Here are 10 great cookbooks to give to others – or yourself – for the holidays.
“Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook” (Potter, $40). “Handbook” finds the perfect balance of useful and stylish. The collection of more than 200 recipes includes almost every baked good you could want, from buttermilk biscuits to a showstopping mixed-berry layer cake.
“Recipes: A Collection for the Modern Cook,” by Susan Spungen (Morrow, $34.95). For 12 years, Spungen was editorial director of food and entertaining for Martha Stewart Living, and this book is certainly in the same casually elegant genre. “Recipes” is a codification of today’s culinary zeitgeist, offering recipes for exactly what you want to cook now, such as peanut noodles with mango, pancetta chicken with lemon fries, and blueberry cornmeal crostatas.
“Sunday Suppers at Lucques,” by Suzanne Goin with Teri Gelber (Knopf, $35). Books written by restaurant chefs all too often contain elaborate recipes, but Goin, chef-owner of Lucques restaurant in Los Angeles, won me over with her engaging and straightforward cuisine.
“Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America,” by Jose Andres with Richard Wolffe (Potter, $35). Andres, the award-winning chef-owner of seven Spanish restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area, is another professional chef who made good with a book this year. Even though he is reportedly a disciple of the excessively innovative Spanish superstar chef Ferran Adria, Andres’ tapas are gutsy and straightforward.
“The New Spanish Table,” by Anya von Bremzen (Workman, $22.95). For a broader take on Spain, this exuberant volume explores its cuisine, with hundreds of recipes both classic (garlic shrimp) and inventive (octopus confit and saffron potato salad).
“How to Cook Italian,” by Giuliano Hazan (Scribner, $35). For newcomers to Italian cooking, you can’t go wrong with this little book, in which Hazan offers 225 good, basic recipes.
“The Silver Spoon” (Phaidon, $39.95). This is the first English translation of the best-selling Italian cookbook “Il Cucchaio d’Argento,” the first edition of which was produced by the Italian design magazine Domus in 1950. It has no authorial voice, no recipe head notes, no regional information. What it does have is more than 2,000 recipes.
“Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent” (Artisan, $45). This oversized book comes from the husband-wife team of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duigid. A travelogue of living and eating in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, “Mangoes” features photography and free-standing essays on tandoor ovens, ethnic minorities and prawn-catchers.
“Hungry Planet: What the World Eats,” photographed by Peter Menzel and written by Faith D’Aluisio. (Material World Books and Ten Speed Press, $40). The goal of “Hungry Planet” is nothing less than exploring how everyone on Earth eats. The authors photographed families in 24 countries with a week’s worth of groceries.
“Bones: Recipes, History and Lore,” by Jennifer McLagan (Morrow, $34.95). “Bones” is a charming polemic against convenience foods.
