabrian chilies, the paste flavors a creamy pasta, topped with crunchy pistachios and scented with basil.

*Sweet Potato Soul Vegan Vibes: 100 Soulful Plant-Based Recipes for Healthy Everyday Meals, by Jenné Claiborne

The idea of actually being vegan holds little appeal for me; I would sorely miss cheese, eggs, and cream even if I left all fish and meat behind. But many recipes can feel “naturally” vegan, as this shows—a good option for cooks of all stripes.

A successful vegan, blogger Jenné Claiborne writes in all caps, is “HEALTHY, VIBRANT, AND COLORFUL.” But she notes that while vegan food is more accessible than ever, it’s also more processed than ever. Claiborne addresses how to eat healthfully, get plenty of protein and fiber, and limit processed or sugary foods while still enjoying what you eat.

So her recipes include chocolate pancakes, carrot and mango muffins, and banana pudding with a miso caramel alongside usual suspects like tofu, cauliflower, and mushrooms.

Of course, non-vegans won’t have all the required ingredients hanging around their pantries: Biscuits are made with spelt flour, while lentil-based breakfast sausages include vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, potato starch, and miso. But most of what Claiborne calls for are now standard in large supermarkets.

Even for non-vegans, the recipes will feel familiar, such as snack, salad, and soup recipes like roasted Brussels sprouts with cranberries; hummus; latkes made with beets and russet and sweet potatoes; broccoli salad; and chickpea tomato soup. Main dishes include jackfruit chili, curried red bean tacos, miso corn pasta, and pea pesto pasta. Even more unusual recipes don’t branch out too far, such as kale chips coated in a paste of sunflower seeds, dates, cocoa, and cayenne.

Zoë Bakes Cookies, by Zoë François

From a reliable author (who found fame with five-minute artisan bread recipes), Zoë Bakes Cookies hits a sweet spot of detail without overload. Newbie bakers, or bakers who want to see how varying technique or ingredients makes a difference, will find detailed explanations from Zoë François in her “cookie academy” section and notes on ingredients and equipment, but recipes are clear and concise for bakers who just want to get their ovens going.

François opens with her path to baking fame, which began improbably on a Vermont commune with little access to sweets and an effort to convince kids that carob was just as good as chocolate, moving on to a cute cookie cart during her college days, her bread bestsellers and beyond.

With chapters broken down by healthy cookies, holiday cookies, Jewish favorites, “wordly” cookies, chocolate chip and brownie variations, and midwestern cookies and bars, she winds through a lot of basics.

There won’t feel like a lot new here, and in many ways there isn’t—you can find recipes for rice crispy bars, rugelach, madeleines, Russian tea cakes, biscotti, alfajores, linzer cookies, and oatmeal cookies in countless other books, not to mention online.

But bakers can learn a tip or two in many recipes: For chocolate crinkle cookies, roll the dough balls not just in powdered sugar but granulated sugar as well; replace some all-purpose flour with spelt in cutout sugar cookies; add bitters to lemon bars. For a variation on flourless three-ingredient peanut butter cookies, use egg whites instead of whole eggs (these were, like all flourless peanut butter cookies, pleasantly crumbly-chewy, but I found they missed the bit of lift and lightness that baking soda often adds).

In some spots, the attention to detail falters a bit. For example, does she really mean fresh lavender buds for shortbread—and if so, why isn’t there an option to use dried? And while many doughs are rolled into logs for slicing, she gives no tips for success, surprising given that these are often harder to get picture-perfect than bakers expect.

Pro tip: Make her carrot cake whoopie pie cookies for the filling alone. I didn’t test it, but I didn’t need to—the combination of cream cheese, honey, and vanilla has been my go-to carrot cake frosting for decades, and while it’s trickier to work with minus the stiffening of gobs of powdered sugar, it’s light-years ahead in taste and texture.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

In Dinner, food writer and columnist for The Guardian Meera Sodha describes how several years ago, she lost her love for food while going through a depression (apparently—she doesn’t label it as such). She found her way back to enjoying food by deciding she would cook for pleasure, not work, and was drawn to dinner prep more than other meals. This book documents the recipes she most enjoyed making during that period.

Sodha organizes chapters by main ingredient (eggplant, broccoli, greens, eggs/cheese, fungi, onions, roots, squash, tomatoes), but includes listings up front of recipes by season and other categories as well, such as curries, rice, and salads.

Recipes have heavy Indian, Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, and Korean influences, and many suggest a simultaneously light and luscious product, such as an eggplant salad with wild rice sparked by a dressing of cilantro, garlic, chilies, sugar, soy, citrus, and basil and mint. They pleasingly layer flavors, as in eggplant baked with chickpeas and spiced with Urfa biber and topped with tahini-spiked yogurt, mint, and pepper. (Chilies of some sort show up consistently.)

I appreciated how even a simple pasta dish still gets in plenty of healthful ingredients; I’ve noticed lately how often the New York Times seems to push main-dish recipes that sound tasty but lack much nutritionally—think with a gochujang or miso sauce, but no vegetables or protein. Sodha’s version of miso pasta purées nearly a pound of kale into the sauce. (Granted, she also includes a vodka gochujang pasta that will be more filling and satisfying than nutrition-packed.) And she puts interesting combinations together—eggy thin pancakes with a filling that combines kimchi and Gruyere might not be obvious to many cooks. Or how about shiitake rice with chipotle chili flakes and pecans, with pickled ginger on the side? Sodha’s recipes are often half a world away from what I usually cook, but just reading them makes my mouth water.

*Family Style: Elegant Everyday Recipes Inspired by Home and Heritage, by Peter Som

Fashion designer and recipe creator Peter Som’s book, celebrating the influences of his mother and grandmother on his cooking, takes traditional recipes from multiple cuisines and tweaks them with some sort of Asian influence: Fish sauce and chile crisp show up in many (maybe the majority) of his recipes.

For example, his deviled eggs start with tea eggs—marinated in a mix of soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and black tea­—that get topped with a crisp herbed panko mixture, nori, bonito flakes, and dill and cilantro. Shakshuka incorporates soy sauce, fish sauce, and rice wine into the tomato base, then replaces the usual unadorned eggs with egg in a hole. Cinnamon toast includes miso and five-spice powder in the cinnamon topping; radishes get dipped in butter flavored with oyster sauce and black sesame seeds. His hummus stretches the concept til the band nearly snaps, blending roasted carrots, gochujang, miso, sesame oil, and five-spice powder with chickpeas and tahini. Likewise his Caesar salad—roasted cabbage with a dressing that includes yogurt, tahini, lemon, Kewpie mayonnaise, hoisin sauce, and anchovy paste, all topped with toasted panko, sesame seeds, lemon zest, dill, and chives.

*Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking, by Richard Hart and Laurie Wollever

Acclaimed baker Richard Hart, whose business partner in his Copenhagen bakery is Rene Redzepi of Noma, promises to help readers “see, smell, touch, and taste your way to great bread.” There’s science here, but Hart is less interested in geeking out over it than in trusting his well-trained bread-baking intuition. So while the book will appeal to advanced bakers—such as those used to thinking in baker’s percentages, which Hart lists for each recipe as well as ingredient weights—it won’t discourage ambitious amateurs.

Written explanations are clear and direct, but when that just can’t suffice, Hart includes QR codes for clarifying videos. Watching how he simply folds an upside-down ball of dough in half before putting it into a banneton—no elaborate shaping here—provided a useful technique to use with many loaves.

Recipe complexity runs the gamut, but all tempted me, including rye wrapped in fig leaves, rice bread, polenta bread, rosemary and lemon bread, pita, and focaccia (with the interesting trick of blitzing olive oil and water in a blender to emulsify them, then quickly pouring that over the risen focaccia instead of oil alone before dimpling the dough) as well as brioche, cardamom-scented milk buns, and a fascinating, many-page panettone recipe.

*Symon’s Dinners Cooking Out: 100 Recipes That Redefine Outdoor Cooking, by Michael Symon

Taken on its own (without watching Michael Symon’s Food Network show of the same name), this book would confuse a reader. Why would someone want to use a charcoal fire to cook pasta from start to finish, or a casserole, or cookies, or panna cotta, or to deep-fry clams? And would the recipes in here be all that unusual or interesting cooked indoors?

To the first question, I have no idea; to the second, sadly, not that much. I can come up with good arguments for a lot of grilling—it’s too hot outside to heat up the kitchen, or you’re on an extended car camping trip (these are not recipes for backpackers), or you want a hint of smoke in every course, including dessert. But otherwise, the appeal of cooking, say, spaetzle in boiling water on a grill—especially one lacking the temperature control of gas, which is definitely not given as an option in this book—escapes me. And I doubt my grandmother, were she still alive, would long to return to the days when she had to fry her doughnuts over a wood-fired stove.

So, clearly, I am not the audience for this book. But even setting aside the wish to cook with firmer temperature control, space, and speed indoors, the fact remains that many of these recipes seem fine, but nothing special.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase on any of the titles above.

Pretty Delicious: Simple, Modern Mediterranean Served with Style, by Alia Elkaffas and Radwa Elkaffas

Given that I’m not generally not drawn to social media influencers, I am not the target audience for this book from the Food Dolls, though I was intrigued by a book that pulls heavily from their Egyptian heritage and Minnesota upbringing. And some things in here strike me as silly, like the dessert bar cart that would apparently require dressed-up guests to bend over to floor level to scoop out some trifle. But many recipes seem solid, if not particularly unusual (tomatoes and whipped feta, baked oatmeal, roasted cauliflower or olives)—with more interesting recipes sprinkled throughout, such as falafel based on dried fava beans or quinoa tabbouleh with a lime vinaigrette.

I love the combination of watermelon, feta, and mint (usually with lime juice and a drizzle of olive oil); here, the feta is pureed with sour cream, heavy cream, and sumac. Sumac-dusted salmon cubes served over a tomato-cucumber salad and topped with mashed avocado should make a pretty and easy summer dish. Baked halloumi is described as pan-fried in the headnote, the sort of error that makes me nervous about overall accuracy. We enjoyed the one recipe tested, the upside-down banana bread (with a butter-sugar-walnut topping in the base of a loaf pan); take the note about baking it on a sheet seriously, as the topping does bubble up around the edge.

*Sweet Farm! More Than 100 Cookies, Cakes, Salads (!), and Other Delights from My Kitchen on a Sugar Beet Farm, by Molly Yeh

Given where author Molly Yeh lives, you get what you’d expect here: sweet recipes. Cakes take the spotlight, and if you don’t like American-style powdered-sugar frosting, you’re better off checking this book out of the library than buying it. (I’ve never understood the appeal of it—gritty, too one-dimensional, way too sweet—but I would happily eat my Swiss meringue buttercream by the spatula-ful.) Cookies likewise get sandwiched together with powdered-sugar frosting, or thickly topped with powdered sugar glaze.

Still, Yeh’s exuberance about classic, un-fancy cakes shines through, and even tempts me to make homemade sprinkles for someone I love who loves them. She makes a good argument for combining coconut oil and butter to keep things moist, and she writes reliable recipes that list all ingredients by both weight and cups. The book includes cookies; bars, cakes; some miscellaneous frozen things and drinks; Midwestern sweet salads that include a bit of fruit to qualify as salad but also whipped cream or Cool Whip, candy bars, Jello-O, and pudding; and a few things that she calls pies but mostly are not.

Justine Cooks: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen, by Justine Doiron

Let’s hit all the trends! That’s how I felt after paging through this book, which offers them up like a hit parade: Earl Grey granola! Green tea coffeecake! Miso in soup, but also pancakes! Jammy eggs! Preserved lemons! Cashew cream! Dukkah! Kimchi! Turmeric! Harissa! Sumac! Toast! Heirloom tomatoes! Shishito peppers! “Melty” eggplant! ACV Brussels sprouts! (Apple cider vinegar, if you’re not quite fully trending yet.) Salted cookies! More turmeric!

In fairness, the recipes often look tasty. I tested only one, Tiny Salted Tiramisu Cookies, which were neither tiny nor particularly tiramisu-ish, quite flat, and a bit greasy, though flavorful. But the book lacks any real sense of place—a sense that these are grounded in something beyond hitting on the trends. Without much of a unifying theme beyond recipes aimed at vegetarians and pescatarians, it wasn’t one I could imagine pulling off the shelf again.

Fat+ Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake, by Nicole Rucker

From the owner of the Fat + Flour Bakery in Los Angeles, this book at first glance seems not to offer much new. A whole chapter on banana bread? Pudding and cream pies that all start with instant pudding mix? Not very inspiring. But a closer look turns up Nicole Rucker’s vision for her recipes—to cut out anything unnecessary, from recipe ingredients to tools to steps.

She focuses on the reverse-creaming method, which she calls the cold butter method, in which dry ingredients are mixed together first, the butter is cut in, and then remaining add-ins and wet ingredients get briefly incorporated. As she notes, it saves time and helps newbie bakers avoid the question of how much creaming of butter and sugar is needed to get the correct fluffy result. The method comes into play in drop cookies, bars, bundt cakes, and dough for fruit and custard pies. Some of these recipes still sidle up to the trendy line (Earl Grey headlines two recipes, and dried fig leaves go in a shortbread, but miso gets a breather here)— most, though, are renditions of basics bakers love to come back to, and eaters love to get.

I won’t be trying those cream pies, since I don’t love the fake flavor of instant pudding. But that fig leaf-vanilla shortbread? Delicious, with the dried fig leaves offering a hint of coconut and a sparkling green top. I write that, though, with a bit of hesitation, because that’s the only recipe I tried, and it had one outright error. It calls for greasing the pan with oil before lining it with parchment, then sprinkling fig leaf sugar into the “prepared pan, and rotate the pan to coat the greased paper with sugar.” Unless you’re getting the sugar on the underside of the parchment, that’s an impossible trick. Also, it calls for two teaspoons/10 grams of ground, toasted fig leaves. My 2 teaspoons weighed nowhere near 10 grams, so it was unclear which measurement to go with, though the flavor of my 5 grams certainly came through.

*Salty Cheesy Herby Crispy Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy Savory Recipes for 24/7 Deliciousness, by Jessie Sheehan

You’ll either find this book adorable or, if you’re allergic to cutesy, nearly unreadable. I’m admittedly in the latter camp (the repetition of “easy-peasy” and the like got grating fast), and too many of the recipes verge on over-the-top richness, but many sound just right for times when you have a craving or want something fun and flippant when friends are over. It opens with savory muffins that seem more heavy than appealing, moving into better-sounding biscuits and scones—think cream biscuits spiked with salt and pepper and sage-heavy scones that I could imagine at brunch with caramelized apples alongside. Other chapters include savory quick breads, yeast breads, cookies (such as gorgonzola thumbprint cookies filled with fig jam to go on a cheese board), crackers, a catch-all listing of snacks, and puff pastry treats such as a puff pastry Danish filled with salt-and-peppered goat cheese topped with sour cherry jam and rosemary. Hand pies, main-course pies, galettes, quiches, and tarts often use her recipe for pie dough made easy with melted butter.

*Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Things from a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey, by Nina Compton with Osayi Endolyn

Tracing author Nina Compton’s path from childhood in St. Lucia through cooking in Jamaica, Miami, and New Orleans, this lovely book offers vibrant photos and illustrations to accompany a mix of easy and challenging recipes. A “Top Chef” runner-up and now the owner of Compère Lapin restaurant in New Orleans, Compton writes essays introducing each place-based chapter that bring the food to life.

The book highlights expected ingredients—jerk seasoning, adobo pork, plantains, cornmeal, cassava, ackee—in traditional recipes that often include Compton’s tweaks: soursop mousse, cassava dumplings, breadfruit balls, banana and brown butter tea sandwiches, curried goat served with sweet potato gnocchi, callaloo, corn and pumpkin soup, ham and cheese croquetas, arepas, coconut tres leches cake, guava-glazed ribs, boudin balls, shrimp ragu and creamy grits, fried okra with pickled green bean roulade, and crepes with plantain pureed in the batter. Kwéyòl gives off a rooted, knowledgeable vibe that will make diving into these recipes both calming and exciting.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers; one small way to support Cook These Books is by clicking through and making a purchase on any of the titles above, for which I will earn a commission. Thank you!

*Italian American Forever: Classic recipes for everything you want to eat, by Alex Guarnaschelli.

This book is warmly written and photographed…and mostly unnecessary. With an emphasis on classic recipes, it just doesn’t provide much new; this is ground well-trodden by Marcella Hazan and Lidia Bastianich, to name just two. A Food Network star and executive chef of Butter restaurant in Manhattan, Alex Guarnaschelli’s exuberance about her food comes through, and cooks who’ve never cooked the classics could find appealing recipes here. But many readers might wish for a few more twists to liven things up. Instead, these are quite standard recipes for crostini, arancini, Caesar salad, meatballs, Italian wedding soup, baked ziti, chicken marsala, chicken parm, roasted broccoli … and did we really need to kill a tree for another recipe for Caprese salad? Most ingredients are listed by volume only, not weight, which I couldn’t help but find irritating from someone whose mother was a famous, and famously exacting, cookbook editor.

*Does This Taste Funny? Recipes Our Family Loves, by Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert

Legitimate reactions to this book: Save me from another celebrity cookbook, full of too-polished photos of fabulously happy wealthy people in their fabulous homes in fabulously casual expensive clothes hosting fabulous parties; save me from another book of Charleston recipes that I’ve seen for decades; gee, I forgot about that classic recipe—I need to go make that!; Durkees and cream cheese in pimento cheese are an abomination that must be stopped.

I cycled through all of those reading the Colberts’ book (well, I got stuck on the pimento cheese, no cycling past that reaction). But the book’s conversational chatter can engage readers, and the recipes did catapult me back to happy memories of my mother discovering those ‘70s Southern Junior League cookbooks. I didn’t yet test any recipes, but why bother—I “tested” their baked artichoke dip on at least a dozen New Year’s Eves growing up. I’ve “tested” their deviled eggs countless times, though minus the onions. Ditto for the crab cakes, soft-shell crabs, tomato pie, and bourbon chocolate pecan pie (though come on, this recipe will in no way produce the pictured pie, with its rings of perfectly placed pecan halves—let’s have some truth in advertising). In the midst of a dismal and difficult January, the book brought in some rays of sunshine.

Very Good Bread: The Science of Dough and the Art of Making Bread at Home, by Melissa Weller

Reading through my cookbook tower lately keeps prompting the same question: Do we really need another cookbook of classic recipes? What’s new here? In Very Good Bread, talented baker Melissa Weller has produced a lovely book, with each chapter opening with some sort of “master class.” That’s useful in the first recipe chapter covering 12 breadmaking steps, less so when stretching the concept to a chapter on bagel platters and sandwiches—do you really need a master class telling you to put a variety of bagels on a platter with some cured fish, boiled eggs, cream cheese, and vegetables? Probably not.

But while you can find recipes for many of these breads elsewhere, Weller has laid out techniques and tips worthy of the bread-obsessed, as well as recipes that go with some of the breads.

Tempting recipes include salt and pepper bagels, m’smen (Moroccan laminated flatbread), brioche feuilleté, buckwheat baguettes, and spelt ciabatta. I didn’t love the heavy yellow grits porridge Pullman loaf, but it’s one I would consider testing again. Recipes typically run at least three pages. A useful addition to the headnotes would have been an indication of how long recipes would take, versus requiring readers to go through multiple pages of instructions to add it up—no matter what, read through these very detailed recipes before beginning!

*Sweet Tooth: 100 Desserts to Save Room For, by Sarah Fennel

Sarah Fennel, who created the Broma Bakery blog, has published a cozy book of recipes that slant toward the standard but include a few less-common creations, such as a nine-layer buttermilk cake with Nutella frosting, a pistachio layer cake, espresso martini cake, baklava cheesecake, and crème brulee cheesecake bars. She offers multiple, more standard variations on brownies and blondies, other bar cookies, chocolate cakes, a few muffins, pies, and breads, several “dessert for one” recipes, and a lot of cookies.

It would be hard to live up to the self-hyping going on here—“stunning”! “modern-day baking bible”! “jaw-dropping pics”! “hilarious!” “genius!” But this seems like a solid collection. And yet my usual complaint applies here, too: Fennel opens with 40-some pages of guidance on baking equipment, ingredients, and rules to bake by before she gets to any recipes. Annoyingly, she includes two pages on “measure like a scientist,” with a full-page chart showing teaspoons/cups to grams for 12 common ingredients…and then completely skips listing ingredients by weight in the recipes.

*Soups, Salads, Sandwiches, by Matty Matheson

This book from “The Bear” actor Matty Matheson has the feel of a love it or hate it cookbook. Matheson says his goal was “just at-home recipes that are easy and fun”; recipes run the gamut from “lightest broth of garden herbs with one chile” to over-the-top rich—think pumpernickel, beer, and cheese curd soup, or caramelized maple parsnip soup with sunchoke chips and ricotta that clocks in with a cup of maple syrup, a cup of brandy, a cup of cream, and a cup of ricotta to serve four. Or corn maple parmesan soup, with 2 cups of wine, 2 cups of cream, a cup of Parmesan, and an ounce of bourbon for good measure—plus more parm, sour cream, and mayonnaise for a topping.

In general, recipes are heavy on meat, but even when not they pack a lot of flavors and richness in, such as a recipe for roasted and raw shaved Brussels sprouts with bacon, mint, lime, pistachios, fish sauce, and pickled pepper caramel (not a typo—you fold pureed bell, jalapeno, scotch bonnet, Thai, and serrano peppers mixed with fish sauce and vinegar into a simple caramel). Too often they just pack a lot in, period—like the waffle breakfast sandwich, with waffles surrounding a mascarpone filling of 1 and a half cups cream, 3 cups sugar, and a cup of mascarpone, plus bacon and fried eggs…and oh, did I mention these are frozen waffles that you fry in 2 cups of oil? And then slather them with strawberry freezer jam as well.

It goes on in that vein. I’m not cherry-picking over-the-top recipes—you can find something similar with a few random page flips throughout. Though most recipes fit on a page, the point size is pretty restrained—so don’t let that fool you into thinking they are all quick despite his “easy” goal. Also, there’s a whole lotta cussing going on in this book—fine, but I got tired of thinking about shit while reading about food. (I had to laugh when he starts the intro to his lasagna submarine sandwich with “I don’t want to be crude, but…”.) To that, though, I’m pretty sure Matheson would tell me to f off.

Not Too Sweet: 100 Dessert Recipes for Those Who Want More with Just a Little Less, by Jessica Seinfeld with Sara Quessenberry

I’m always on the lookout for baking books that aim to lower the sugar or use alternative flours not with the goal of going gluten-free, but for a wider range of flavor and, potentially, lower glycemic loads. So the cover of Jessica Seinfeld’s book caught my eye with beautiful photos of lower-sugar desserts. But it made no mention of nearly all recipes being gluten-free, and unfortunately, that didn’t generally mean using alternative flours that offer some health benefits, such as buckwheat flour; it just meant using a standard, nutritionally wan gluten-free flour blend. Still, for bakers who need GF recipes, this book may be a godsend, and some of its sugar-lowering tricks can be useful. Yet I didn’t come away from a few recipe tests wanting to try more.

Seinfeld follows in the footsteps of others who have tried to lower refined sugar through replacements such as pureed dates, date or maple syrup, or coconut sugar. I tried a baked custard sweetened with a dried apricot puree. The flavor was fine though muted, but the texture hinted at something curdled, given that it’s near-impossible to get the puree as smooth as the rest of the custard. A recipe for caramel made from cooking down oat milk and honey, which Seinfeld describes as a “breakthrough moment,” works well enough only if you don’t think of it as caramel, since the flavor is decidedly different and too honey-heavy.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers; one small way to support Cook These Books is by clicking through and making a purchase on any of the titles above, for which I will earn a commission. Thank you!

Lots of reviews and short takes on cookbooks to come this month, but here are a few of the books in the about-to-topple-over stack on my coffee table.

*Easy Weeknight Dinners: 100 fast, flavor-packed meals for busy people who still want something good to eat, by Emily Weinstein

This is a compilation of New York Times recipes, so Times subscribers may find little use for it—or they may appreciate having these popular recipes compiled in one spot. Cooks can quickly find something that works with their needs and pantry through chapters broken down by type of meat or grain, and vegetables and eggs and cheese, plus three pages listing recipes by categories such as “hand-held dinners,” “good for freezing,” “truly 15-minute recipes,” “dinner party vibes, but on a Tuesday,” and “five-star recipes with 5,000+ comments.” I was curious about whether the recipes were tweaked in testing them for the book, but spot-checking 10 recipes online turned up nearly no changes—even the headnotes are nearly word for word, and recipes come with errors intact (both online and in the book, the sheet-pan shrimp recipe’s last sentence is “Served topped with chopped tomatoes and crumbled feta” instead of “Serve”). About the biggest adjustments I found were along the lines of saying “ground black pepper” online while the book omitted “ground.” (Maybe the changes happened in reverse with testing for the book leading to online tweaks; some of the online recipes I checked said “updated on” with dates within the last year, if not the last month.) Sadly, one tweak not made was to list ingredients by weight as well as volume—so from the first recipe, for mayo-marinated chicken with chimichurri by the reliable J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, you’re stuck with your measuring cups—scooping mayo into a cup, then scraping it out again, instead of just dumping some into a bowl on a scale and adding in whatever a fourth-cup of chimichurri weighs. This is a greatest-hits-of-the-2020-somethings book of easy supper recipes full of flavor. But it missed an opportunity to offer enhancements—more info about a recipe, top tips and tricks to improve or riff on a recipe, other ways to use recipe components, such as more uses for a Yum-Yum Sauce; instead, it offers nothing beyond what you can find on the Times cooking site. So skip the book and put the money toward a newspaper subscription—newspapers need your support, both financial and to show strong subscriber numbers to keep advertisers happy.

*The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking with All Kinds of Beans, from the Rancho Gordo Kitchen, by Steve Sando with Julia Newberry

As you might expect from the founder of a bean company, this book is a big advertisement for Steve Sando’s Rancho Gordo heirloom beans. His famous beans, championed by famous chefs who went truly gaga over his humble—but not so humbly priced—product, would surely make his recipes the best they can be. But while each recipe calls for a specific bean his company sells (online and in specialty shops), he also calls for its more generic equivalent of black bean, white bean, garbanzo, and so on. The recipes skew short and simple, seemingly to let the beans shine; many could be made from even a scantily stocked pantry (save for the pineapple and banana vinegars that pop up repeatedly). Chapters cover appetizers, salads, soups, stews, beans with grains, baked beans, and more.

*America’s Test Kitchen 25^th Anniversary Cookbook: 500 Recipes That Changed the Way America Cooks, by America’s Test Kitchen.

This 5½-pound, 711-page tome makes a bold claim—really, 500 recipes that changed the way all of America cooks? They forgot the humble part of humble bragging…but ATK, as its fans know it, and the related Cook’s Illustrated (for which I freelanced many years ago, pre-test kitchen) have helped cooks understand why a recipe works or doesn’t, and rounds of testing help ensure success. Some readers may quibble with spice levels or other markers of authenticity, arguing that the recipes seem aimed at an inoffensive middle range. But the book provides a solid start for a variety of classic recipes from multiple cuisines. My quibble: Recipes generally serve four to six people, and often more, but as household sizes shrink, that means many cooks will have leftovers. But almost no recipes provide any guidance for freezing or storing leftovers.

*The Christmas Baking Cookbook, by…no one?

This book stood out in my coffee table tower as a pretty, reasonably sized, nicely photographed book of Christmastime recipes. Don’t be fooled. There’s no author name attached to the book, and I started to wonder, thumbing through, if some hallucinating AI had been involved. Within any one ingredient list, you can find it calling for every possible measurement: pumpkin buns call for 1 cup butter in the filling but 4 ounces melted butter in the dough; the alfajores recipe calls for 8.9 ounces butter, 5.4 ounces sugar, 10.7 ounces cornstarch, and 7.1 ounces flour, but 1 cup of coconut. Rugelach calls for 8 ounces of butter but 1 cup sugar. And a tarte tatin calls only for cup measurements throughout. I’m all for listing ingredients by weight as well as cups, but this is ridiculous. And without any headnotes, recipes and some photos lack necessary context and explanation. Do you know what a goro iron is? For all I thought I knew about Scandinavian recipes, this one was new to me—and maybe new to our AI author as well, because the photo shows round waffle cookies. Goro irons, while they may have different patterns, seem to generally produce rectangular cookies with a scroll or leaf design. Maybe the AI photographer used a pizzelle iron? But where did the AI photographer come up with the brownish, egg-shaped mounds of an unidentified substance atop the cookies? My best guess is cocoa whipped cream, but the ingredient list suggests no garnish, and the recipe doesn’t suggest any uses for goro cookies as a base for egg-shaped brown mounds. For all I know, the recipes would all turn out fabulously. But I didn’t try any, and I never will; such sloppy editing doesn’t deserve any more time than it took me to write this, and the publisher—Cider Mill Press—certainly doesn’t deserve your money.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers; one small way to support Cook These Books is by clicking through and making a purchase on any of the titles above, for which I will earn a commission. Thank you!

Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals, by Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George

If you’re looking for surprising or unique recipes, don’t turn to Dolly Parton. This book—with her sister as co-author—offers just what you might expect: oldie-but-goodie recipes that mostly feel a half-century old (at least). Readers of Southern newspaper food sections or Southern Living magazine will find old friends here—think angel biscuits, black-eyed peas, cornbread sticks, fried green tomatoes with ranch dressing, banana pudding, and fried catfish. (I made the angel biscuits, something I’ve not thought of in years but loved baking for my family as a teenager. They use both yeast and baking powder/baking soda for leavening to create an angelically light biscuit; I subbed in fresh lard for shortening and whole-wheat pastry flour for half of the all-purpose—and they were as delicious as I recall.) Organized by one menu per month, and interspersed with many photos of the authors (and one guy grilling), the book will feel like a warm hug to Dolly fans.

The Kitchen Shortcut Bible: More than 200 Recipes to Make Real Food Real Fast, by Bruce Weinsten and Mark Scarbrough

This book came out in 2018; I picked it up recently to see how helpful it would be to new cooks, knowing that the authors have a history of successful books. The answer? Definitely worth giving to the newbies in your life. As Weinstein and Scarbrough note, this is a book of recipes, not hacks, aimed not just at quicker cooking but “better without more effort.” For example, zucchini bread pancakes call for blending a chopped-up zucchini with wet and dry ingredients (including a little cinnamon but no sweetener), and pouring the batter in circles onto preheated, oiled sheet pans, to cook an entire batch at once and avoid the usual squeezing of shredded zucchini to remove excess moisture. With a little extra oil added, and whole-wheat pastry flour subbed for all-purpose to boost the nutrition, I used the batter for waffles that turned out well (though they did soften quite quickly). Organized mostly by meal type (such as breakfast, pasta, make-ahead, sides, desserts), the recipes aren’t generally fancy or full of exotic spices, but for everyday cooking, they seem to deliver what they promise: “time saved, convenience added, and flavor enhanced.” (Except for saving you time looking for a recipe in the index. Zucchini bread pancakes will be under zucchini, or pancakes, or ideally both, right? No such luck. The table of contents does seem to list all recipes, at least.)

*Mushroom Gastronomy: The Art of Cooking with Mushrooms, by Krista Towns

With 23 chapters each covering a specific type of mushroom, this book provides a great start for cooks looking to eat more, and more varied, mushrooms. Chapters begin with a one-page overview of the type—such as beech, chanterelle, hedgehog, lion’s mane, oyster, pioppino, and reishi, brief descriptions of how to choose and store the mushroom, suitable cooking methods, culinary uses, and an extensive list of ingredient and flavor pairings, including herbs and spices, noodles, vegetables, meat, and more. But the recipes that follow don’t include—likely to readers’ frustration—suggestions for substituting other types of mushrooms. Most are vegetarian or have a vegetarian option, and usually stick to a page or less, but annoyingly do not include weights for most ingredients, which should be expected in a more sophisticated book as this one aims to be. Several recipes call for smoking the mushrooms briefly on the stove; I’m looking forward to testing the applewood-smoked portobello croque monsieur” cordyceps kakiage, wild mushroom conserva with whipped goat cheese, and portobello mushroom vinaigrette—a simple blend of roasted portobello, balsamic, Dijon mustard, and olive oil, inspired by Charlie Trotter and suggested for a spinach salad with blue or goat cheese. Most intriguing of all—though likely not something most of us will get to try—are the sweet recipes for candy cap mushrooms.

*Food Gifts: 150+ Irresistible Recipes for Crafting Personalized Presents, by Elle Simone Scott

When a book claims it provides 150 “irresistible” recipes on its cover, and does that grating thing of incessantly using “gift” as a verb** (what the cuss-word is wrong with “give”?!), my inclinations against it start early. This book, from America’s Test Kitchen, offers luscious photos and ideas for creating and packaging gifts, and some of the recipes are interesting, though hardly irresistible. But more than you might expect are for items that have to be consumed within a day or two, so they’re unsuitable for big gift-giving (sorry, “gifting”) occasions like Christmas or for mailing, and most are very common recipes. Do you really need to be told to give pasta salad, chili, enchiladas, or lasagna for a meal train delivery? (And if you do, your recipients may inwardly groan when you show up with their fifth lasagna in a week.) Do you really need another chocolate chip cookie recipe for a cookie basket? This is a book I might check out of the library, noting that the first two chapters provide some useful ideas for making a cute gift basket that doesn’t spoil instantly—such as a star anise-orange cold brew concentrate, or some homemade tea or spice blends, chili crisp, or vermouth or coffee liqueur. But I wouldn’t spend money on it.

**Merriam-Webster may defend this, but it makes my ears hurt, mainly from the incessantness of its usage today.

Coming soon: A full review of What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, by Caroline Chambers. Will this solve your not-in-the-kitchen-mood problems? Possibly not.

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers; one small way to support Cook These Books is by clicking through and making a purchase on any of the titles above, for which I will earn a commission. Thank you!

When I began cooking by my mother’s side, recipe ingredients came in one measurement style: teaspoons/tablespoons/cups—that is, by volume. I needed to know whether to use the measuring cup meant for wet or dry ingredients, but that was it. (Oh, except that I did need to know, for one special recipe, how my mother had converted my grandmother’s stollen recipe, in which a cup referred to a mug from my pastor grandfather’s church kitchen.)

When I started writing recipes, I followed that formula, but always a bit uneasily, because it left too many variables in play. How to explain just how firmly to pack that cup of brown sugar, or how much to fluff up the flour before scooping it out—and did you scoop directly with the measuring cup, or spoon up the flour gently into the cup? And augh, how much sticky honey will the average cook leave behind in the cup?

Around the time I started getting recipes published in magazine and newspaper articles, I bought my first small scale—but it wasn’t life-changing. It was a well-rated model at the time, and more accurate than the flour scoop method, but hardly precise.

Then I got a digital scale, and things began to improve. Not hugely, at first, because so few American recipes gave measurements by weight—but I laminated a list of standard ingredients based on King Arthur Flour’s chart, and began to memorize the swap. Still, even then, I was memorizing ounces, not grams: If recipes gave weights at all, they were often listed first, at least, this way, and I could more easily envision 4 ounces of flour than however many grams that might be.

Today, I measure nearly everything in grams—though I have yet to memorize the conversions for most of my standard ingredients; somehow, when numbers quickly get into the hundreds, that’s harder than ounces to keep straight. Four and a quarter ounces of flour equals a cup of flour which equals…how many hundred grams of flour? Somehow, 120 just doesn’t roll off my tongue.

But even without memorization, measuring nearly all ingredients by weight dramatically simplifies the baking/cooking process. When I can stick a bowl on the scale, tare it out (take the weight to zero), and begin to dump directly into it butter, sugar, flour, milk, and a squirt of honey, and then, using my teaspoons, add some yeast and salt, a loaf of bread becomes a one-bowl affair, with nothing more to clean up than the bowl, teaspoon, and a spatula.

And while baking still has plenty of variables—the reliability of my oven thermometer, how warm and humid the room is, room-temperature versus fridge-frozen butter—the scale removes one of the most frustrating variables for recipe writer and user alike.

So why aren’t all recipe writers using one?

I have no answer, other than to hazard a guess that it might be habit, laziness, or a fear that scale-less readers will complain. (But of course, they will also complain vociferously if a recipe fails for them, though it may be because their “dip-and-sweep” cup of flour came closer to 150 grams than 120—that is, a fourth of a cup more than called for. What recipe writers want their creations to crash over something so simple?)

But fine, for whatever reason, continue to give measurements in cups—but flip the usual and list them in grams first, with cups in parentheses. Owning one digital scale is no longer a luxury: At $25 for one such as this by Escali, or this pricier Oxo model with a pull-out screen, cooks can buy fewer dry and liquid measuring cups, reduce their storage needs, and increase the odds of success. I write this during a presidential campaign in which grocery cost complaints bedevil candidates. Wouldn’t it be nice to set cooks up to avoid failure and food waste? I’m looking at you, New York Times—having made another recipe you published just two days ago, with nary a weight to be found, and you, Washington Post, having looked at another just-published recipe that calls for 1/2 cup each of panko and parsley, in an ingredient list that did, at least, tell me my small onion should weigh 6 ounces.

I understand that American cooks may be better able to judge by feel which onion is about 6 ounces versus 170 grams, so I’m not complaining about that measurement. But at least for baking, everything that can be in grams, should be. That also means, for simplicity, no mixing of measurements. Don’t be like one recent book that listed ingredients variously by grams, ounces, and, for liquid ingredients, milliliters—that last being especially annoying when grams would have been easier and more precise, given that mL markings on my liquid cups come only in fairly large increments.

I readily admit I can be too easily vexed by life’s small annoyances, but when you cook every day, is this that small? Petty or not, my quiet, possibly tiresome crusade will continue with each book review.

The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America, by Sara B. Franklin

The Editor well deserves its near-unanimous praise. It moves at a steady clip through the quietly barrier-breaking life of Judith Jones, renowned for carving out a niche for serious cookbook authors who made up an incredible roster for one editor: Julia Child, James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Edna Lewis, Madhur Jaffrey, Claudia Roden, Lidia Bastianich, and Marcella Hazan—not to mention getting Anne Frank’s diary published, and editing Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Bowen, and John Updike, among others. Biographies are my next-favorite genre after cookbooks, and I would rank this among one of my favorites.

*The Salad Lab: Whisk, Toss, Enjoy! Recipes for Making Fabulous Salads Every Day, by Darlene Schrijver

The Salad Lab got its start when Darlene Schrijver began posting recipes in 2020 on TikTok, with the shtick of using beakers for measurement. It’s a cutesy made-for-video trick that mercifully isn’t pushed in the book’s recipes, which list ingredients first by volume and then by milliliters—unfortunately, almost never by weight. (Though, of course, you can buy those beakers on her website, along with $200 wooden bowls.) Salad recipes list ingredients in three columns: “start out,” “whisk,” and “toss,” with instructions underneath to match the column headers. Money was definitely spent on photography here, and the promise of creating vibrant salads to match the photos can mask that these are pretty basic recipes. But most salads are, of course, a simple matter of chop, whisk, and toss some complementary ingredients. To see examples of Schrijver’s recipe, go to thesaladlab.net/recipes.

*Come Hungry: Salads, Meals, and Sweets for People Who Live to Eat, by Melissa Ben-Ishay

This is a book with the obligatory photos of its natural fabrics-wearing author (and cupcake company CEO) lovingly gazing at farmers market vegetables, preceded by a food porn shot of a pita sandwich with dressing dripping down the eater’s fingers and followed by photos of her two children in the kitchen and dancing with their father. (Which seems to fit with how she portrays her overall lifestyle.) Posting an initial green goddess salad on—you guessed it—TikTok led to this book. It opens with extremely basic recipes—rarely more than 10 ingredients including salt and pepper. Did you really need another recipe for avocado toast? Me neither. (Really, did you ever need just one?) It does gain in interest as it goes along, with more complex, usually meatless salads, plus a chapter of breads and another of desserts. The desserts offer an interesting mix of creations based on Oreos and other processed foods with recipes featuring alternative flours and sweetened with dates. For all the posturing, these recipes do look more interesting than those in The Salad Lab.

*Good Vibes Baking: Bakes to Make Your Soul Shine and Your Taste Buds Sing, by Sandro Farmhouse

This, from a Great British Bake-Off finalist and likely to be my next full book review, starts out scary, with a recipe that throws 1½ cups of powdered sugar into some strawberries and another cup into some cream—just for 12 pancakes. Would all the recipes be this sugar-stuffed? It doesn’t look like it, and while many feel kitsch-heavy, such as a “rainbow crepe cake” with food coloring-crammed crepes stacked up with whipped cream, the buoyant presentation here does seem to deliver the good vibes it promises…verdict yet to come on the promise for your taste buds.

*On Sundays: Long Lunches Through the Seasons, by Dave Vertheul

This one fooled me into thinking it promised relaxing, drawn-out Sunday lunches. A quiet cover—no faux-rustic or color-saturated photos here—drew me in, but the author, a chef with a restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, has a different standard for Sunday lunch than most home cooks. The biggest audience for this book might be fellow chefs, followed by people who love cookbooks but don’t cook; the rest of us may find this almost comically complicated. As Vertheul notes, almost all the recipes use “a wood-fired oven, a fire built on wood, or both.” Failing that, he suggests a good-quality gas-fired pizza oven or, finally, your oven cranked as high as possible. Admittedly, I’ve been gazing longingly at photos of tabletop pizza ovens since reading how much one respected baker loves his, but if my best shot for now is a 500-degree oven, these recipes seem unlikely to come out as intended. That would presume, though, that I would actually get to the point of putting something in the oven, and if, as he also notes, most recipes in the book require fermented fennel juice, well…making that requires a kilogram of fennel juice (thus requiring a juicer, I assume), whey “from naturally fermented yoghurt or a past ferment,” a vacuum-pack bag sealed on high pressure, and three weeks of fermentation—and, by the way, be sure to release the gas midway and re-vacuum seal it before it explodes. Despite that level of intensity, this was an interesting read. But when I say in this column I haven’t tested any recipes in the other books, here I should add “and never will.”

*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers; one small way to support Cook These Books is by clicking through and making a purchase on any of the titles above, for which I will earn a commission. Thank you!