Cookbooks: The New Best of BetterBaking.Com by Marcy Goldman

I feel as though, until now, I’ve been shuffling along in the dark. Having now experienced the flaky, buttery goodness of BetterBaking.Com, how did I ever attempt a flan or pie crust without it? This is the good stuff. So good, it’s better than anything mother ever made.

Author Marcy Goldman is a Montreal-based pastry chef who’s written for Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, The New York Times and many others. As that CV would imply, Goldman writes clearly on a topic she obviously loves: how to make baking better.

The New Best of BetterBaking.Com (Whitecap Books) includes over 200 recipes as well as Goldman’s sharp and ever-present advice. As might be expected -- and as is only right in a beautifully produced and illustrated cookbook -- the recipes are the stars, here. Hotel School Cream Cheese Rugalach. Tiramisu Cheesecake. Blackberry Wine Crunch Biscotti. Fried Parmesan Pizza Wedges. I could go on (I want to go on.) but you get the idea. Goldman’s endeavors are so successful because she pushes the envelope. That’s why The New Best of BetterBaking.Com isn’t just another baking book. It’s better.

Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark:

Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we were orphans, turn us celibate or, worse yet, vegan.

Many foodies have met Techamuanvivit through her food blog, Chez Pim, where the Silicon Valley dropout brings foodie stuff to many thousands of visitors every week. The Foodie Handbook is better. And why? Because it is the physical embodiment of Techamuanvivit’s passionate, knowledgeable spirit. Foodie lore, recipes, advice from Techamuanvivit and other, more famous, chefs: it’s all here, just as on Chez Pim. But the book stuffs the blog into the shade. You can hold the book in your hands, flip through it, bury yourself in it and learn. And enjoy. The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy is what the book is subtitled. And it’s that -- sure it is. But, oh, so much more.

Cookbooks: Savory Baking by Mary Chech

The title is misleading, and not in a helpful way. It offers the idea that this will be yet another book on being a better baker. The fact is, Savory Baking (Chronicle Books) is so much more than that.

You don’t need to read very far to understand what I’m saying. White Cheddar-Zucchini Pancakes. Hazelnut Waffles. Buckwheat Blinis with Warm Bing Cherries and Crème Fraiche. Fig and Rosemary Spread. Caprese Salad. And, yes: some of these things are meant to go with other -- baked -- recipes. And, yes: there are more baked items in Savory Baking than not. But still, it is a book beyond the expected, filled with tempting savory versions of a lot of recipes that are quite often sweet.

Author Mary Chech was named one of the top ten pastry chefs in North America. She is an award-winning pastry chef and cooking instructor. That combination shows both in the innovation she brings to Savory Baking as well as the clear and sensible way she tells us to make her creations.

Savory Baking includes recipes for every meal of the day, plus snacks. This is beautiful, well-conceived food, temptingly styled and photographed, clearly shared and quite beyond expectation.

Cookbooks: The Entertaining Encyclopedia by Denise Vivaldo

Today I dropped by my local Home Depot only to be met with a shock: the rows upon rows of barbecues I’d seen there just a few weeks ago had disappeared and been mysteriously replaced with ... fake Christmas trees and decorations. After I’d recovered and had gotten my too-hard-beating heart under control I stopped and took stock. After all, the time between when you see the first Home Depot Christmas tree of the season and when seasonal entertaining begins is not necessarily very long.

Upon my return home, I remembered the copy of The Entertaining Encyclopedia (Robert Rose) by Denise Vivaldo that I’d been perusing for the last few weeks. Suddenly its presence in my lair made sense.

Vivaldo is, after all, a sort of catering queen to the stars. Los Angeles-based, she’s catered the Academy Awards Governors Ball and she’s cooked for some of Hollywood’s top names. That being the case, it seems as though she’s a good person to look to advice for when it comes to holiday entertaining -- or any other kind, for that matter.

“It might sound too simple to be true,” she begins, “but the best way to ensure that your guests are having a great time is to have one yourself.” But it’s a big, fat book. Even in paperback. Loads of recipes, lots of advice: a lot of it, in the end, dedicated, to helping you be proficient enough with the idea of entertaining that you will have a good time, despite yourself.

The Entertaining Encyclopedia: Essential Tips and Recipes for Perfect Parties is a great primer on ... well, everything to do with entertaining. Identifying and choosing glassware. Stocking a bar. How to handle coffee service. How to garnish a plate. Choose a location. Get a hard-partying guest to leave when the party is over.

And then the food: which is fantastic. Even if you have no intention of ever hosting a party, you’ll find useful recipes here. Some very good versions of old standards -- chicken satay, cheese fondue, spare-ribs, barbecue sauce. Scones. Some sophisticated modern dishes and the thing that I found most arresting: Vivaldo’s casual approach to food. For example, an hors d’oeuvres party appears almost as magically as if it had been waved in by a wand. Several pages of elegant hors d’oeuvres that are so simple, they seem almost to make themselves. And hors d’oeuvres are, of course, just the very beginning. There are over 200 recipes in the book.

If you have questions about entertaining or planning a party, you’ll find sensible answers in Denise Vivaldo’s The Entertaining Encyclopedia.

Cookbooks: Araxi by James Walt

There has never been a better time for a cookbook from and about Araxi, the well known restaurant at Whistler, British Columbia, established in 1981 and a local and even international favorite ever since.

A couple of things will be certain to fix the eyes of the world on Whistler for the next year or so. For starters, the portions of the 2012 Winter Olympics that demand snow will take place at Whistler, just a couple of hours by car from the host city of Vancouver.

From a foodie perspective, though, the patronage and smiling eye of famed chef and television personality Gordon Ramsay is more important still. Ramsy, who has not only called Araxi the best restaurant in Canada, is has also been named as the reward for the current season of Hell’s Kitchen, the US-based reality series that sees Ramsay harassing a clutch of would-be chefs. The winner will be created head chef at Araxi under executive chef James Walt.

While the flood of interest from various angles might cause a happy bounce in Araxi’s bottom line, I suspect that none of these shenanigans will effect the food served at the restaurant in a negative way. Araxi has been a long-time favorite of mine. Like a lot of people, I love Araxi for all the things it is. World class food in a stunning location. In my memory, the menu has always been reflective of the seasons and the locale and some of the meals I’ve enjoyed there number among the most memorable of my life: beautiful food, beautifully presented and evocative of the season in which the meal was consumed.

Naturally, then, I met the announcement of an Araxi cookbook with some excitement. Though Araxi (Douglas & McIntyre) is not quite what I expected, it’s certainly not been a disappointment. The introduction might be interesting to those who are unfamiliar with either Whistler or Araxi, but no one who has eaten at the restaurant will need to be told about chef James Walt’s locavore leanings or how well the cellar has been built and maintained. Moody black and white photos set the tone. Chef pensive, then laughing. Sparkling glassware. Artistically arranged corks. They’re good photos but, by this point, we’ve seen it all before.

The business part of Araxi is divided into three seasons: Summer, Harvest and Winter. Each of these seasonal sections offers its own introduction (more moody black and white images) and its own detailed table of contents. And then, finally, we begin.

Some of the recipes are dead simple -- Butternut Squash Soup with Pumpkin Seed Oil; Chilled English Pea and Mint Soup. Some would require all the attention of a home chef with moderate kitchen skill -- Herb-crusted Halibut with Pea Purée and Coriander Vinaigrette; Loin of Lamb with Summer Squash and Sweet Peppers. And a good many seem to be intended for the accomplished home chef to spend hours slaving over lovingly -- Saddle of Rabbit with Buttered Noodles, Carrots and Mustard Sauce; Black Forest Cake with Brandied-Cherry Ice Cream.

Stunningly photographed, well-designed, produced and even printed, I think Araxi is also meant to be one of those cookbooks you moon over and, certainly, if you’re the type who does like to do that sort of cookbook dreaming, you could not pick one better. From beginning to end, a terrific job has been done on Araxi. It’s the perfect two-dimensional representation of a truly great restaurant.

Cookbooks: Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source and How It All Vegan

If the idea of green food appeals, then Clean Food (Sterling Epicure) may well be for you.

Author Terry Walters is a certified holistic health counselor and it shows. Clean Food is a gorgeous book, beautifully produced and while it is long on intent and sustainability, the recipes are more serviceable than inspired. In truth, though, and considering the thrust, for this particular book, that may be enough.

At one point Walters writes that “a perfect diet alone will not fully nourish us. What we need is connection -- to our bodies, hearts and spirits, to our families, to community, to the environment, the land, the season and to a purpose.”

This spirit is echoed throughout the book, which is long on recipes that will help round out the repertoire of someone just begin to play with the idea of a vegan diet or who wants to add a few vegan and veganish dishes to their old standbys.

What Clean Food lacks in flights of foodie fancy it makes up for in sheer volume. As the subtitle says: “With More Than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You.” There are many options here and a lot of the bases are covered and covered well.

For pure and joyous vegan inspiration, try the tenth anniversary edition of How It All Vegan (Arsenal Pulp Press) by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. Since the publication of the first edition in 1999, How It All Vegan has won numerous awards, inspired several sequels and been reprinted 14 times. This edition includes new recipes and, perhaps more importantly, has been updated to reflect a way of eating that has moved more firmly into the mainstream over the past decade.

As the title implies, How It All Vegan is a celebration of the vegan way of life. “Healthy lifestyles should begin by making conscious decisions about the food we eat and things we do to make it a better world.” For all of that, though, the recipes are great: easy-to-follow and potentially life-changing.

Cookbooks: The New Thanksgiving Table by Diane Morgan

Over the years, we’ve reviewed a number of Diane Morgan’s excellent cookbooks at January Magazine. And, in general, we like them quite a lot. Morgan’s approach to food is sensible. Though she stays aware of trends and her food is always modern, there is nothing of faddishness about a Morgan cookbook.

All of these things can also be said of The New Thanksgiving Table (Chronicle Books), the latest addition to the Morgan oeuvre. If I have a single quibble, it’s that the title is a bit misleading. One arrives expecting Thanksgiving-specific recipes. And while those are all there -- and then some -- there is so much more here, as well.

I’ll tell you what I mean. Of course there is turkey. And turkey. And then turkey. In fact, aside from basic turkey know-how (buying, defrosting, brining) Morgan has included eight ways to cook a turkey, including the very trendy -- and perhaps even slightly faddish -- Spatchcocked turkey. Some of the eight would seem to have a broader appeal than others. Perhaps that’s to be expected? But while I have no trouble at all imagining hordes of home chefs settling in to prepare Herb Butter-Rubbed Turkey with Giblet Gravy, thinking about the Roast Turkey with Vidalia Cream Gravy makes me feel a little queasy.

As impressive as a book with eight (eight!) turkey recipes might sound, to my mind, the most significant recipes in The New Thanksgiving Table would seem to me to have very little to do with Thanksgiving at all. Crostini with Fig and Calamata Olive Tapenade. Tex-Mex Honey Pecans. Sizzlin’ Corn and Jalapeño Bread with Bacon. Oyster Stew. Roasted Chestnut Soup. Forget Thanksgiving. In some ways, Morgan’s new book is autumn delivered straight to the table. Which is not a bad place to be come Thanksgiving.

The New Thanksgiving Table is another winner for Morgan.

Cookbooks: Slow Cooker Comfort Food and Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever

There’s certainly not much less cool than slow cooker cooking. A combination of things. First you start with the name. Crock pot. A brand name, sure, but one that’s stuck like a Xerox copy. Like Tampax. Like Coke. You show someone that deep, electric vessel -- especially if that someone is of a certain age -- and you can say “slow cooker” until your face is blue, but they’re gonna call it something else; that’s just how it will go.

“My concept of comfort food is warm and welcoming and provides a sense of sustenance,” writes Judith Finlayson in Slow Cooker Comfort Food (Robert Rose), “a kind of culinary haven in a heartless world.”

Finlayson is the slow cooker queen. She is the author of The Healthy Slow Cooker. 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics, The 150 best Slow Cooker Recipes and others. Slow Cooker Comfort Food itself contains 275 “soul-satisfying recipes.” If it can be said about slow cooking, Finlayson has said it, maybe even a couple of times in different ways.

This latest book is large and friendly. A color guide on each page lets readers know if the recipe is “entertaining worthy,” “vegan friendly,” “vegetarian friendly” or suitable for halving. The type is large and the recipes are easy to follow. The food styling and photography is, unfortunately, not that great. In fact, some of this food looks awful: homogenous and bland in some places; too glossy and overly manipulated-looking in others. And while, yes: a lot of this food sounds comforting, some of it just has no business being done in a slow cooker. I don’t understand the sense of poaching quinces for eight hours when a similar effect could be accomplished in minutes -- and not a lot of them -- on top of the stove. Ditto all of the dips with shrimp and/or crab. Please: nothing with either of those delicate meats should be allowed anywhere near a slow cooker. Ever.

Many, many of these recipes, however, are of the type that slow cookers were intended for: the type of low maintenance, high return dishes working families most need. Just a few of these: Moroccan-Style Lemon Chicken with Olives; Simple Soy-Braised Chicken; Corned Beef and Cabbage; Old-Fashioned Beef Stew with Mushrooms; Pinto Bean Chili with Corn and Kale.

In Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever (Chronicle Books) veteran cookbook author Diane Phillips takes a different approach. “Whenever I look at my slow cooker,” Phillips writes, “I think of the lyrics to that old Sinatra standard, ‘I’m not much to look at, nothing to see,’ but upon closer inspection the slow cooker is like the girl in high school who everyone said had a nice personality.”

That said, Best Slow Cooker is by far the more attractive of this particular pair of books. The type is not as large, and the pages are not as shiny but the design is completely contemporary, as is the approach to recipe description. Instructions are not needlessly wordy. As a result, even complicated recipes appear more simple. That said, does anyone really need 400 slow cooker recipes? There are definitely some good ones here (I especially loved the Chicken, Artichoke, and Mushroom Casserole and the Pork Tenderloin Osso Bucco-Style is practically genius) but, as with Finlayson’s book, after a while it seems like a bit of a reach. An artichoke spinach dip that spends two to three hours in a slow cooker? Who would even want that? It just seems contrary to everything slow cookers excel at.

All of that said, if you have an interest in slow cooking or the kind of lifestyle that could benefit from this type of culinary intervention, either of these books would serve very well. Both books include many very good recipes along with the silly ones. And both books talk about slow cook rationale as well as why and how to do it. As well, both authors take a very different approach to their topics even if, in some ways, they end up at a similar place. In fact, the recipes are varied enough, if you’ve the means, you might reasonably opt not to make it a competition at all. Perhaps you don’t have to decide between them: in the end, you might decide you want both.

Chef Michael Smith Does Not Tweet

In the end, a series of tweets gave up the game.

“You can’t tip enough in Montreal,” came a tweet apparently generated by Canadian celebrity chef and cookbook author Michael Smith. “No matter how much money you drop, you still can’t get a smile out of your sullen, bitter server.”

Earlier the same day: “Montreal means grotesque, tragic food served by hateful staff.”

Understandably, The Montreal Gazette’s food critic, Lesley Chesterman, was not amused. Chesterman writes that “As a proud Montrealer and a long time restaurant critic, the comment: ‘Montreal preys on clueless tourists and pretentious locals. Desperate, dated restaurants abound. It’s not a foodie city,’ left me steaming. I Twittered myself about it, and contacted Smith’s PR people to express my dismay.”

Once Smith and his people got wind of it, things happened very quickly, beginning with a press release from his publicist, Debby de Groot of Toronto’s MDG & Associates:

On the eve of launching his new cookbook The Best of Chef at Home and beginning celebrations for Prince Edward Island’s Fall Flavours festival, Chef Michael Smith has discovered that a complete stranger has stolen his identity on Twitter. The fraud was discovered earlier today when a writer for the Montreal Gazette questioned several negative tweets about the Montreal restaurant scene posted by the impostor.

All of this is a complete surprise to Michael Smith, who does not twitter. A lawyer has been consulted, and not only is Michael trying to get his identity removed from that site but he is calling on Twitter to notify all followers of the feed that they have been deceived. “Frankly I’m overwhelmed. I’m very, very angry. I can’t believe that anyone would say such horrible things about Montreal. Worse yet they’ve been writing about my family, they’ve deceived my fans and stolen what I’ve worked so hard to build,” says Michael. “I don’t fault Twitter but I do expect them to help make this right.”

Smith’s dismay is understandable. As I write this, the fraudulent Twitter feed is still online. As you can see, the material posted feels quite authentic. The poster obviously knows who Smith is and has Tweeted things Smith’s fans might actually care about.

Back in Montreal, Chesterman asks the question: “can chefs ignore new media outlets like Twitter and Facebook and risk having someone stand in for them? Or must they go with the flow and engage fans in every way possible in this increasingly competitive field?”

Meanwhile, the timing is really pretty good. As de Groot reminds us, Smith is one of Food Network Canada’s biggest stars, with two hit series, Chef at Home and Chef Abroad. His fourth cookbook, The Best of Chef at Home, has just been released by Whitecap Books.

Review: The beerbistro Cookbook by Stephen Beaumont & Brian Morin

Today in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Adrian Marks reviews The beerbistro Cookbook by Stephen Beaumont & Brian Morin. Says Marks:

Much of the time, cookbooks attached to a restaurant the author either owns or cooks for ends up feeling like a big, glossy ad: a come-on for those who happen to pick the book up to actually go on down to the restaurant and enjoy what’s on offer in person. In short, many of those types of book have a very limited appeal, both regionally and, in a way, spiritually. Despite the title, The beerbistro Cookbook is not that book. If anything, linking the book tightly to the popular Toronto eatery seems like a mistake. Sure: beerbistro patrons are likely to want a copy. But what about the rest of us? What’s in it for us?

The full review is here.

Julie & Julia Inspires Book Sales … and More

Though it’s not unusual for a successful movie to spur the sale of related item, cookbooks and cookware are not usually among the things moviegoers line up for. From The Guardian:

Film merchandising usually comes in the form of unnecessary plastic objects or high-calorie fast food special offers, from Transformer toys to McDonald's tie-ins. It's an unusual movie that triggers sales of cordon bleu recipe books and Le Creuset cookware. But the latest Meryl Streep film, Julie & Julia, is having just that effect.

The 40th anniversary edition of Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cookery, was published by Knopf in 2001. At the time of this writing, the book was riding the #1 spot at Amazon.

The Guardian’s piece is here.

New in Paperback: The Oxford Companion to Italian Food by Gillian Riley

If you were to ask cookbook aficionados for a list of the ten most influential cookbooks of all time, I’m betting that most all of them would include Larousse Gastronomique somewhere on that list. First published in 1938, that book is much more than a cookbook. It is an encyclopedia of gastronomy from the French perspective. You don’t necessarily read Larousse, you graze it, browsing at various entries as your make your way, in leisurely fashion, from back to front, or however else you want to enjoy it. You’re safe in knowing that, every time you go in, you’re going to take something new out. It’s not so much a cookbook, then, as an amazing, never-ending literary lunch.

In many ways, all of these things also describe The Oxford Companion to Italian Food (Oxford) very well. In many ways, it’s set up just like Larousse, with two columns per page of smallish type with the entries arranged alphabetically. And so we learn about Burrida, (“… a Sardinian way of serving fish like skate…”) Burrino, (“a kind of butter of ghee”) and Butter all on a single page.

Those accustomed to glossy cookbooks featuring fashionably out-of-focus photos of food and pride in the few words required to share a recipe might take some time becoming acclimated to The Oxford Companion to Italian Food. Because this is more than a cookbook: it is, as Chef Mario Batali says in the foreword, a tour of “Italy’s rich culinary history.”

If you want to know how to make pasta, other books will likely get you there more directly. But if you also want to know how pasta came into the vernacular, how it was invented, developed and how it can variously be prepared, then The Oxford Companion to Italian Food will be the book for you.

Cookbooks: Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book by Bob Sloan

Why has our culture seemingly gone out of its way to link cooking outdoors over flaming coals with men? When looked at very carefully what, truly, does one have to do with the other? Something primal, perhaps? Something hunter to a woman’s gatherer? In his reasonably impressive new Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book (Chronicle Books) award-winning food writer Bob Sloan tries to sum things up.

Like so many Dads, I love to grill. Perhaps it’s being so close to the fire that harkens back to an earlier, simpler time -- before, say, income tax or Jerry Springer. The grill is, after all, just a man, a pair of tongs, and heat.

What could be simpler? And Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book is simple but it’s also, in some ways, quite beyond simple. Do you really think, for instance, you can dismiss “Lamb Picadillo,” “Scallops & Prosciutto on Rosemary Skewers” or “Grilled Halibut Reggio Emilia Style” as simple? They might be easy, but we’re several layers beyond grilled weenies and reheated beans.

The recipes here are uniformly terrific: well-planned, creative, original and -- based on both tests and observations -- all quite do-able. Sloan’s descriptions of the grilling experience is lucid and recommendations on necessary equipment and “must-have” materials are right on target.

Dad’s Awesome Grilling Book joins a very long line of excellent outdoor cooking books, including 2008’s excellent Patio Daddy-O at the Grill and Weber’s Way to Grill, which I talked about in this space a few weeks ago.

Cookbooks: Weber’s Way to Grill by Jamie Purviance

When it comes to cookbook excellence, Jamie Purviance’s Weber’s Way to Grill has two strikes against it coming right out of the gate: with a big name barbecue manufacturer right in the title and a big ol’ lifestyle magazine publisher right on the spine, there are a lot of people who would give Weber’s Way to Grill (Sunset/Oxmoor House) a miss before they even cracked the first page. Truth be told, that would be a shame because readers who are serious about grill cooking are in a position to learn a great deal from Weber’s Way to Grill.

Now understand the distinction I made there: this is not a book about barbecue, as in the style of regional cooking brought to high art in the Southern part of the United States. Weber’s Way to Grill focuses on contemporary grill cooking, of the type that can cook just about anything on a well-designed grill surface. “Culinary details matter,” author Purviance tells us in the introduction. On subsequent pages, he takes us through it bit by bit: working with charcoal, arranging the coals, judging the heat levels, working with a gas grill, must-have grilling tools and then many, many easy to follow and illustrated recipes for grilling probably anything you’d ever want to grill.

Weber’s Way to Grill is comprehensive, well executed and complete. If you are interested in cooking on an outdoor grill you could go a long way before finding a better book on this topic.

Cookbooks: Sips & Apps by Kathy Casey

Author, chef and expert mixologist Kathy Casey had me at Zen Turkey Dumplings. With peanut sauce. They are, in a way, typical of the type of food she’s opted to include in Sips & Apps: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Cocktails and Appetizers (Chronicle Books). They are easy to make -- can, in fact, be made by a group, preparing to party together. And they represent interesting flavor and texture combinations and will please a wide swath of your potential party going public.

Sips and Apps is more about the Sips than the Apps -- sips win 69 to 35 in the number of recipes included. (Though variations bring the numbers up on both sides.) But the number included might also speak to the type of recipes chosen for both sides. The apps here are solid, basic, crowd-pleasing favorites. For the most part, you won’t have seen these recipes before -- Casey’s flavor choices and presentations are interesting and original -- but they are the sort of backbone recipes frequent hosts may very well come to treasure.

The Sips, though, are a different matter. Very good bar basics sections get things going in the right direction and by the time you’re ready to make a drink, you’ll know just what everything is. (And if you’ve skipped ahead, you can go back and look for whatever it was you missed.) So if you decide to make, for instance, a Strawberry Shag or a Rouge Pulp, you’ll know how to do it. There’s even a section called Clear-Headed Cocktails: gorgeous drinks with fruit and finish, but no alcohol.

Sips and Apps is excellent. Those who enjoy entertaining at home will find this to be a useful and interesting book.

Earth Day Ecovore

Here’s an Earth Day special from The Washington Post in the form of an interview with Kate Heyhoe, author of Cooking Green (Da Capo Lifelong). Heyhoe brings up a whole lot of issues most of us have never considered, putting even your average vegan to planet-wasting shame.

You've coined two terms in "Cooking Green": cookprint and ecovore. They sound an awful lot like carbon footprint and locavore, two words we've been hearing in the green and sustainable worlds. How do your words differ from what's already out there?

I chose these words because they’re more specific and accurate to my intent. Cookprint is the entire chain of resources used to create the foods you eat, including water and land, and the waste produced in the process. Carbon footprint measures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Shrinking your cookprint includes saving water and energy, as well as reducing waste and emissions.

Being green is all about making choices. An ecovore looks at the total impact of food with fluidity, not rigidity. Our food choices are, at any given time or in any given place, in constant flux, because of changes in ecosystems, economics, and technology. Ecovores eat foods that are in harmony with the environment, both currently and for the foreseeable future, locally and globally. An ecovore’s diet pivots on a series of judgment calls based on conditions at the time and place. This season’s local salmon may be sustainable, but next year it may not (and would then not be part of an evocore diet, even though the food is local). And conversely, as we make progress, what casts a carbon footprint last week may not be an issue tomorrow. World hunger matters, too. In a global rice or corn shortage, an ecovore picks a different food to eat.

Heyhoe has lots more to say, and it’s here.

Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters

Alice Waters’ lush and lovely Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea (Chronicle Books) is a coffee table book about change and sustainability. You’ve heard the term grassroots? This is what it looks like, right here.

In the early 1970s, Waters introduced the idea of organic produce at her Berkeley Restaurant, Chez Panisse. While Waters’ star has risen considerably in the last 35-plus years, so has her clout. If Waters has an idea, she has both the resources and the respect to put it in motion. And since Waters’ focus has been green since before the color was chic, it only stands to reason that at least some of her good ideas are also going to be good for the planet.

In 1996, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Chez Panisse, Waters created the Chez Panisse Foundation. The Foundation’s big project has been the Edible Schoolyard, an acre that Waters and the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley have transformed from cracked blacktop to lush garden of learning. It is a tool for social lessons as well as a sustainability demonstration garden for over 3000 students and countless visitors since the garden first sank its roots.

Edible Schoolyard documents this transformation as well as Waters’ journey with it as well as the many young lives that have been touched by the garden. It’s an amazing, beautiful story.

While the world looks to Barak Obama, Al Gore and (for crying out loud) Bono to save the planet, foodies know that, for real grassroots change, you don’t have to go much farther Alice Waters. Edible Schoolyard is a gorgeous literary documentary of a good idea.

Cooking for Two by Jessica Strand

It’s not that the idea behind Cooking for Two: Perfect Meals for Pairs (Chronicle Books) is so unique. In fact, lots of cookbooks have been published on this theme. Author Jessica Strand hits her mark perfectly, though, creating a book that will meet the needs of chefs at many levels.

And when Strands says Cooking for Two, she means it. She doesn’t just mean dinner for two or recipes for two, but rather food that you can build together, right down to a list of tips to ease the way for couples cooking.

Strand’s food choices are perfect, as well. From the complicated and time-consuming (Two Pizzas with Two Toppings would qualify as one -- or two -- of these. And the Chicken Tagine isn’t complicated, but there’s a bit of work involved) to recipes so simple, they practically make themselves (Antipasti Dinner for one. Quesadillas for another.) For the most part, though, the recipes are about medium in the complicated department. Easy for the accomplished home chef, challenging but not impossible for those less experienced in the kitchen. For example, the Poached Eggs with Prosciutto and Heirloom Tomatoes, Drizzled with Basil Oil offer a fantastic and easy alternative to the classic eggs benedict. And the Split Broiled Lobster with Lime Butter and Celery Root Remoulade is wonderfully simple and appropriately elegant, a wonderful choice for a romantic dinner for two.

With the current economic dust-up going full force, I think a lot of people will be looking for reasonable alternatives to the big night out this year. Jessica Strand’s Cooking for Two is a great and romantic alternative. Rush down to your independent bookstore pronto and demand your copy while there’s still time to arm yourself for Valentine’s Day.

New This Month: Surfing the Menu by Curtis Stone and Ben O’Donoghue

You don’t have to have seen the television series or be Australian to understand the delights of Surfing the Menu (Key Porter Books), a book by the co-hosts of a FoodTV hit show. A decade after Jamie Oliver wowed the world with his “Naked” presence, Curtis Stone and Ben O’Donoghue bring a similar fresh-faced hunkiness into their kitchens. In the book -- as in the series -- there is a travelogue element to the project. Together they explore Australia -- the kitchens and the backroads -- and combine it with their own experiences as professional chefs in order to bring us a book that is every inch worthy of all the attention it’s been getting.

In so many ways, Surfing the Menu is like a loveletter to Australia, a country most of the world longs to visit, but about which most of us really know very little.

If this material looks familiar, it’s because the book was published in Australia and the UK a few years ago. However this new one from Key Porter is the first published for the North American market.

Best Books of 2008: Cookbooks

The Complete Robuchon: French Home Cooking for the Way We Live Now by Joël Robuchon (Knopf) 832 pages
In a world full of glossy, high color cookbooks with shiny pages and mindless prose, The Complete Robuchon stands out. Here Joël Robuchon, a three star Michelin chef and arguably one of the most renowned chef/restaurateurs in the world -- passes on what he knows. And he knows a lot. This is not a book for everyone -- the fat content alone would preclude that. However, if you like your cookbooks -- and your food, for that matter -- old school and you love your Larousse Gastronomique (And, incidentally, Robuchon is on the committee for the newest edition) chances are you will appreciate what’s on offer here. If your tastes run to cooking tomes more glossy -- and if you expect photos of the meals you would concoct -- give this one a miss. -- Aaron Blanton

Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food by Gordon Ramsay (Key Porter) 256 pages
It’s possible that Gordon Ramsay is an acquired taste. At least, when I mention him, quite often the response I get is a roll of the eyes or a “oh: is he that very noisy guy?” And he is. At least, his television persona is tres noisy. But the fact is -- and this is even apparent when he’s yelling -- Gordon Ramsay is a wonderful chef. If you’ve not had the opportunity to witness this fact for yourself and especially if you enjoy cooking at home, you will see his simple brilliance in Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food. This is a cookbook for everyone, but especially those who don’t think they have enough time to prepare beautiful food for themselves and their families. Wonderfully designed, perfectly illustrated and literally stuffed with recipes even the greenest kitchen novice can follow, Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food is a book almost anyone can enjoy. Here Ramsay celebrates and shares what most accomplished chefs understand at an instinctive level: the very best food is very simple, very easy and very fast. -- Linda L. Richards

Great Chefs Cook Vegan by Linda Long (Gibbs Smith) 272 pages
Like many of the very best things in life, Great Chefs Cook Vegan grew out of an accident which led to an experiment which led to this fabulous book. Tired of being served plates of “unseasoned and overcooked vegetables,” vegetarian and veteran food writer and photographer Linda Long called ahead to two of New York’s top restaurants to warn there would be a vegan dining there on the evening of their reservation. “Will that be a problem?” she asked when she called ahead and was told by both Jean-Georges and davidburke & donatella that it would not be. The chefs at both restaurants, given fair warning, concocted beautiful meals that far exceeded Long’s expectations. “Not even a mention of a plate of vegetables!” she writes enthusiastically. Instead, four star meals that easily met her dining requirements and fulfilled her desires. This started Long on a journey of reserving and tasting and when she was impressed by the creative offerings of chef after chef, the next natural thought seemed to be to collect their creations in a book. “It was all getting too good to keep as a secret,” writes Long. “I should write a book!” To the potential delight of vegans everywhere, that’s just what she did, collecting offerings from 25 of the very top chefs in the United States including Charlie Trotter, Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Cat Cora and Gabriel Kreuther. Together they offer up a very complete cookbook of fabulous eats from appetizers straight through to dessert. Unsurprisingly, not a single dish will make you think of overcooked plates of vegetables. Fantastic! -- Sienna Powers

Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life by Jamie Oliver (Hyperion) 407 pages
It seems Jamie Oliver has come a very long way since his Naked Chef days. At least, that’s the feeling you get when you read through Jamie at Home. It is, in a way, a kinder, gentler Jamie. More: this new Jamie is all about the simpler things in life. As long as they taste good. “All I’ve done,” Oliver writes in his introduction, “is fallen in love with my garden, and with my veg patch in particular!” He goes on to write about hugging trees and being at the point in a man’s life where he becomes “one with Mother Nature.” And what do we get out of this? Well, you guessed it: a year’s worth of cooking seasonally, of thinking about where your food comes from and how it is grown and made and how it comes to market. And, of course, how best to prepare your (preferably organically and locally grown) food for optimum taste and absolute simplicity. At its heart, though, whatever we say about organics, this is a Jamie Oliver book and so the food -- and the food styling and the design in general -- are all up to a certain very high standard. But whatever else he brings, Oliver offers a very real and contagious love of food and a high level of skill in sharing his thoughts. From where I’m standing right now -- at the time in my own life when I’m enjoying cooking locally grown, organic ingredients in season -- this is Oliver’s best book thus far. High praise, indeed, as all of those I’ve seen have been just super. -- Linda L. Richards

Leith’s Simple Cookery by Viv Pidgeon and Jenny Stringer (Bloomsbury) 532 pages
Every era seems to inspire at least one timeless classic that helps home chefs build in their own kitchens the food that is popular in the wider world. Leith’s Simple Cookery brings to mind earlier classics: The Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gatronomique for starters. Simple, elegant books that are all about food, boiled as tightly down to its own essentials as the time in which it was published will allow. Leith’s Simple Cookery is a substantial, elegant volume. It has no pictures, but over 700 simple, easy-to-follow recipes for many of the things you are actually likely to want to make. The by-product of Leith’s School of Food and Wine in London, this is one of those desert island cookbooks. If you could only take one with you, you could do worse than Leith’s Simple Cookery. -- Aaron Blanton

Postcards from Portugal by Tessa Kiros (Whitecap Books) 760 pages
This is the whole package: a literary visit to a country via wonderful photos, a talented author’s carefully crafted musings and -- most important in a cookbook -- well considered recipes across the full table spectrum -- from essential basics of the cuisine to appetizers to dessert after a wonderful meal -- brilliantly photographed and shared with us in a way that is clear and easy to follow. Highlights for me: the Coffee Steak is so simple, anyone could prepare it. But the balance of flavors make for a memorable meal, especially with Batatas A Murro (squashed potatoes) on the side. I adored the Gratineed Mussels and think they may well become one of my cocktail party standards. (Elegant, relatively easy and inexpensive, even for a crowd.) And the Tuna or Sardine Pate, which I initially thought fairly bizarre, but now can’t get enough of. In all ways, Tessa Kiros’ Postcards from Portugal meets my criteria for a truly successful cookbook. -- Linda L. Richards

Turquoise: A Chef’s Travels in Turkey by Greg and Lucy Malouf (Chronicle Books) 356 pages
Turquoise is the perfect cookbook. It has everything. Perhaps more. A big, lush presentation, you can leave this one on a coffee table just to delight. Part travel memoir -- with wonderful photos -- part chef’s diary and part classic cookbook, I find it difficult to imagine the foodie that wouldn’t devour this book. In their native Australia, the Maloufs are a well known team when it comes to Middle Eastern food. That might be why they’ve gotten it really, really right here. The authors point out that Turquoise is not meant to be the final word on Turkish cooking. Those books already exist, they say. “In Turquoise we wish to share the story of our journey with you, to inspire you to learn more about this country and about the aromas, flavors and textures of its wonderful cuisine.” And they hit it perfectly. The memoir portions of the book are enchanting, well illustrated and just right. Meanwhile the recipes invite you back time and again. And, as promised, these include not only Turkish classics, but Greg’s modern interpretations for western markets and palates. -- Monica Stark

Holiday Gift Guide: Lost in the Supermarket: The Indie Rock Cookbook by Kay Bozich Owens and Lynn Owens

The whole premise behind Lost in the Supermarket: The Indie Rock Cookbook (Soft Skull Press) is so bizarre, it just has to be explored. “Moments, whether momentous or quotidian,” the authors tell us in their introduction, “are marked by how they combine music and food.”

Oh-kay.

And then later, “One of the initial draws of this project … was the hope that creativity was not limited to music and a recipe book might seem like an unlikely combination.”

You think? And yet how delicious (!) to have a recipe for Belle and Sebastian’s Thai Sweet Potato Soup or Bliss Blood’s Guacamole? How about an apple pie recipe from USAISAMONSTER? (Like a contradiction in terms, right?) or lemon curd tart from Bunny Brains? Never heard of Bunny Brains? I certainly hadn’t. But the authors set the whole thing up for us in this regard, as well, telling us that “their music is a shambling mess of noisy nihilism.”

Lost in the Supermarket is a lot of fun. More: it’s completely stuffed with really creative interpretations of food you might actually like to eat. “Use the recipes in this book to eat out less,” the authors advise. “Save your money for CDs, shows, books, a trip, whatever …. stay at home and cook, where you can serve and indulge yourself …. Save your cash, and rock out in your kitchen!”

Good advice from an innovative and surprisingly good cookbook. A must for the rock lover in your life.

Holiday Gift Guide: A Man’s Place is Behind the Bar by Tucker Shaw

The sentiment sounds oh-so sexist, but the execution is light and fun. “A good cocktail,” writes author Tucker Shaw, “carefully balanced and lovingly mixed, is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

Shaw does not bring a mixologist’s expertise to A Man’s Place is Behind the Bar (Chronicle Books), but rather, as restaurant critic for The Denver Post and an accomplished journalist, he appears to know what he likes as well as how to do the research to be able to share it. For instance, at one point he writes that “Most dedicated gin drinkers pooh-pooh the vodka martini, but I, a fairly dedicated gin drinker myself, don’t. Vodka, treated correctly, is crisp and clean in a way that hoary old gin never could be and for reasons I can’t explain, a fresh vodka martini always seems colder than gin.”

However, most of A Man’s Place is Behind the Bar is not about Shaw’s sterling prose. He wastes no time getting down to mixing. This is a great book for someone who actually would like to know the difference between collins and highball glasses (though I love his explanation of a shot glass: “Duh.”) and what is absolutely necessary for stocking the home bar. The wannabe home mixologist could do worse than A Man’s Place is Behind the Bar. A great idea to help mix things up during this holiday season.

Holiday Gift Guide: Food Festivals of Italy by Curti and Fraioli

This is the gift that the true foodie will enjoy for many years to come. More: this is the sort of book -- lush, over the top, practically decadent -- that is best served up as a gift. After all, Italian cookbooks are hardly in short supply. But Food Festivals of Italy: Celebrated Recipes from 50 Food Fairs (Gibbs Smith) takes things to a whole new level.

“We have yet to find anyone who believes us,” write the authors in their introduction, “but it was truly hard, demanding work to uncover, taste, and talk to the purveyors out of the most prized recipes at these various food festivals.” And we feel sorry for them, do we not?

The authors have gone to heroic lengths here -- they really have -- traveling the length and breadth of Italy on a quest to visit all the festivals they could find out about in order to share their findings with us. Artichoke Festival, Chile Pepper Festival, the National White Truffle Fair. Omelet Festival, Polenta Festival, Strudel, Muscat Wine and Vine Santo Festival. I get a little out of breath just thinking about it all.

And the book? The book is fantastic. The photographs rich and deep and either perfectly styled or wonderfully composed, as appropriate. The recipes are clear and interesting and good. I was tremendously excited to try Lumache con Basilico, an actual escargot recipe that was so easy, I almost did it again to make sure I hadn’t left anything out. (I had not.) For less adventurous guests, it would be tough to beat Mozzarella Impanata which is, basically, fried cheese. But the straight-forward instructions combined with an elegant yet rustic presentation make it a great recipe for those times when you want to impress while entertaining, yet not tire yourself out. Plus, again: fired cheese? What’s not to like?

For a gift or for a special treat for yourself, if any of the above has sounded appealing, you will not go wrong with Food Festivals of Italy.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Christmas Table by Diane Morgan

Regular January Magazine readers will be familiar with the work of Diane Morgan. Over the years, we’ve reviewed many of her books, including Grill Every Day, Salmon and Delicious Dips. Morgan’s books are of a bankable quality. Gorgeous photos and excellent production, of course. But also a consistently great range of recipes that are clear and easy-to-follow and that run that gamut from incredibly easy and intended for the everyday table, to complicated banquet meals that will challenge the best-equipped and prepared home chef.

The Christmas Table (Chronicle Books) is no exception. As befits both the topic and the season, there’s a rich baroque quality to the book. And, once again, the recipes fit into just about every place you’d expect, and a few besides. From Garlic and Herb-Rubbed Crown Roast of Pork to Macaroni and Cheese with Ham and from Eggnog Cheesecake with Candied Kumquats to Sake Oyster Shooters (and they may sound exotic, but -- truly -- nothing could be more simple) and from Bread Stuffing with Sausage, Apples, and Caramelized Onion to Christmas Kugel (hello!).

For my money, this is the book for the holiday table, 2008. Highly recommended.

Holiday Gift Guide: Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Guide 2009

Oz Clarke is one of the top wine writers in the world and his annual Pocket Wine Guide (Harcourt) has come to be a must-have for certain segments of the wine-drinking community.

Though at least certain aspects of the coming year might be lean, wine lovers can easily rationalize the purchase of Clarke’s reasonably priced little book as he goes out of his way to find not only the best wines, but also the best “World Class Wines That Don’t Cost the Earth” as well as “Top value Wines.” As well, he reports on producers and regions to watch.

Especially interesting this year is a section on the effect that climate change might have on wines and wine producers. He makes some interesting points, but concludes that the type of temperature change associated with global warming might well have us entering a “post-classic” era of wine production.

And as astute a wine writer as former actor Clarke has proven to be when it comes to international wines, potential readers with an interest in Canadian wines and wine production will want to give this one a wide berth: Canada doesn’t even rate its own section, but rather gets lumped in with “Other Wine Countries” between -- get this -- Bulgaria and China, both of which get a more intimate look than does Canada. In fact, of all the “Other Wine Countries” the one that gets the closest and most detailed look is England (Did I mention Clarke is a Brit?) which is just stupid: the United Kingdom produces more wine than only six countries: Syria, Malta, Panama, Lichtenstein, India and La Réunion. And don’t tell me it’s about quality: no one is running around claiming that Sussex wines beat the pants off… well… anyone.

Now all of that said, for many people, Clarke’s annual guide is an absolute must. For those people, Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Guide 2009 is a terrific gift.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Science of Good Food by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss

The Science of Good Food (Robert Rose) won’t be every home chef’s idea of a good time. However, if the foodie on your list loves the “why” as well as the “how”of cooking, he or she might be a great candidate for this astonishingly complete book.

After close reading, it appears to me that The Science of Good Food includes everything. Everything. There are over 1600 entries in a book that is paperback, yet very thick and surprisingly heavy. It’s a substantial volume. Pick a topic: it’s here. What it is about butter that makes cakes so tender. Exactly -- exactly -- what is hydrolyzed vegetable protein? What’s an emulsion? Irradiation? Milk? What should be done with mollusks, mustard greens and okra (though not in the same dish).

Information, recipes, myth busting and demystification, The Science of Good Food touches on every aspect of food, cooking, preparation and storage. An amazing book.

Holiday Gift Guide: The NFL Gameday Cookbook by Ray Lampe

With a name like The NFL Gameday Cookbook (Chronicle Books) you’d maybe think there wouldn’t be a lot to say. 150 recipes. Official NFL colors. Lotsa pictures. Add a football fan or six and some food and you’re ready to party, right?

In all fairness, though, the The NFL Gameday Cookbook is a lot more. In fact, it’s more than it has to be. First, the recipes are surprisingly varied. Sure there’s a lot of barbecue, but everywhere his name comes up, we’re told that author Ray Lampe is a.k.a. Dr. BBQ. He’s a multiple cookoff champion, has been “grilling professionally” for more than 20 years and is a columnist for Fiery Foods magazine. So Lampe knows BBQ. But he also knows football and food and it shows.

The NFL endorsees the book and, in a foreword, the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen says, “It’s a time-honored, football God-given inalienable right that cuts across every conceivable demographic -- the entitlement to stuff yourself silly while watching the game.” However, author Lampe manages to go beyond mere gourmandishness, delivering a truly well-rounded and carefully thought out cookbook. One doesn’t expect Sweet Potato Bread with Pecans; Vegetarian Chili; Lobster with Chili Lime Butter and Chocolate Martinis. The expected stuff is here as well. There’s lots of delicious barbecue as well as food clearly dedicated to testosterone heavy boys determined to have fun watching football while, as Eisen said, stuffing themselves silly. Turkey Gravy Sandwiches with Homemade Cranberry Sauce; Judy’s Double-Stuffed Cheeseburgers and Barbecued Bologna Sandwiches are just a few examples of those.

All in all, The NFL Gameday Cookbook is a terrific book that more than delivers on early promise. Lots of football and team information is well put together but never overshadows our real reason for being here: “It’s your party and you can have it any way you want! Just call it NFL game-day fusion cooking.”

Cookbooks: The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever by Beatrice Ojakangas

“Casseroles are making a comeback,” writes Beatrice Ojakangas in her introduction to The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever (Chronicle Books). And no wonder: the casserole can be like nature’s perfect food. Perfect for busy lifestyles and budget conscious chefs, casseroles are about as 2008 as can be imagined.

Unfortunately, the author completely misses the mark on the history of the casserole and its ancient origins. However, most readers probably won’t mind this as The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever includes over 500 recipes for just about any type of casserole imaginable, as well as a few that are definitely not considered casseroles at all, but are nice to see included in any case.

Those looking for a way to use holiday leftovers will find inspiration here: recipes for Turkey and Curried Rice Casserole, Turkey and Mushroom Casserole, Turkey and Wild Rice au Gratin, Turkey Breast Mole and others are all waiting here to help turn your post-holiday frown upside down. More importantly, following some of the author’s advice for the making ahead and freezing of casseroles could be life-changing for would-be home chefs who seldom find themselves with enough time or energy to cook.

Holiday Gift Guide: Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines by Shari Darling

Picture this: a full house at your place in the weeks leading up to the Big Holiday. You come out of the kitchen with a tray. And on that tray, Seared Scallop with a Pickled Ginger and Clementine Butter Sauce. And nestled next to it, a platter of Meatballs in Camembert Sauce that you put down on the table right next to the Chipotle Goat Cheese Dip with Bagel Wedges. And the whole place sighs. Oh heck, this is your fantasy: the whole place applauds. To be honest, though, Shari Darling would take it up a notch: she’d have the whole place moan.

The culinary orgasm is sometimes just a happy accident. As a home cook (I’m not a chef), I love to hear my guests moaning over my food and wine choices …. For many of us, provoking this sublime response in others is hit and miss. What if you could learn the science and art of causing the culinary orgasm by purposefully preparing hedonistic recipes and matching wines, and you could produce them on a consistent and frequent basis?

In Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines (Whitecap Books) Darling takes us there. Why appetizers instead of something more substantial? “Appetizers are indulgent and irresistible, risky and exciting. They’re sexy!” Are you sensing a theme here?

Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines will make a terrific present to yourself on your quest for unforgettable holiday entertaining, or to make a strong statement under someone’s tree. This might very well be one of those gifts that just keep on giving.

Review: The Complete Robuchon: French Home Cooking for the Way We Live Now by Joël Robuchon

Today in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews The Complete Robuchon: French Home Cooking for the Way We Live Now by Joël Robuchon. Says Leach:

Okay, so I’m a coddled, spoiled, Berkeley tree-hugger type of eater. Not only do my vegetables come from a farm, so does my meat. And though I pay slightly less for farm-driven, high-end organic food than I would at the market, that cheaper price comes at the expense of choice. For this year, tomatoes, corn, and fresh fava beans are a memory. The first acorn squash of the season rests in the fridge, awaiting transformation. Likewise, our monthly meat box offers no lamb or vitello (humanely raised calf), but we’re awash in ground beef, steak and two pounds of ground goat.

In other words, I am hamstrung -- albeit willingly -- by seasonality, a commitment to local eating, and the preparation of nightly meals (which often morph into the next day’s lunch).

Cookbooks, of course, are a tremendous source of creativity when faced with a pound of ground goat. So much the better if that cookbook is French. So it was I welcomed Rubochon’s 832 page missive into the house.

I was in for a few shocks to my delicate ecosystem.

The full review is here.

Review: The Book of New Israeli Food by Janna Gur

Today in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews The Book of New Israeli Food by Janna Gur. Says Leach:

To her credit, Gur doesn’t attempt to delve deeply into the complex cuisines of this tiny country. (For the bible on Jewish cuisine, see Claudia Roden’s magnificent Book of Jewish Food.) Instead, she gives us tastes, with explanations all along the way. For example, I had no idea why the many Israelis I know are all salad freaks. I learned that every meal -- including breakfasts and snacks -- includes some kind of salad, most often chopped cucumber, tomato, onion and garlic. The variations on this “Israeli Salad” are endless. I also learned why the Israelis I know are indifferent to red meat: Israel is not cattle country. Instead, the nation thrives on chicken, turkey and lamb. And eggplant. It’s safe to say Israelis view eggplants the way Americans view potatoes: a foodstuff as essential as water.

The full review is here.

Cookbooks: Everyday Raw by Matthew Kenney

Though a cookbook for raw foods might sound like an oxymoron -- or more -- the need for books with this particular bent are undeniable. Over the last decade, interest in raw food diets has increased a great deal. Proponents argue for a more pure, healthy lifestyle. That’s an argument we’re not going to get into: it’s outside the mandate of a review. However, clearly, if you are interested in a raw food diet and you don’t want to restrict yourself to a future filled with nothing but undressed salad greens, you’d better have a look around for a book by someone with some experience in preparing raw food diets and delivering them in a presentable and delectable way. Enter Matthew Kenney.

Kenney is a restaurateur and cookbook author whose burgeoning interest in the raw food diet has brought him an equal portion of growing fame. He’s appeared on the Today Show, on the Food Network and he has been nominated for the James Beard Rising Star Award. And though he hasn’t always cooked and written about raw food, it is in this area that he’s brewing up the largest part of his reputation.

Though I have an interest in alternative food lifestyles, I am not myself a raw food vegetarian, nor does the choice interest me greatly. (So much food, is what I’m more likely to say. So little time!) That said, if you were contemplating taking even part of your diet raw, Everyday Raw (Gibbs Smith) would not be an option: it would be a necessity. Kenney has gone to great lengths to develop raw food recipes that look and taste like “real” food. A cashew and lemon-based “sour cream” for instance, and a “feta cheese” made out of macadamia nuts. Those already embarked on their raw food journey will rejoice in Kenney’s creative desserts and starters.

A good book, filled with creative and well presented recipes. Everyday Raw is a must-have book for anyone interested in the raw foods vegetarian lifestyle.

New This Week: Serve the People by Jen Lin-Liu

“In cooking class, I learned a startling array of things. Eating fish head will repair your brain cells. Spicy food is good for your complexion. Monosodium glutamate is best thrown in a dish just before it comes off the wok. Americans are fat because they eat bread, while Chinese are slim because they eat rice. If you work as a cook in America for three years, you can come back to China and buy a house.”

Jen Lin-Liu was a Fullbright scholar and is a food critic and the co-author of Frommer’s Beijing. And though Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Harcourt) would be engaging at any time, with the Olympics just moments away, it moves from interesting foody travel book to one of the must-reads of the season.

Even if you plan to get no closer to Beijing than your television, Serve the People will fill in some of the blanks with a great deal of style. Not only does Lin-Liu know this material, she can cook and she can write.

Serve the People is terrific. It might change your view of China, in a good way. And just in the nick of time.

Review: Dishing With the Kitchen Virgin by Susan Reinhardt

Today in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Mary Ward Menke reviews Dishing With the Kitchen Virgin by Susan Reinhardt. Says Menke:

The writer who Booklist called the “modern-day, Southern-fried Erma Bombeck or Dave Barry” has done it again with Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin. Susan Reinhardt’s third book (Not Tonight, Honey: Wait Til I’m a Size 6 and Don’t Sleep With a Bubba Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs were numbers one and two) is another hilarious endeavor for the syndicated humor columnist born and raised in the South, whose talents apparently don’t carry over into the kitchen.

In Reinhardt’s words, Dishing with the Kitchen Virgin:

“… is the book for all of us who have felt guilty because our pot holders don’t have the burn marks of a real kitchen queen, whose pans aren’t scratched and half-scorched from overuse, whose Cuisinart has never been taken from the box and even still sports the old, yellowing bows from the Land of Unwanted & Unopened Wedding Gifts including Salad Shooters and Chop Wizards.”

The true audience is much wider, though. The book will appeal to kitchen virgins and trollops alike, as well as those who enjoy (or not) the results of their efforts and those who just want a good laugh.

The full review is here.

As Seen on TV: Top Chef: The Cookbook

Food porn enthusiasts will be interested in taking a peek at Top Chef: The Cookbook (Chronicle Books), a book that ends up being a lot more interesting in concept than it is in actuality.

Top Chef: The Cookbook is a strange combination of things. There are stills from the television series and a floor plan of the official Top Chef kitchen. We get to see their pantry, read about their staples, see the judge’s table which is followed -- naturally enough -- by detailed bios of the judges and others involved with the show, including contestants.

Then the food portion of the book, which is designed and styled more like an 80s cookbook aimed at the amateur chef than anything else.

Some of the food looks terrific and those who followed the show closely will almost certainly be pleased to find recipes for some of the things they saw on television. However, along with the interesting recipes, there are a few for things that should just never go together. Tempura Vegetables and Mozzarella with Cornichon Mayonnaise, for example. (Isn’t there a law against that?) Or things too fiddly and silly to contemplate: like Poached Baby Manilla Clams over Grilled Sea Beans. Life is just too short.

The fact that the book is based entirely on a television show would seem to me to limit the book’s appeal. After all, how many people actually watched the show? Facts prove me wrong, though: Top Chef: The Cookbook has been hitting the bestseller lists pretty much since it was published in mid-March.

Martin Yan’s China

With the summer Olympics bearing down on us with lightening speed, there’s just enough time to get our culinary ducks in a row -- and not crispy duck, either -- in order to have local favorites at our fingertips while watching the Beijing games on television.

I understand that this is not the point of Martin Yan’s China (Chronicle Books), a wonderful and complete book by a well known author and television personality. If regional Chinese cooking expertly parsed for western markets and kitchens is what you’re after, you’d have a tough time going wrong with one of Yan’s many books. But this one, even more than the others I’ve seen, seems to embrace the fierce simplicity that characterizes the best of Chinese cooking. Bold flavors and colors, fresh ingredients and straight-forward explanations of techniques and foods that may be unfamiliar to some western chefs.

This is a really wonderful book. One of my favorite cookbooks thus far this year. Very good photographs are included throughout: not just great food and food styling, either but National Geographic-quality photos of a country currently undergoing great change. In all ways, Martin Yan’s China seems an important companion for those two weeks this summer when you’ll be glued to your television.

The Battle for Wine and Love by Alice Feiring

While the book is ostensibly about how wine writer Alice Feiring has been fighting back against the Robert Parker’s of the wine world (“How I saved the world from Parkerization,”) there’s more to The Battle For Wine and Love (Harcourt) than meets the eye. Most important of these is the fact that this is the memoir of a fabulously talented writer.

“When my world was still innocent,” Feiring tells us at the very beginning of chapter one, “I was drinking Manischewitz mixed with seltzer, but by the time my father ran off after a neighbor’s wife, I was drinking the partially fizzy Mateus.”

Earlier still, in the introduction, she lets us know about her mission. “When it comes to wine and love, I get attached. So when I realized that certain wines I had relied on and lusted after were disappearing from the universe, I lost sleep. In ingested. I sulked …. I could always find a different shade of lipstick, but there is no substitute for real wine or profound love.”

If, like Feiring , you view the world through taste-studded lenses, you’ll like The Battle For Wine and Love. It’s a beautiful journey with strong motivations and some great sub-plots.

Cookbook: Memphis Blues Barbecue House by George Siu and Park Heffelfinger

When you think of Vancouver, just about the last thing that comes to mind is classic Southern barbecue. And vice versa. Two things that, quite rightly, have no business being mentioned together. Maybe that’s exactly why the barbecue cookbook by the proprietors of what is probably Canada’s most successful barbecue restaurant is really quite good: the great barbecue they make at their award-winning restaurant was hard won. They have no family memories of this type of cuisine, no recipes from Aunt Delia to fall back on. On a trip to Memphis, they tried barbecue, fell in love then decided to import their new passion to Vancouver.

I’ve been to their restaurants on several occasions and though, strictly speaking, it’s not my kind of food, I still managed to choke a fair bit of it down. It’s wonderful. And it transports. Vancouver is stuffed with restaurants doing all sorts of Pan Asian and West Coast natural and Mediterranean types of food. But barbecue -- real barbecue? Not so much.

In bringing barbecue to Vancouver George Siu and Park Heffelfinger had to learn everything about the cuisine from the ground up. This translates to their book, Memphis Blues Barbecue House: Bringin’ Southern BBQ Home (Whitecap Books) as well. Everything here is clear and lucid and amazingly easy to follow. The type is large, the writing clear, the ingredients lists mostly surprisingly short. They break down cuts of meat, types of barbecue and even discuss “home barbecue rigs,” an important section if you’re going to try this at home. Not feeling brave enough to give up your gas barbecue? There’s still lots here for you: sauces and sides, salads and cornbread and even dessert. Vegetarians might want to give the book -- and the restaurant -- a pass, though. If Southern barbecue is anything, it’s a celebration of meat: even when administered by Canadians on a mission.

Review: Around the World in 80 Dinners by Cheryl and Bill Jamison

Today in January Magazine’s biography section, Diane Leach reviews Around the World in 80 Dinners by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Says Leach:

Cheryl and Bill Jamison are best known for their numerous cookbooks, many focused on grilling and outdoor cookery. As an urban dweller lacking a barbeque, I’d never read much of their work, and looked forward to their travelogue, a jaunt from Bali to Brazil celebrating their 20th anniversary.

I was sorely disappointed. What could be an informative, amusing journey though oft-neglected spots -- been to New Caledonia lately? -- is instead a slog through miserably bad writing interspersed with flat attempts at humor and a more than few trumpetings of the Jamison horn.

The full review is here.

New in Paperback: The Pleasures of Slow Food by Corby Kummer

When The Pleasures of Slow Food (Chronicle Books) was first published back in 2002, elements that now, in 2008, have become a torrent were just a teensy little trickle. That is to say that Atlantic Monthly senior editor Corby Kummer’s celebration of the slow food movement will make more sense to more people now than it ever could have even six years ago.

If you’ve missed the Slow Food movement so far, you won’t for long: it’s coming at us fast and picking up steam, and dovetailing into other somewhat connected changes in the way we, as a culture, think about food.

To get an oversimplified picture of just what Slow Food is about, think about everything you know about the fast food industry… then imagine the opposite. That’s Slow Food. In Kummer’s words, “Slow Food is anything that uses ingredients carefully raised and tended and that tastes of where it’s from. Most important, it bears the stamp of the hands and the kitchen that made it.” In a way, even that is an oversimplification, but Kummer’s book covers it all in detail: the where, the when, the how and why. It’s lucid, well charted and even more than all of that implies.

It would have been enough to tell us about Slow Food: to explain it to us and let us know what’s good about it and why -- and if -- we should incorporate Slow Food into our own lives. But Kummer goes one better, incorporating a really useful and well-rounded recipe section that most serious home chefs will find of interest. In fact, more than half of The Pleasures of Slow Food is devoted to actually cooking. And though, clearly, you don’t need to follow Slow Food directives to make Baked Cheese with Winter Herbs or Soft Shell Crab Bisque or even Risotto Wrapped in Cabbage Leaves, the sprit of Slow Food envelopes all of these recipes and instructs us, in a way, better than even well-crafted words ever could.

Review: Out of the Frying Pan by Gillian Clark

Today in January Magazine’s biography section, Diane Leach reviews Out of the Frying Pan by Gillian Clark. Says Leach:

Clark, chef/owner of Washington D.C.’s Colorado Kitchen, had an immensely interesting book in her. Unfortunately for us, she didn’t write it, opting instead for a candy-floss memoir comparing the challenges of single parenthood to the brutalities of professional cooking.

Don’t get me wrong. Clark is a highly intelligent, educated woman who left a career in marketing to pursue her love of cooking, putting herself through culinary school in her early 30s. Anybody with the guts to do that deserves kudos. When that somebody has two small daughters and a hard-drinking husband soon off the scene, more power to her. But instead of digging deeply into the experience of being a female chef -- challenge enough in the masculine world of professional cooking -- she focuses on what readers of cookery memoirs will recognize as the usual suspects: shady investors, drug-addled cooks, sous chefs who honed their knife skills in prison.

The full review is here.

Cookbooks: Betty’s Best by Betty Rohde

In the steam-ahead 1990s, Betty Rohde gained her reputation writing low fat cookbooks for body conscious home chefs. Now, as the turbulent first decade of the 21st century head towards its close, Rohde delivers a book that is in some ways exactly opposite those low fat books, but that capture the cookbook zeitgeist just as precisely.

The back cover of Betty’s Best: Simple Comfort Food from Grandma’s Kitchen (Gibbs Smith) sums it up so finely, there is no mistaking the direction we’re being led: “Bake, fry, and roast your way to childhood dinners spent around the table with family.”

The subtext seems clear: Yes, there is a war on. Yes, we’ve never paid so much for gasoline. And, yes, people are losing their homes even while politicos prepare themselves for the ultimate dance. But look: Ham and Cheese Breakfast Casserole. Candied Sweet Potatoes. Chicken and Dumplings. Meatloaf. Pot Roast. Mock Apple Pie.

If you’re going to call it anything, call it what it is: American food that would be recognizable as such by almost anyone you served it to, anywhere in the world.

It seems to me that Betty’s Best is not without a message, quite beyond all the simple and easy-to-prepare food: the world may be going to hell in a hand basket, but comfort can be had right here.

Cookbooks: Grill Every Day and Patio Daddy-O at the Grill

For the busy household with no extra time for fussing in the kitchen, the importance of grilling food can not be overstated. Though it’s possible to spend a lot of time preparing the food that will end up on your grill, as Diane Morgan shows us in Grill Every Day (Chronicle Books), quite often the very best foods are the simplest to prepare.

Take, for example, Lemongrass-Grilled Lamb Loin Chops. Basically, you get the grill hot, massage the chops with pre-prepared lemongrass paste, grill four minutes per side for medium-rare and -- voila -- a meat course for four.

But wait: man (and woman) does not live by meat course alone. There are loads of great vegetable and starch recipes for the grill here, as well. Some of them just as simple. Asparagus Spears would be a natural with those lamb chops. The book has us grab 28 spears, prep as instructed, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper, grill and -- voila again! -- dinner is served.

Grill Every Day is a great book. Subtitled 125 Fast-Track Recipes for Weeknights at the Grill, the recipes here range from super easy to super, duper impressive and accommodate every taste and food restriction. I’ve seen a lot of grilling books in my time. Grill Every Day ranks with the best of them.

The same can not be said for Patio Daddy-O at the Grill (Chronicle Books) by Gideon Bosker, Karen Brooks and Tanya Supina. A sequel to a seminal food and lifestyle book published in the mid-1990s, Patio Daddy-O at the Grill offers up the same self-conscious cool that the original Patio Daddy-O brought to the table, only now it feels like more of the same: only with fire.

Lines like, “At heart, every guy is a pyromaniac, and the outdoor pit is where you get away with it,” seemed funny in 1996. Now it just seems tired. “Don’t get hung up on designer grills. A grill is just a grill.” Yeah, yeah. You see what I mean?

Ditto the art, which is sharp, well done, yet seems not to have evolved very far from the original. Most painful, I think, is that there has been a cookbook revolution over the last dozen years but you can’t tell from Patio Daddy-O at the Grill. Recipes seem overly wordy and even simple things are much more complicated then they need to be.

If you can work your way through all of that, a few of these recipes are absolutely top-notch. I really love the Tropical Fruit Salsa Tuna Sticks: and they’re not as difficult to prepare as would first appear to be the case. And the Emergency Grilled Pound Cake Extravaganza is very good… you can just call it something else.

Cookbooks: Postcards from Portugal by Tessa Kiros

If I were going to dream up a an author of rich and gorgeous cookbooks with international flair, her background would look just like this: I’d have her born in London, for the flavors you can find there. (So many. And from everywhere.) I’d stick needles in a globe and say her mother should be from Finland and her father? Let’s make him a Greek-Cypriot. Then, when she was just a little kid, I’d have the whole family pack and move to… let’s say South Africa, just to blend still more flavors into the mix.

Tessa Kiros is, of course, the author described. She is at an early point in her career. Three previous books have been well received and widely acclaimed: Twelve, Falling Cloudberries and Apples for Jam. But Postcards from Portugal (Whitecap) is showstopping and though we’re only in the four month of 2008, I can’t imagine that it won’t be one of my picks for best of the year.

This is the whole package: a literary visit to a country via wonderful photos, a talented author’s carefully crafted musings and -- most important in a cookbook -- well considered recipes across the full table spectrum -- from essential basics of the cuisine to appetizers to dessert after a wonderful meal -- brilliantly photographed and shared with us in a way that is clear and easy to follow.

Highlights for me: the Coffee Steak is so simple, anyone could prepare it. But the balance of flavors make for a memorable meal, especially with Batatas A Murro (squashed potatoes) on the side. I adored the Gratineed Mussels and think they may well become one of my cocktail party standards. (Elegant, relatively easy and inexpensive, even for a crowd.) And the Tuna or Sardine Pate, which I initially thought fairly bizarre, but now can’t get enough of.

In all ways, Tessa Kiros’ Postcards from Portugal meets my criteria for a truly successful cookbook.

Further Adventures in Search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal

In this gorgeously produced and surprisingly thick book, Blumenthal looks at the preparation of exactly eight dishes: hamburger; fish pie; chicken tikka masala; risotto; peking duck; chilli con carne; baked alaska and trifle. However, he looks at the them so closely, there are times that they probably want to squirm. Blumenthal’s risotto, for example, takes only about 35 minutes to prepare... once you’ve dealt with the 10 hours of prep time required to make it in his way. While it’s likely that very (very, very) few people will make risotto in exactly the way Blumenthal recommends, on the way to the recipes, you’ll learn an awful lot about rice and starch and many other things you’ve probably never considered deeply until now.

Picking off where he left off in 2006’s In Search of Perfection, Further Adventures in Search of Perfection (Bloomsbury), Blumenthal goes to excessive (some would be say crazy ass) lengths to deconstruct a handful of favorites. “Ultimately,” writes Blumenthal, “that’s what this book is about the excitement and enjoyment of discovering new routes to the cooking of old favorites.”

The routes are extreme, to say the very, very least. For example, in order to determine if marinades actually do tenderize meat, at one point Blumenthal sticks chicken breasts into an MRI (this on the road to finding the perfect chicken tikka masala). If you’ve seen him on television, you know that some of the effort he goes through in his endless search for the perfection is… well… a little silly. Same here. But, at the same time, it’s a deeply interesting tour through a surprising number of ingredients and techniques by a man whose internationally acclaimed restaurant -- Fat Duck -- and OBE attest to the passion he brings to his quest.

“Increasingly,” Blumenthal writes, “I’ve realised that culinary perfection means not only mastery of technique, but also consideration of the sensory and psychological aspects of a dish.” If that’s a line that hits you where you live, you will love Further Adventures in Search of Perfection.

Review: Shellfish: The Cookbook by Karen Barnaby

Today in January Magazine’s cookbook section, Linda L. Richards looks at Shellfish: The Cookbook by Karen Barnaby. Says Richards:

The title of Karen Barnaby’s ninth cookbook puts me in mind of the first time I encountered this chef’s food. It was my first visit to Vancouver’s Fish House in Stanley Park and it was deep in the 1990s. In retrospect, at the time Barnaby could only have been executive chef there for a couple, three years, at most. I ordered the cioppino, a special favorite of mine and one I’ve discovered is a good test of a chef whose work is new to you. It seems to me that a cioppino will show you something of a chef’s soul.

When my cioppino arrived that first night it took my breath away. For starters it was, quite simply, the loveliest food that had ever been set in front of me. At a glance it all looked perfectly cooked. But more: it was artfully presented. It was beautiful. Eating it brought no disappointments. I instructed my server to send compliments to the chef and after a while Barnaby appeared at our table. I supplicated accordingly, telling her just what I felt: that no one had ever served me food quite so lovely. She took these compliments as was her due: pleasantly but without surprise. One got the feeling she’d heard these effusions before.

The full review is here.

Holiday Treats: Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes

Almost everyone knows that the true meaning of Easter is… chocolate. (If this interpretation shocks you, you’ve seriously come to the wrong place.)

A lifetime of Easter Creme Eggs; of annual garden hunts for chocolate treats of various description; of family meals focused on all sorts of action, but hinged on a chocolate-laden dessert has taught many of us everything we need to know about Easter: the holiday is the celebration of spring in many cultures and it culminates in the exchange and enjoyment of that sweet, dark, sensuous treat.

The beauty of this reading of the holiday is obvious: if Easter is really about chocolate, there is no religious axe to grind, no debts to pay, nothing to prove. There is only the celebration, and chocolate is on our minds. And if all of this is true, there is no better book for this particular celebration than Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes (Kyle Books), first published (to great fanfare) in 2004, now available in a revised edition. If you’re a chocolate fan, or even have a strong sweet tooth, a single trip through the book will push all the other Easter silliness right out of your head. Perhaps for good.

My favorite recipe for the season is Mayan Gold Stolen. This is rich, decadent, beautiful: dried fruit, marzipan, yeast dough and chocolate and chocolate and chocolate. I was blown away by the easy no-bake elegance of Konditor & Cook’s Chocolate Cookie Cake. The over-the-top complication of Sunday Chocolate Cake (complicated enough, I admit, that I’ve not tried this one: just drooled over it).

And though the sweet’s are the highlight, it would be possible (a stretch, but possible) to do your entire Easter menu from these pages: especially if you’re not that into vegetables. How about Swedish Chocolate Coffee Lamb; Italian Venison Agrodolce or Mole Poblano de Guajolote (dark chile, nut and chocolate mole with turkey)?

The book is beautifully executed and while the recipes aren’t necessarily for beginning cooks, all of them are manageable.

Not a Peep

I was recently washed away in a brightly colored flood of fun by Peeps!: Recipes and Crafts to make With Your Favorite Marshmallow Treat (Chronicle Books). Let’s face it: this is a ridiculous book. In a world of serious cookbooks filled with recipes for all sorts of important and self-important foods, who needs a book on what to do with those weird marshmallow treats you possibly haven’t thought about since childhood? Yet Peeps! Is a merry blast of happy colors tinted all the more bright by nostalgia.

If you do not know what Peeps are, I am not going to explain them, but these people can. Calling them “sugar dusted chicks and bunnies” really doesn’t quite cover it, yet that’s just what they are. And though Peeps! tells us the confection has been around since the 1950s, like the author, I strongly associated them with the mad sugar rush that was growing up in the 1970s. The author sums this up quite sharply:

Like most kids in the 1970s, I had a sweet tooth that could not be sated. The sweeter – and more brightly colored – the better, was my motto.

And, certainly, Peeps fit that bill on all counts.

So it’s one thing to wax poetic about an odd confection from your childhood. After all, no matter where or when you grew up, you certainly have one of those. But to write a whole cookbook about it? That’s another thing altogether. And yet, here we are.

And so we have Peeps Fondue (bring on the chocolate), Peeps Affogato (bring on the espresso) and even Peeps in a Blanket (bring on the crepes). A different section brings us crafts featuring Peeps, including a Peeps printed tote, a Peepiñata (I’m not even going to explain. I don’t need to) and a Sugar Cookie Peeps Coop.

As I said earlier, this is a ridiculous book. It works, though. And it only works because author Charity Ferreria has the food and creative chops to pull it off. Her projects -- both food and craft -- are often sweet but never to the point of cloying and even if you don’t, for instance, care one whit about a Garland of Peeps or a Peeps Wedding Cake Topper, you can’t help but admire the panache with which she puts together these Peepsish dreams.

Review: Good Food Tastes Good by Carol Hart

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Good Food Tastes Good by Carol Hart. Says Leach:

Where the self-help market was once awash in love books -- how to fall in, how to fall out, how to survive or thrive, we are now deluged with treatises dwelling on another unavoidable human pastime: eating. The average reader cannot walk into a bookshop, open a paper, or log online without falling over the latest gastronomic advice. Eat organic. Eat local. Eat low-fat. No butter! Margarine is poisonous! Eat carbs. Avoid carbs. No sugar! No red meat! Eat more leafy greens, except the bagged ones contaminated by e.coli. Eat more fish, but memorize your Monterey Bay Aquarium do’s and don’ts card, lest you buy fish nearing extinction, high in mercury, or otherwise toxic.

No question about it: food is a fraught issue.

Science writer Carol Hart enters the fray with Good Food Tastes Good. She contends that Americans are conditioned to ignore fresh, tasty foods in favor of boxed, canned, ultraprocessed products manufactured by a handful of megacorporations. The evil media has drilled into us that fresh foods like spinach or peas are just plain yucky, that the fresh ham from your local farmer is bad for you (ham fat!), that life is better if you never cook at all. Off you go to Food Mart, where, ever gullible, you buy wilted, sprayed produce shipped from Chile or February’s pallid greenhouse tomatoes.

The full review is here.

Holiday Gift Guide: Cookbooks

Eat, Drink & Be Vegan: Everyday Vegan Recipes Worth Celebrating by Dreena Burton (Arsenal Pulp Press) 243 pages
You don’t have to actually be a vegan to enjoy Dreena Burton’s cookbooks and to make them a part of your usual kitchen library. This is healthy, nutritious cooking suitable for a family or anyone interested in eating for optimum health. So, OK: all of that you can get other places, as well. The magic that Burton weaves into her cookbooks is that she treats food in a sane and normal way and prepares her delicious and completely vegan family meals without fanfare or weird and convoluted steps and preparations. The resulting food looks more like what some kids (and even adults) insist on calling “normal food” than anything you’ve ever seen come from a vegan kitchen. And so you have Pumpkin Cheese Pie (made with soy cheese) and Rosemary Cornmeal Polenta Fries, there are all manner of curries and pestos and soups and stews. This is healthy eating, simply enough told that even the most amateur of chefs can follow Burton’s healthy and delicious recipes.

Fire Hall Cooking with Jeff the Chef: Surefire Recipes to Feed Your Crew by Jeff Derraugh (Touchwood Editions) 230 pages
In his introduction to Fire Hall Cooking, cookbook author and genuine fire guy tells a story that illustrates exactly where his head -- and his heart -- are at. Derraugh tells of putting in a shift at a firehall across town from his own. Someone called the guys for breakfast, and they all descended, fire guy style, to tuck in. Someone asked how many pieces of bacon each man was allowed. The cook responded “Nine.” And when Derraugh restrained himself, someone asked if he could have Derraugh’s. “That man had 14 pieces of bacon,” Derraugh writes. “That’s why our fire trucks now carry defibrillators, so that we can jump-start each other after we send that breakfast barge of cholesterol to our hearts.” So here’s what we can understand about this author: he knows from feeding hungry guys, he is concerned about health, he likes variety. And, additionally, he’s funny and he can write. The recipes in Fire Hall Cooking are mostly solid, well thought out versions of classic dishes, though some of them have been given funny names. (Funky Fire Hall Chili, Mozzasaurus Chicken, Scorchin’ Lasagna and so on.) This is a fun cookbook with lots of easy-to-follow recipes featuring the type of food most families will enjoy.

Gentleman’s Relish: And Other English Culinary Oddities (National Trust Books) 143 pages
For such a tiny book -- and it really is tiny -- Gentleman’s Relish packs a very solid punch. The introduction explains the book slightly: “The recipe for Patum Perperium, The Gentleman’s Relish®, has remained a closely guarded secret from the moment it was first devised by John Osborn in 1828. Since then this unique blend of anchovies, butter, herbs and spices has become established as one of the quintessential treats enjoyed by British gentlemen all over the world.” While the book never does get around to telling us how to make Gentleman’s Relish (I suppose some things are best left secret, after all) many other things are explained. Actually -- and again -- a surprising number of things, considering the diminutive dimensions of the book. For example, traditional recipes for Tipsy Cake, fudge, butterscotch, Mulligatawny Soup, pickled walnuts, kedgeree, bakewell tart, shepherd’s pie, barley water, spotted dick and many other things that a gentleman’s table had best not be without. Some items -- kippers, porridge, chelsea buns, boar’s head and good old gentleman’s relish itself, to name just a very few -- don’t include recipes, just information about the thing and how it fits into a proper gentlemen’s style of life. A well executed little book that would easily fit into a stocking, were one so inclined.

Menus from an Orchard Table by Heidi Noble (Whitecap Books) 320 pages
Heidi Noble’s first cookbook is a stunning personal reflection of her culinary art. While you can read about the 100 mile diet in other books, here we see it not mentioned, but certainly -- in most regards -- in action. There is nothing not to love in Menus from an Orchard Table, from Noble’s passionate and single-focused view of food, her artistic and uncompromised application, original recipes properly shared and wonderful and appetizing photographs by Chris Mason Stearns. My highlights: these two altered the course of summer 2007 for me. Noble’s Red Onion and Thyme Tarte Tatin and her Chickpea Soup with Fontina Finished with Lovage Pesto. -- Aaron Blanton

My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals by Melanie Dunea (Bloomsbury) 218 pages
The structure and execution of My Last Supper is such that it’s perfect for this particular roundup of books. While it makes a fabulous gift -- it’s impressive, interesting, lovely -- I can’t imagine too many people actually purchasing it for themselves. And again, it’s impressive, but who needs to impress themselves? What we have here are themed photos by Melanie Dunea, whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Town & Country, Gourmet and many other magazines known for gorgeous photos and good ideas. Here Dunea asks 50 of the -- bar none -- top chefs in the world what sort of vittles they’d fix themselves if they were on their way out the big door. She publishes their replies without comment, accompanied by a striking, creative photo of each. Then, in a separate section, she hits the highlights of the last stated meals with a recipe or two from the final menu of each chef. And so you have Raymond Blanc talking about “something humble and simple” and Scott Conant “seated at a large table, covered with platters, spending time with the ones I love,” and Tyler Florence with “a great New Orleans jazz band playing a dirge” while on the table there’s “No froufrou French. No snout-to-tail. No fucking foie gras. On the table would be the classic Southern feast of my childhood.” But don’t take my opening words here as a negative criticism: the very fact that My Last Supper is so impractical and lush that few people would buy it for themselves makes it a fabulous gift for the foodie in your life.

New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia (Arsenal Pulp Press, 215 pages)
Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia met in Nice, at a restaurant where both were working in the kitchen. In the foreword to New World Provence, Dominique LeStanc, the chef and owner of Nice’s La Merenda touchingly tells their story. At the time LeStanc was chef de cuisine at an important hotel in Nice. LeStanc hired the passionate young French chef, son of an accomplished chef, Suzanne Quaglia. Not long after, she hired a young Canadian chef, named Alessandra. LeStanc noticed they shared similar sensibilities about food. “Their chemistry flourished,” writes LeStanc, “and soon they were never apart.” In 1997, five years after leaving Nice, they opened Provence Mediterranean Grill in Vancouver. A few years later, they followed up the neighborhood bistro with the posher Provence Marinaside. The restaurants, and the Quaglias (four of them now: the couple have two young sons) continue to flourish. But all of this is, in a sense, backstory and you don’t need to know any of it to enjoy New World Provence, a cookbook that, like the Quaglias, takes old world Provence-style cooking and retools it for North American markets and sensibilities: that is to say, the fare is lighter and more health conscious than the traditional versions might be, yet without loss of substance or flavor. A neat trick. A few of the recipes from the book have become fast favorites -- the Coco Bean and Wild Mushroom Ragout was comforting and surprisingly delicate, the Bouillabaisse was so easy, it practically made itself, the whole section on sauces alone makes the book worthwhile: all the classics, lucidly shared -- but everything looks wonderful. And everything we tried was a success.

Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson (Hyperion) 391 pages
Oh, Nigella. My love. My fantasy chef. If there’s one woman out there who represents everything there is to love about the world, it’s Nigella Lawson. Food goddess and self-proclaimed purveyor of food porn. This is Lawson’s sixth book of recipes, and everything looks good enough to eat. Arranged into somewhat arbitrary chapters -- why does Blackberry Crisp belong in Workday Winners rather than Razzle Dazzle? -- you’ll find appetizers, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, you name it. We’re talking about Caramel Croissant Pudding. We’re swooning over Pear and Ginger Muffins and Warm Potato Salad. We’re salivating over Roly-Poly Pudding, Broccoli and Stilton Soup and Caribbean Creams. As in all her books, Nigella’s signature style comes popping through in her highly dramatic and full-on delicious writing. Frankly, she writes just like she talks, in prose peppered (if you will) with allusion, alliteration and all-consuming (if you will again) passion. This new book is a confection of splendid ideas, and I defy you not to fly to the market to get some key ingredients the moment you open it. Nigella, I pray you read this. And after you’re done with whatever you’re making, that you let me lick the bowl. -- Tony Buchsbaum

River Cottage Handbook No. 1: Mushrooms by John Wright (Bloomsbury) 256 pages
River Cottage Handbook No. 1 is a wonderful book. I can’t imagine I will ever part with it. And, in the autumn, if you find me out of doors anywhere near my home, I’ll likely have the Handbook somewhere on me: in a good-sized pocket, or a medium-sized bag. That is, it’s small enough to be a field guide, but not as ridiculously small as some where you can’t really get a proper look. I should explain: though I imagine there will be over River Cottage handbooks, at present as far as I know, there is just the one. And it’s on mushrooms. But it isn’t just another mushroom book: it is the mushroom book I’ve always dreamed about but did not, as far as I know, exist before. That is, it’s like a field guide that concerns itself only with edible species as well as the few poisonous species that look like edibles. (Which, arguably, is just as important.) There’s also a very strong cookbook component, just in case you find a bunch of wild edibles and then don’t know what to do with them. Most of the recipes are simple, some are ingenuous and many would work with plain old get-them-at-the-market button mushrooms. The photos are all very good, as are the reproductions and, as far as I can tell, there are no color shifts. In other words, when you find them in the wild, they look just like the mushrooms in the book. (A no-brainer you say? Yet it’s not always the case.) I don’t know where River Cottage is, though I’m guessing the UK, since it’s obviously an Anglo book. However I live on the west coast of North America and recognized almost all the species mentioned. The habitats and seasons worked, as well. And, finally, I would imagine there will be a River Cottage Handbook No. 2 through some higher number and, when there is, I also imagine it will cover what it sets out to very well. But, honestly? I’m good to go. I’ve got my field guide to edibles and some new recipes: let me know when it’s morel season. Maybe we’ll talk then. -- Linda L. Richards

Review: Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Today, in January Magazine’s non-fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. Says Leach:

The adage of making silk purses from sow’s ears has lost its oomph for a generation of foodies raised on Fergus Henderson. Instead we might say a crispy pig ear salad cannot be got from the frozen foods section. So it is with Jenni Ferrari-Adler’s anthology, which borrows both concept and title from the late, great Laurie Colwin’s essay, which you can find in the magnificent Home Cooking. If you haven’t read Home Cooking, or its sequel, More Home Cooking, I suggest you drive to your nearest independent bookseller and purchase both books immediately. Now. This minute.

The full review is here.

Review: The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

Today, in January Magazine’s biography section, January contributing editor Diane Leach reviews The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones. Says Leach:

Judith Jones hails from another era, one where garlic-fearing bluebloods hired cooks who served fish on Fridays and no upright person consumed French food, a cuisine that, with all those sauces, surely had something to hide. Daughters, after educations at Spence and Barnard, were expected to make good marriages and carry on the family lineage. Jones managed to escape this almost-forgotten mold, moving to Paris after college, where she hung out with an artistic crowd who loved foods that gave her mother fits: oysters (which, young Jones assures writes her parents, “had no ill effects”), entrecote, chicken liver pate, and the unpasteurized cheeses still widely feared on North American shores.

The full review is here.

Review: Crescent City Cooking by Susan Spicer

Today, in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Crescent City Cooking by Susan Spicer. Says Leach:

Susan Spicer is proprietor of New Orleans restaurants Bayona and Herbsaint. With her long-awaited cookbook, I was hoping for a taste of a now lost New Orleans. I opened Crescent City with a mixture of sadness and anticipation. What was still there? What had been lost?

The full review is here.

Review: A Year of Spicy Sex by Gabrielle Morrissey

Today, in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Cherie Thiessen gets us ready for some holiday fireworks with A Year of Spicy Sex by Gabrielle Morrissey. Says Thiessen:

My apologies for the length of time it has taken to review this book. But you have to realize there are 52 recipes tucked between these licentious covers and they all have to be tried in order to give an honest evaluation of their worth. My hunk and I are not 30 anymore; we sacrificed quantity for quality some years back.

The full review is here.

Review: Heat by Bill Buford

Today, in January Magazine’s cookbook section (though it could have just as easily slotted into biography), Diane Leach looks at Heat by Bill Buford. Says Leach:

I learned many things from Bill Buford’s Heat. The first is that I could never cook professionally. The second is how to prepare polenta correctly. But let us begin with the first. Bill Buford arguably already led a life many would find enviable. Having started Granta magazine in the UK, he came to the United States and began working at The New Yorker, where he held the powerful post of fiction editor. But like many of us approaching middle age, he found himself longing to do something else. In his case, this something else was cooking for Mario Batali, he of Iron Chef, Molto Mario and a few dozen famous restaurants.

You can read Leach’s review here.

Review: Halibut: The Cookbook edited by Karen Barnaby

Today, in January Magazine’s cookbook section, contributing editor Adrian Marks cooks from Halibut: The Cookbook edited by Karen Barnaby. Marks says:

The recipes range from ultra-simple -- suitable for an after work slap together or for the home chef with only the most rudimentary kitchen skills -- all the way up to complicated meals for friends that will take hours of pleasurable concentration to prepare. Appropriately enough, most fall somewhere in between.

The full review is here.