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The Everlasting Meal: Leftovers A-Z
by Tamar Adler
Salad Seasons: Vegetable-Forward Dishes Year Round
by Sheela Prakash
A Middle Eastern Pantry
by Lior Lev Sercarz with Emily Stephenson
The Healthy Back Kitchen: Move Easier, Cook Simpler How to Enjoy Great Food While Managing Back Pain
by Dr. Griffin Baum and the editors at America’s Test Kitchen
Put on your apron and prep your mise en place, because it’s time to get busy. This time around, our annual cookbook “best of” list includes titles for throwing unbeatable dinner parties, baking objectively perfect pies, and crafting imaginative cocktails. You’ll find deep dives into Mexican, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern cuisines, as well as books on fermentation, tinned fish, and salads to give your WFH lunch menu a creative spark.
Be sure to check out last year’s summer and year-end cookbook roundups for more ideas.
If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.
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Photograph: Scribner
The Everlasting Meal: Leftovers A-Z
by Tamar Adler
This book sat on my desk for a while before I figured out how to use it. What do you do with a book written by someone described as a “leftover enthusiast”? A lot, it turns out. Adler, who has worked in the kitchens at Prune and Chez Panisse and written other cookbooks, refers to this book as a “leftovers encyclopedia” that steps in after dinner. When you’re trying to figure out what to do with half a head of radicchio, a handful of cilantro stems, and some burnt toast, just look them up in the index and do what it says, something to appreciate as we all try to cut down on food waste.
This is not the first book you’d think would become a kitchen reference, but it certainly belongs on your shelf. Like an artsy genius friend you wish you had in college, Alder has the palate, confidence, and descriptive ease of greats like Alice Waters and Anissa Helou. Those cilantro stems can be thrown into Puerto Rican sofrito, the radicchio sautéed with garlic and turned into a side course, and that burnt toast scraped, buttered, and eaten because it is still delicious. It may take a while to latch onto the book’s vibe but once its usefulness is established, you’ll keep it within reach and use it often.
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Photograph: Rizzoli
Salad Seasons: Vegetable-Forward Dishes Year Round
by Sheela Prakash
Salads and dressings are perhaps the easiest places in the kitchen to fall into a rut. My wife Elisabeth and I have made some version of a rice, lettuce, Parm shavings, and hard-boiled egg salad once or twice a week for years because it’s easy and delicious, yet as salad guru Emily Nunn says, “Salad is long, life is short; why are you eating the same old caprese salad summer after summer after summer?”
The book is divided into four sections by season (get it?) so you flop it open to the section that corresponds to where you are in the year and start cooking. My buddy Dave dropped off a bag full of curlicued garlic scapes one day and with Prakash’s help, I turned it into a tortellini salad with garlic scape pesto a few days later. Good thing, too, as I would never have thought of that in a million years. I also had culinary dandelions sprouting in my garden and turned them into a salad by wilting them in a hot dressing of olive oil, garlic, cider vinegar, and Aleppo pepper. We’ll still make the salad we always make at home, but there will now be a few other regulars in the mix.
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Photograph: Penguin Random House
A Middle Eastern Pantry
by Lior Lev Sercarz with Emily Stephenson
If, like me, you look at a Middle Eastern cookbook with excitement but aren’t sure where to start, let me suggest knocking your own socks off by braising chicken thighs in caramelized onions swimming in a blender-smoothie of walnuts, pomegranate juice, and pomegranate molasses in a Persian fesenjan. You’ll likely make plans on when to make your second and third batches following the first bite of the first. Sercarz owns the deluxe New York City spice shop La Boîte and has written both Mastering Spice and its predecessor, The Spice Companion. If you need advice on how to use the spices in your cabinet, he’s your guy.
Perhaps next to the chicken, you could dish up a pile of mujadra—basmati and lentils cooked in broth steeped with coriander, cumin, garlic, cinnamon, and bay. Shower it with herbs and fried shallots to find your happy place. The next day, make a green soup of Swiss chard, sautéed green onions, potatoes, coriander, and lemon. When it’s done, (gently!) drop balls of labneh in each bowl, where the strained yogurt gives everything a luxurious tang.
Sercarz, who grew up in Israel, is an excellent guide to the region’s culinary riches. Start with that chicken, then see how you feel.
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Photograph: America’s Test Kitchen
The Healthy Back Kitchen: Move Easier, Cook Simpler How to Enjoy Great Food While Managing Back Pain
by Dr. Griffin Baum and the editors at America’s Test Kitchen
I get a lot of unsolicited cookbooks delivered to my office, and while I like seeing what’s out there, a new one about back pain from America’s Test Kitchen went straight to the “To Donate” pile—until I thought about it a couple days later while doing my physical therapy.
ATK is known for its excellent, well-tested recipes which span all layers of difficulty, and if you follow their lead, your food comes out very well. ATK’s authors are not known for their chiropractic prowess, yet in this book you’ll find a combination of new recipes along with some from its archives that have been re-engineered with achy backs in mind. The recipes lean toward their easier stuff, which is the whole point. The book also gets into kitchen-centric back pain management strategies, everything from medication (duh!), to mindfulness, to rearranging your kitchen. Recipes even have taking breaks built into them.
Sometimes the simplicity of the recipes keeps you from moving around too much, lifting more than you should, or spending longer than you want on your feet. Steak tips, for example, cook quickly and while they rest after cooking, you can use the same skillet to cook up a quick cauliflower side dish. I made a Vietnamese chicken dish from the book that’s based on a recipe from Charles Phan of San Francisco’s Slanted Door restaurant. It leaned on a small number of heavy hitters like fish sauce, garlic, ginger, and dark brown sugar to bring complex flavor with minimal effort. Just follow ATK’s lead, keep it simple, take a break once in a while, and keep doing your PT.
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Photograph: Red Lightning Books
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts
by Camper English
Back in the aughts, I’d go on industry trips to distilleries where our group of writers, journalists, and bartenders would learn about different kinds of booze and drink a little more than was strictly necessary. It was always a jovial group with a charming nerdy faction that would get deep into the tech specs of stuff like the precise shape or angle of the swan’s neck above a copper still. I met Camper English on a few of those trips and he was proudly part of that gang. Now he’s written a book about ice for his fellow nerds, along with intrepid bartenders and cocktail lovers around the world. English is credited with coming up with a way people could make clear ice cubes at home, taking advantage of a process called directional freezing. To do it, you put a little cooler full of water into the freezer, leaving the lid off, which causes the ice to freeze from the top down, pushing air bubbles and impurities to the bottom where they can be lopped off. This might seem like a bit of a niche subject, because it is, but if this is your jam, this small book is the perfect format, matching English’s skill at explaining with a sense of humor that’s sneakily, almost imperceptibly dry.
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Photograph: Penguin Random House
A Cook’s Book
by Nigel Slater
Years ago while perusing one of Nigel Slater’s many cookbooks, I wondered aloud to a British friend about what made him so popular and prodigious.
“Reading his recipes makes you feel like you’re sitting in his cozy kitchen, drinking a decent glass of claret and waiting for something delicious to eat,” says my friend, Guardian journalist Alexandra Topping.
Slater’s in the rare-air league of UK luminaries like Diana Henry, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Simon Hopkinson. When his new book arrived (another one!), I set it aside while I perused his fresher-feeling competition. On a trip home to see my folks, though, I found a few things to try cooking with Mom, and realized for myself why he’s so beloved—it’s smart, inventive food that makes me want to cook more.
One night, Mom and I marinated chicken with za’atar—a favorite ingredient-technique combo of his—then grilled it, and served it with a tahini and yogurt sauce, alongside a big salad. We made three leg quarters for three of us and everyone wished I’d cooked more so there would be leftovers. Next, we made savory pancakes with herbs blended into the batter, wrapped them around sautéed mushrooms with thyme and crème fraîche, and showered the whole thing with Parmesan. It was superb.
“His books are like a salve to the soul, it’s the life you wish you had,” says Topping. “In Slater’s recipes, there is no such thing as too much butter, cream, or melting cheese. I love him.”
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Photograph: Sasquatch Books
Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour & Butter
by Kate Lebo
One of my most-anticipated cookbooks this year turned out to be such a mess that it inspired an afternoon-devouring crisis of faith. Clearly, no recipe tester ever had ever come within 50 feet of it. Then I turned my attention to Kate Lebo’s Pie School, which turned out to be the perfect antidote. Freshly revised from the 2014 original with new and updated recipes, it offers soothing lessons in technique and taste. Lebo forgoes weight measure, a potential red flag for serious bakers, but by removing the crutch, you develop a skill and learn the waypoints on the road to perfect pie. She works in small batches and mixes by hand, showing you what to look for as you learn to make perfect crust. When your hands are coated with sticky dough, her voice is a balm, and clear photos keep you from worrying.
Lebo, who coedited the 2017 WIRED favorite Pie & Whiskey, lives in Washington state, where if you have a plum tree, the growing season culminates with such force that she refers to harvest time as a “tyranny” of plums. “More than you can jam. More than you can freeze. More than fits into twenty pies.” Faced with a bagful myself, I made two of her plum-thyme pies and brought them to dinner at a friend’s. My crust still needs work, but the filling drew raves, and the thyme created a depth that lodged it pleasantly in my mind. Go ahead and leave the scale on the shelf while school is in session. Lebo is an expert teacher and you’ll pass with flying colors.
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Photograph: Penguin Random House
The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope
by José Andrés and World Central Kitchen with Sam Chapple-Sokol
World Central Kitchen is an inspiring nonprofit, a global group of chefs and organizers led by chef José Andrés who feed huge amounts of people following disasters. Perhaps best known for serving food in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017, WCK has helped feed people in Haiti, Houston, Ukraine, and now the Gaza Strip. It’s such a noble enterprise that this could be a mediocre cookbook and I’d still encourage you to buy it because you’d be doing a good thing (of course, you can just donate to the group directly). Yet a great deal of care and attention went into it. The book uses global recipes to recount the work WCK has done around the world, but is surprisingly well thought out for dinner for four at home. The first time I saw it, the pages fell open to page 60 and I left it right there, making braised pork al pastor, which was served to people in Southern California following the 2019 earthquakes. Pork shoulder or butt is marked with a series of incisions which you stuff with pineapple chunks, then it marinates overnight coated with a host of spices. The following day, it bubbles away in apple cider vinegar and pineapple juice, taking advantage of enzymes in the latter that tenderize the meat and add flavor. The book also does a nice job of contextualizing the history of a dish, describing how al pastor pork is a spin on lamb shawarma originally brought to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants.
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Photograph: Amazon
Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling
by Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral
A few years back, when I started visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, on the regular, a cookbook by this duo appeared with immaculate timing, turning out to be exactly the reference I needed to decrypt the city’s food scene. Now, the Los Angeles–based authors return with Asada, a perfect combination of Mexican grill and LA vibe. You won’t need a thermometer, nor shall you be called upon to remotely monitor your brisket on an app while you go to the gym. Instead, this is food that’s big on complex marinades that you whip up in a blender, like the one for the carne asada where flap steak marinates overnight in OJ, cider vinegar, lime juice, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and a host of toasted spices before being thrown onto a cast-iron pan over a campground fire. At home, I grilled veggies and dipped them in a pipian made from blended habanero, garlic, red bell pepper, tomatoes, and a few hunks of sourdough. People went crazy for it. Asada is a lovely detour from most of the grilling books we’ve recently seen in the North American market. For what you might call the “lost ribeye decades,” which started in the late 1980s, finding a barbecue cookbook in the United States written by someone who wasn’t a white dude was near impossible. Around the grill, Black pitmasters, women, and especially women of color were not being published, with incredibly few exceptions. With Asada, Lopez and Cabral show us just how much we’ve been missing, and set a delicious example for how to start making up for lost time. (Read my full review of the book.)
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Photograph: WW Norton
Company: The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for Others
by Amy Thielen
As this set of cookbooks came together over the course of several months, Company sent persistent pings from the periphery of my mental radar. I have no idea what I was waiting for as I was smitten from the moment I cracked it open. It’s designed around menus for entire dinners—appetizers, mains, sides, desserts, the whole enchilada—and grouped into four big themes: Saturday Night, Holiday, Perennial Parties, and “Casual Walkabouts,” aka buffets. This is a book for skilled home cooks who love to throw a regular bash, and while there’s nothing keeping you from cherry-picking recipes from all over the book, Thielen has thought these things out in a way that will make for happy bellies and a less-stressful host. My sister, a top-notch home cook and host who’s almost never into cookbooks, spent a good hunk of an evening with her nose in this one, enthralled. For reasons like this, and Thielen’s refined style that allows her to stick poetic lines deep into the farthest reaches of the cookbook, I’ll be rooting for her at this year’s James Beard Awards. For one meal, I made chicken thighs with sage and olive oil, where the skin side starts on the pan and stays there for what feels like an eternity, emerging mahogany brown and super-crisp before being floated on a sauce of gin, stock, and cooking juice. Next to it, we had wedges of matafans, big savory Savoyard pancakes reminiscent of Dutch babies, this version fortified with potato and cabbage. To round it out, we had a lemony salad of herbs with cauliflower roasted in bacon fat. Our tableful of chatty eaters just fell silent as we tucked in, quietly reveling in the company and the Company.
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Photograph: Simon & Schuster
Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation
by Clarissa Wei with Ivy Chen
As a food and travel writer and photographer, I appreciate a cookbook that makes me want to get on a plane. Taipei journalist Clarissa Wei, writing with Ivy Chen and the photographer-stylist team of Yen Wei and Ryan Chen, has created a stellar book that feels like it’s written for Taiwan’s inhabitants, and we North American readers have somehow just lucked upon an English-language version. The book tackles global politics head-on in the first pages, drawing a clear and detailed line between Chinese, Taiwanese, and their cuisines. So many details fill the book with a sense of place and daily life. If you’re new at a wet market, for example, “strut in with confidence and sugarcoat your words. Call the aunties ‘big sister,’ refer to the uncle as ‘brother.’ Ideally speak in Taiwanese Hokkien. Compliment them on their perpetual youth, and never, under any circumstances, doubt their expertise on their products (even if they are truly in the wrong).” I still need to work on my Taiwanese Hokkien, but my three-cup chicken game has been fully bolstered. Wei’s recipe highlights soy sauce, black sesame oil, and rice wine, “though not in the same proportions and definitely not a cup of each.” I also appreciate her use of chicken thighs here, which add flavor and wiggle room. This is authentic food, beer-hall grub, special-occasion feasts, and delicious breakfasts, with no concessions for Instagram or finicky palates. If you get to Taiwan before me, please seek out the round stainless railway bento boxes stamped with a train illustration and “EMU 500” on the lid. I’ll take 10.
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Photograph: Chronicle Books
Tin to Table: Fancy, Snacky Recipes for Tin-Thusiasts and A-Fish-Ionados
by Anna Hezel
Back in the late aughts, I lived next to Quimet & Quimet, one of the most popular bar-restaurants in Barcelona, where they specialized in tinned seafood. No Chicken-of-the-Sea there; they used high-end ingredients to create stunning bar snacks like mussels on tiny toasts with tomato confit, herring roe, olive oil, and balsamic glaze. Now, thanks to greater online availability and a pandemic where we stocked up on nonperishables, along with Anna Hezel’s expert new guide, Americans are starting to pick up on the delicious and often sustainable tinned seafood they’ve been missing. She divides the book into layers of complexity, from straight-from-the-tin snacks to salads and sandwiches to full dinners. Those new to the game will appreciate her “field guide” section, which shows readers the breadth of what’s out there and piques their interest in food they might be less familiar with, from anchovies to cockles to tuna. Particularly useful in that section are the “three tins to try” columns, which showcase some of the best examples of each. Mackerel, for instance, can be found fairly unadorned, lightly smoked, or, intriguingly, in spicy olive oil with pickles. Also helpful is her cautious note on salt, as something like anchovies can be plenty salty on their own. She recommends salting any recipes in the book only after adding the tinned goods and tasting before letting the crystals fly, to avoid accidentally overdoing it.
Not long after my copy of the book arrived, my sister texted an article about Hazel’s green anchovy butter, where fishy filets, parsley, garlic, and lemon are whirred together with an immersion blender. Lacking appliances on a recent trip, I made a hand-chopped version, spread it on toast, topped it with a slice of tomato and ate it on a New York City stoop on a sunny fall day. Divine.
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Photograph: Sasquatch Books
Fermenter: DIY Fermentation for Vegan Fare
by Aaron Adams and Liz Crain
I love showing up at a dinner or barbecue with a big batch of sauerkraut. It’s generous-feeling, inexpensive, made ahead, and relatively exotic, and it reliably gets some Midwesterner or Pennsylvanian excited enough that they gobble up half the vat. Fermenter is for people who have the basics down and want to try something a little more advanced, with a vibe that combines hippie, punk, and the scientific method. Chef Aaron Adams from Portland, Oregon, is big on four-letter words and learning from failure. Yet even his kraut is handled in ways that had me rethinking my standard method. He likes to toast his spices to make them more flavorful and suggests adding some brine from an existing batch of pickles—a technique known as backslopping—that’ll get your fresh kraut going in a hurry. After that, it’s time to plot a more complex course. This book will appeal to advanced home fermenters and restaurant chefs looking to up their game. Up next on my list are Adams’ spicy giardiniera, here fermented instead of the typical vinegar pickling, and the tempeh burger, which, if you’re really ambitious, is served with his smoked onion shio koji, miso sauce, and sour dills. Delicious ferments, all.
