It's been quite some time since I shared my cookbook acquisitions here. Guess I've been lazy but there's also the fact that for many years, I've viewed every cookbook post to be the beginning of a conversation with @Anna N and it makes me sad to know those convos are no more. There are some books on this list that I haven't cooked from yet and that certainly wouldn't have happened when Anna was around as I always tried to cook at least a few recipes before mentioning a new book. I'll try to come back and update this when I get around to more cooking.
Onward...to the new-ish arrivals shelf...
Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Nigella Lawson - I think this one would have been right up Anna's alley as I know she mentioned cooking from Nigella's recipes multiple times. It came out in 2021, but I haven't seen many specific mentions of it here on eG. It was the December book in my cookbook group and I didn't cook as much from it as I wanted but really enjoyed the experience and would very much recommend it to anyone who enjoys Nigella's writing. There are a ton of what I'll call "stealth recipes" that are tucked into essays that begin chapters or header notes or even buried right in another recipe. Eat Your Books is your friend in ferreting out these little gems.
Veg-table: Recipes, Techniques, and Plant Science for Big-Flavored, Vegetable-Focused Meals (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Nik Sharma - this is Nik's latest book and came out towards the end of last year. It's not a vegetarian cookbook, plenty of meat, fish and chicken here but it's organized by vegetable "families" so it's kind of the focus. It's this month's book in my cookbook group and I haven't cooked a ton from it yet but I've liked what I've made and have a lot of recipes marked to try. He uses a lot of interesting flavor combinations and a fair number of unusual ingredients. On the downside, he's formatted the recipes without a separate ingredient list and has instead incorporated them into the recipe text, as they are used in the recipe, using a bold font so they stand out. You can see what this looks like in the Amazon sample. He claims that this is the style used in the Joy of Cooking and some other classics. Those books do list ingredients as they are called for but they stand proud of the instructional text, instead of being incorporated in it as this book does. My gripe with the format is that I usually scale recipes and like to write the amounts I actually use next to the ingredients and that's entirely impossible with this style. Some people absolutely refused to even try cooking from the book. For me, it's not a tragedy, just an annoyance. Photos are Nik's signature dark, sometimes moody style. Sometimes takes a little sorting to identify which photo goes with which recipe.
Snacking Bakes: Simple Recipes for Cookies, Bars, Brownies, Cakes, and More (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Yossy Arefi - bought this one because I really enjoyed her previous book, Snacking Cakes, full of easy, one-bowl, modestly-sized cakes. Haven't touched it yet but am looking forward to it.
Zingerman's Bakehouse Celebrate Every Day: A Year's Worth of Favorite Recipes for Festive Occasions, Big and Small (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Amy Emberling, Lindsay-Jean Hard, Lee Vedder and Corynn Coscia - I believe this was the November book for the Food52 Baking group, although it's not strictly a baking book as there are plenty of soups and plenty of savory baking, too. It's organized by season with a few recipes for a range of well-known and more unusual holidays, like the Moroccan Harira Soup, Za'atar Flatbreads and Nutty Butterball Cookies that I made and enjoyed on World Kindness Day. I think this one would make a fun gift book as it kind of puts you in the mood to celebrate
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow: Food to Warm the Soul (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Diana Henry - This book was originally published almost 20 years so this is kind of an anniversary re-issue but contains a bunch of new recipes as well. I know I called this out in the Kindle bargain topic but it's still only $1.99 for the Kindle edition of the new book. Diana's one of my favorite cookbook authors so I'm very much looking forward to diving into the book as it will be the March selection for my group. Honestly, I'll probably be dipping into it sooner as it's really a book made for cold weather cooking. I'd highly recommend this to anyone looking for some warming winter recipes. Sadly, Diana got Covid around the same time I did after Christmas and has been in the hospital with that and pneumonia and was still in ICU a couple of days ago, although her Instagram post sounded like she was getting better. Hope she'll be back to herself soon.
50 Great Curries of India (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Camellia Panjabi - this was totally an eG-enabled purchase. There's a topic about it in the Cooking forum and it pops up in discussion often. Looking forward to diving in!
Latinísimo: Home Recipes from the Twenty-One Countries of Latin America: A Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Sandra Gutierrez - I ordered this one after listening to a few author interviews and reading articles, like this excellent one in the Washington Post: A life’s work: Celebrating the glories of Latin American home cooking (that should be a gift link.) It's described as being about home cooking in 21 different Latin American countries. The recipes are organized by ingredient, which makes for a nice way to compare and contrast recipes from different areas. My gripe with the book is in the formatting, where there's a ton of white space on most pages but the font is quite small. I'm nearsighted and usually have no problem with small print but this is right on the edge of being annoying - I love to settle in and read a cookbook and this one just isn't a relaxing experience. So I'm going to recommend the book but advise purchasing it in an ebook format to avoid being annoyed.
Bold Beans: recipes to get your pulse racing (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Amelia Christie-Miller - I think I've mentioned this one in a bean topic and maybe a Kindle bargain topic. The authors own a UK company that sells fancy-ish jarred beans and these recipes make use of their products, although they also provide instructions for cooking your own dried beans. I found the flavor combinations to be interesting and lots of the recipes are super quick and easy to toss together. A good addition for any beaniac's cookbook collection.
Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by @marlena spieler - after we learned of Marlena's passing earlier this year, I spent some time reading her contributions here and found several mentions of this book. It's chock full of sandwiches made with interesting cheeses, all sorts of breads and delicious-sounding accompaniments. I'm pretty sure it's out of print, but I picked up a used copy and I believe there's an e-book version as well.
Veg Forward: Super-Delicious Recipes that Put Produce at the Center of Your Plate (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) by Susan Spungen - Like Nik Sharma's Veg-Table, this one is touted as having a vegetable focus but not strictly vegetarian though this one comes closer to veg, including small amounts of meat or fish more or less as seasonings rather than the center of the plate. Like Nik, Susan did her own photography for the book although the layout is less artsy: Recipe on one page and photograph of the finished dish on the facing page. This one is organized by season rather than veg family. I confess that I put it away on the shelf when I got it, planning to compare with Veg-Table when it came in and promptly forgot about it. I'll have to pull it out and line up some comparisons in the next month or so.
I'll try to update these as I cook more from the books and add new books more frequently to avoid a big dump like this.
