Latinísimo by Sandra Gutierrez

My on line cookbook group is cooking out of this book this month, and I am surprised by a number of things about it. The first is that I did not know this book had been published--it is a relatively comprehensive cookbook covering all 21 Latin countries in the Americas. That is both its strength and its weakness. Do you need to own it? I would say yes--I have been going to Central and South America since I was a child, and I have been an avid home cook for almost 50 years and there were many things that I learned about the region and the cuisine from reading this book. There is a lot of information about the differences in cuisine across the region, including the kinds of peppers and what you can do with them that are worth the price of admission. The downside is that while it is almost unliftable in weight, it lacks depth into any particular cuisine--that it unsurprising, but this is not the be all and end all of Latin American cooking--rather it is an excellent starting point and one that should be explored. It is available on used book sites for under $10 and well worth it.

Best Dressed by Dawn Yanagihara

I saw this at the house of a friend who was on the verge of expanding the dining options in their coffeeshop to include some sort of salad, and she chose this book as the point of inspiration. On top of that, I was about mid-way through reading Samin Nosrat's new cookbook, Good Things, which has some of the same principles, which is get a well balanced and interesting flavored dressing, and then you can use it for a number of different things--like salad greens of course, but also salads with beans, salads with grains, and also over variously cooked vegetables. I am not where I would love to be with my cooking and this concept, despite my advanced age, and I am going to try to make 2026 the year I take a noticable step forward making progress in this arena. I think this paired with Good Things may be the magic sause that makes that happen--and also maybe buying the specific ingredients for a few recipes so that I do not start off with making due.

Good Things by Samin Nosrat

Wow, this is everything that you would expect from Samin Nosrat and more. Her first book, Salt Fat Acid Heat, is a game changer for how to think about cooking and food preparation. The unique thing about that book is that there are not so much recipes as there are ingredients that go together and how to balance the dishes that you make. So this cookbook is a bit different because there are traditional recipes, especially for sauces and dressings, but also other dishes--but what makes this different is that once you make the back bone recipe that are a myriad of things to do with it. So it is a combination of traditional and what I think of that is unique and special about this chef's approach to food. This is a book that should be read before you dive into it--she has a style that is well worth immersing yourself in before you take a stab at replicating what she has on offer. I highly recommend this, especially if you want to experience this fun way of approaching and thinking about feeding yourself, your family, and your friends.

Boustany by Sammi Tamimi

This is a love letter to Palestinian food and the Palestinian people-- the author, who I first discovered when he co-authored a book with Yotam Ottolenghi called Jerusalem, lives in London, but his food is firmly rooted in the Middle East. This is a bit of a love letter as well as a book full of food--there are stories to go with every recipe, and also at the beginning of each section. This is a deeply personal book, laced with longing and a loving nostalgia. You can almost picture the author's grandparents’ boustan, or garden, and feel the joy he experienced spending time there as a child. He shares cherished family recipes, offers up dishes from the various ethnic communities in Palestine, and expresses enormous pride in his people’s culinary heritage. It is all vegetables all the time. There are a lot of dairy products used, but they can often be eliminated or replaced with plant based alternatives if that is how you roll.

Something From Nothing by Alison Roman

In the interest of full disclosure, I have Alison Roman's first three cookbooks, and while I am not often opening Sweet Nothing, the other two are in regular rotation for me, especially Nothing Fancy, which has a number of salad recipes that are outstanding--they easily scale up for a crowd, allow you to have a varied looking array of vegetable side dishes that are quite easy to make. My most recent child who got married had my spouse and I do the food for both the groom's dinner (130 guests) and the wedding (200+ guests) and I did several of her recipes. The prep can be done ahead of time and the salad assembled right before with surprisingly delicious and beautiful results. So that is a long way around saying I am a big fan. This cookbook, which is all about assembling a casual yet stylish table of food using mostly things that you have in your "pantry"--which includes refrigerator, shelf, and freezer--things that you should have on hand, not necessarily what you actually have on hand. The recipes are inspired, especially if you like anchovies, and this approach to eating is quite timely what with the rising cost of basic food in the United States. She emphasizes things that are available year round--celery is one of her favorites--and that are not high cost. Lastly, this is a fun read, and I recommend what I did--read it cover to cover.

Turkuaz Kitchen by Betül Tunç

There is a bit of a trad wife vibe going on here, with the author talking about the joy of cooking everything from scratch for her husband and son--so if you are super sensitive about not supporting that, there might be too much of it here. The author is from Turkey and apparently has a social media presence and following (lost on my for the most part, but may be how she got this book contract). After coming to the U.S. , Betül began creating vintage-style videos on Instagram, garnering an audience that grew rapidly with each personal post she shared. My on line cookbook group cooked out of it for a month, and that is how I came to find it. It is beautifully put together and photographed, and well written. She shares seventy-five recipes for sweet and savory doughs and the dishes to make with them. With inspiration from traditional Turkish recipes, as well as recipes she discovered in her travels, Turkuaz Kitchen is a treasure trove of recipes for: *Basic Doughs: such as bagels, pita, ciabatta, and pizza dough *Enriched Doughs: such as croissants, cardamom buns, buttermilk dinner rolls, and burger buns *Quick Breads and Short Doughs: such as pie and tart dough, scones, biscuits, and biscotti *Unleavened Doughs: such as pastas, noodles, and dumplings *Doughs from Turkey: such as Turkish style phyllo, Turkish Pistachio Baklava, Spinach Triangle Borek, and Grandma's Lavash--these come with savory accompaniments, not just the dough.

Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle King

There is so much to learn in this book that centers on Fu Pei-mei, the Taiwanese woman who broke with tradition to show people how to cook. The traditional Chinese art of food preparation was something that you would not write down. It was instead passed down within the family, and the secrets were closely guarded--so when Pei-mei first wrote a cookbook, and then demonstrated the recipes on television, she was bringing Chinese food into the modern day. Her cookbooks were bilingual, so that they could be shared across language as well as being inter-generational. Then, like Julia Child and French cooking, she went on TV to demonstrate how exactly to make these recipes. Chinese cooking prioritizes two essential qualities: huohuo (“fire-time”) and daogong (“knife-skill”). The former is the precision with which a cook can control the heat of her stove, the latter the blade of her knife. Think of the perfectly sliced green scallions, thin and trembling like blades of grass, that accompany a Peking duck or the way beef sliced for a stir-fry instantly cooks on a heated wok, evenly seared on the outside, still juicy and tender within. Both of these skills were broadcast live on Taiwan Television in 1962, when a housewife and cooking instructor named Fu Pei-mei was asked by the network to host a 20-minute cooking show. The set was makeshift, decorated by a cloth fish stapled to the wall. Fu had been asked to bring her own ingredients and equipment, which included her wok, cleaver and brazier--it was just as low budget as the PBS shows that Julia Child made, but despite all of this, both shows were both ground breaking and wildly popular. The author has introduced a Taiwan icon to an American audience.

Asada--The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling by Biria Lopez

This is a cookbook selection for my cookbook group, and it has been quite a while since I have cooked out of a cookbook that was this popular in my household. The authors are from Oaxaca and their first cookbook covers that regional Mexican food. This is largely about grilled food, and it is exceptional. The marinades are the true highlights, where the protein is marinated in a flavorful sauce, and usually for a pretty short period of time, so that if you made it ahead of time, it was an easy midweek meal. The three version of rice: white, red, and green--the colors of the flag of Mexico--and they are all stellar. The salsas are on the hot side, but the hotter chilies could be subbed for less hot chilies and the six we have tried are all very flavor. They use avocado oil in their flour tortillas based on the ones made by Carmelo's in Lawrence, KS, which are the best commercial flour tortillas I have had. I recommend this highly, and even if you have a robust Mexican food section in your cookbook collection, this one should have a place on your shelf.

Breath of a Wok by Grace Young

This is part cookbook and part history, both of the wok and of Chinese cooking in general, and an introduction to the regional differences in China in terms of not just food, but also the equipment used. Grace Young has been on a vocal quest to save America's Chinatowns since the pandemic began. She has called out the racism that was employed in the beginning that further marginalized Asian Americans, and made them even more vulnerable to physical and verbal attacks. The Breath of a Wok is a cookbook to keep not just because of the recipes, but for the how to instructions for buying, using and maintaining a wok, the quintessential tool for making stir fried food. Read about the workings of a traditional Chinese kitchen, techniques passed down from masters (and favorite uncles), and feast your eyes on the sumptuous photography. Learn about wok hay, the magic that happens in your wok when you learn how to stir-fry properly, as will hopefully happen after reading this book and also being able to recognize it. Then following the chapters about the care and feeding of your wok, there are chapters filled with recipes for how to season your wok, with oil, or in the oven, and how to clean a wok properly. Then dive into the food recipes and try your hand at it.

Mi Cocina by Rick Martinez

When I read this cookbook I did not know the origin story of why this chef and food writer had enough time on his hands to spend a year traveling through Mexico, collecting the very best food that each region has to offer. He was a senior food editor at Bon Appetit and rumor has it that he asked for equitable pay and treatment, and when that didn't go his way, he hit the road--literally--and this book is the result. Several things to say about this book. One is that the recipes are well written, spectacular, and easy to follow. He has included the measurements of all the ingredients by both volume and weight, making everyone happy. And, as he correctly points out, "one Jalapeno" can be vastly different in both size and weight, and since there is heat invcolved, precision is at least a helpful start. He also is a proponent of add some, taste, and adjust. You cannot take it out but you can add it. The book is organized by regions, which I love because that is also how I think about Mexico, but it may not suit everyone. In my mind, a regional cookbook is meant to teach you something that you might not know about a place or a cuisine, but it is possible not everyone agrees and the organization might seem a hindrance. Finally, there are vibrant pictures, lots of stories, and what the food looks like is pictured throughout. All of which I loved. This book is well worth reading as well as cooking out of!

Cook Real Hawai'i by Sheldon Simeon

I have relatively recently been on a kick where I actually read the cookbook cover to cover before I actually make anything, which has been both educational and fun. This is no exception, unless you know a lot about Hawaii both culturally and regional differences. The author grew up on the big island, went to culinary school on Oahu, and has his restaurants on Maui. This is not 'typical' Hawaiian food but rather the local Hawai‘i food that the author feeds his ohana, his family and neighbors. The recipes are uncomplicated and flavor-forward and demonstrate the many cultures that have come to create the cuisine of his beloved home: the native Hawaiian traditions, Japanese influences, Chinese cooking techniques, and dynamic Korean, Portuguese, and Filipino flavors that are closest to his heart. The majority of the recipes are different from what most of us are used to eat daily, there's a solid chance you have most of the stuff you need already on hand. Most ingredients can be found in a well-stocked grocery store, with just a few items requiring a trip to your nearest Asian market. Besides this, all the recipes are relatively easy to do and can be done in just a few steps. And never fear, there is Spam, macaroni salad, and condensed cream of mushroom soup contained within.

Ripe Figs by Yasmin Khan

I joined a monthly cookbook group through Food 52 a few months before the pandemic set in, but it wasn't until my spouse and I were cooking 100% of the food we ate that we really dove in with both feet. The experience got me back to using cookbooks rather than the internet for my recipes, which improved the range and quality of the meals that I prepared. It has just been recently that I have started to read the cookbook before cooking out of it, and this is a good one to approach in that way. Ripe Figs is a book about resilience as much as recipes. The author, Yasmin Khan has travelled around the Eastern Mediterranean in search of stories about food from refugees who have landed on its shores. While exploring their cuisine and the dishes they have brought with them in their to recreate in their new environment, Khan considers the question of borders, migration, loss, and the role that food plays in helping people negotiate these life-changing events. The recipes are vegetable forward for the most part, and the index is well organized, and categorized around vegan versus vegetarian versus gluten free. There is a cultural context and a story to go with each of them, and center on small dishes and food as a way to build social structure and broader ties. This gives the book even more poignancy and amplifies the ways in which lives are disrupted and changed by events outside of our control.

Black Food by Bryant Terry

It is really hard for me to put my finger on exactly how to categorize this book. I came to read it because it is the March cookbook featured in my Food 52 cookbook club, and while there are recipes in it, that is almost incidental to the rest of the book, which is about black food and the African diaspora. The author, who is more of an editor, is the popular Black vegan chef Bryant Terry, who’s based in Oakland and highly involved in education, healing, and activism. The book contains a chorus of more than 100 Black voices in and about the food world. It is a detailed collection of essays, poetry, art, and recipes. All told, it is an ambitious account of Black food across continents and past and present. Terry has a master’s in history, and this book does border on the academic, digging into the culinary history of the African diaspora; but it’s also as varied as the profusion of voices it contains, from restaurant chefs to food writers to artists. It is an experience wrapped around food and what it means, as seen through a black lens.

In The Same Breath (2021)

The filmmaker, Nanfu Wang, is also the narrator of this film, which has been shortlisted for the Oscars for Best Documentary. This is her second appearance on this list, with her last documentary, One Child, making a similar appearance. This fim explores =f how political narratives and public health collided in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in both China and in the United States, and and that these are still happening in both countries in different ways. The film opens with the denial of the seriousness of the novel virus in China, even arresting those who raised the alarm early on, then with incredible access within China, she shows security footage of the sick and ailing coming in to a private clinic near the wet market where it is beleived that it all started going back as fat as November, 2019, and then how the whole thing played out in Wuhan. The contrast between a totalitarian dictatorship versus a democracy doesn't leave one feeling that either served its people well, and marveling at the filmaker's access to material from China in order to tell that half of the story is even handed. Her juxtaposition of censorship afflicting Chinese citizens from speaking out—from telling the truth to the rest of the world—against the ways freedom of speech in America slowed the proper response to the virus, is just as balanced.

This Will Make It Taste Good by Vivian Howard

There are some very annoying aspects to this cookbook, but do not let that get in the way of enjoying what the author presents. She has some master sauces that she has you make up, some of them requiring that they set for a bit, and others are useable right away. They are flavor power houses, each of them, which you then use as the flavor foundation for a dish. Some of them, which she calls "no brainers", are straighforward and can easily be done in minutes, leveraging the work of putting the mother sauce together to have a complex flavored dish in minutes, and then there are actual recipes that require a bit more time and attention, but again use these pre-constructed sauces. The two that are herb forward sauces are excellent--the Little Green Dress taking quite a bit of time to assemble, but then you can use it over and over again. Same with the tomato pepper relish called Red Weapons. Her version of the herb pesto comes together quickly, and the carmelized onions take forever, but we already know that! I reccommend this for cooks who don't mind spending a weekend day putting the master sauces together and reaping the benefits as the week goes forward.

This Will Make It Taste Good by Vivian Howard

This is the follow up cookbook by the author of one of the best southern cookbooks I have seen, Deep Run Roots, which has a chapter on collard greens, one on watermelon, and one on blueberries, to name a few. It is straight ahead, written without either humor or nonsense. This one is another story entirely. The concept is great--spend some time making some master ingredients, and then use them to make a multitude of dishes that are flavor packed because you have spent time punching it up, so it can be then diluted into something else. I have made the two green sauces, and will make a few others. The outcome is really good, but the thing that I have trouble getting past is how cutsie all the names are. It is particularly irksome when posting on social media about the recipe, because while the end result is delicious, it sounds so sill y that I want to avoid it all together. It is a shame, because the end results are innovative and taste good. If you can overlook this, or better yet, if you can enjoy it, then I recoomend this cookbook.

Simply Julia by Julia Turshen

I am slowly warming to this cookbook, which was wildly popular with our Food 52 Cookbook group. The great thing about having a group of above average to excellent cooks all focusing on the same cookbook at one time is that you get some great ideas about what recipes to try yourself. The premise of this is that you are cooking on a week night and you want to put food on the table quickly that tastes more complex than the time you have devoted to it would ordinarily render it. There is a lot to be said for this approach, and having a book that does that and nothing else is definitely worth some space on your shelf. There are several of everything. For example, a number of different meatball options, and you can sub the ground meat you have. There are several dressings that are unusual and dump and shake and dress and serve. I found the soy based one too salty, but my gut told me it would be, and I would try it again with less tamari. There is something for every meal of the day, including dessert, and there is some snack food/appetizer options. The writing style is breeezy without being irritating, and as more people try things from this in my cookbook club, I am likely to return to it more often than I have cooked from it so far. If you are looking for easy peasy, give this one a whirl.

Mister Jiu's in Chinatown by Brandon Jew

I think this is an amazing compendium of the story and the process of cooking at one of the most iconic Chinese American restaurants in San Francisco, which is the most iconic Chinatown's in the United States--second only to Vancouver in North America. The restaurant has a wonderful window onto the street where you can watch dumplings being hand made, and with that, you know that you are in for a treat. I have only eaten there once right before the pandemic, and for drinks and appetizers only, but the food and the atmosphere are enough to bring me back. The recipes are largely both complex and detailed. My Food 52 cookbook group did this last month, and the people who dove right in, expecting each recipe to be a project rather than a breeze, were the happiest. We plan to do some longer term exploration of the recipes, but the story that is told (which is about a third of the book) is well worth reading as well.

Bestia by Ori Menashe

I rate this cookbook highly, but that applies only to people like me, who might get 10-20 new cookbooks a year, who really likes to cook through a cookbook, to get to know it and who has gotten to know quite a few cookbooks along the way. It is not a good book for a small collection, or someone who is new to meal preparation, and might be best taken out of the library to give it a whirl forst. It has sections that are deep rather than wide, and some aspects--like cured meats--may be great but are thus far untapped. The farro recipes are well worth making--the salads are delicious and unusual (I subbed blueberries for pomegranate and almonds for walnuts with no diminution in enjoyment). There are multiple vinaigrettes that I am having on hand this summer to see what the variety brings to my summer salads (I have high hopes for the fish sauce, the cinnamon, and the pomegranate ones to widen my horizons). The vegetable sides are delicious! Same can be said for the wealth of sherbet recipes. The pizzas dough that is leavened with sourdough starter is worth the price of the book, as is the uncooked tomato sauce and the country loaf. Do not skip the buckwheat flour in them either. It is an easy way to give a depth of flavor to your finished product.

Open Kitchen by Susan Spungen

This cookbook is the December featured cookbook for the Food 52 Cookbook club.  I had it out of the library over the summer, and on a casual look through thought that it was not for me.  Then I made a recipe, and reading the directions and the context and then tasting the food, I thought, well, it is a pandemic, and we need inspiration to continue to thrive on the food that we are making, so why not?

There are several things that I love about this book, not the least of which are the photos, but a cookbook that has an extensive salads section, on top of vegetable sides is a cookbook for me.  There is plenty of meat in here, but there are quite a few recipes with none, and then others where it can be omitted or is optional.  The book identifies recipes that are projects rather than week night dishes, and there is a break down of when you can do what ahead, so that is you are transporting the dish, or prepping for a week night meal that is elaborate ahead of time, you know exactly what works, at least from the author's point of view.  A nice addition to my collection.