Reading for Leisure: Cook Books

The ultimate everyday cookbook you'll turn to again and again. Like her mentor Julia Child, Sara Moulton believes that with the right guidance anyone can become a good cook. After all, great home cooking is in the details. Having the proper tools, understanding temperature and cooking time, and knowing how to balance flavors are simple skills that elevate everyday meals. In Sara Moulton's Home Cooking 101, Sara teaches readers how to a make good dish taste even better. This invaluable guide is packed with essential techniques, expert tips, and practical advice to sharpen your sense of taste and cultivate confidence in the kitchen. With wit and wisdom, Sara guide readers through the fundamentals, then offers 150 hit recipes to illustrate, step-by-step, the time-tested methods that make each so delicious. You'll learn to navigate your stove, season like a pro, and add umami to a dish while discovering new ideas for weeknight dinners.

Maybe she's on a photo shoot in Zanzibar. Maybe she's making people laugh on TV. But all Chrissy Teigen really wants to do is talk about dinner. Or breakfast. Lunch gets some love, too. For years, she's been collecting, cooking, and Instagramming her favorite recipes, and here they are: from breakfast all day to John's famous fried chicken with spicy honey butter to her mom's Thai classics. You'll learn the importance of chili peppers, the secret to cheesy-cheeseless eggs, and life tips like how to use bacon as a home fragrance, the single best way to wake up in the morning, and how not to overthink men or Brussels sprouts.

Dr. Libby H. O'Connell takes readers on a mouth-watering journey through America's culinary evolution into the vibrant array of foods we savor today. In 100 tantalizing bites, ranging from blueberries and bagels to peanut butter, hard cider, and Cracker Jack, O'Connell reveals the astonishing ways that cultures and individuals have shaped our national diet and continue to influence how we cook and eat.

From the author of the brilliant A Modern Way to Eat, who was dubbed "the new Nigella Lawson" by The Times, comes this beautiful collection of 150+ delicious and inspiring weeknight vegetarian recipes. EATING HEALTHY ISN'T ALWAYS EASY when you're coming home late at night and tired. In this genius new collection of vegetarian recipes, author Anna Jones tackles this common problem, making nourishing vegetable-centered food realistic on any day of the week. The chapters are broken down by time, with recipes that can be prepared in under 15, 20, 30, and 40 minutes, so no matter how busy you are, you can get dinner on the table, whether it be smoky pepper and white bean quesadilla, butternut squash and sweet leek hash, or chickpea pasta with simple tomato sauce. With evocative and encouraging writing, A Modern Way to Cook is a truly practical and inspiring recipe collection for anyone wanting to make meals with tons of flavor and little fuss.  -- New York Times Book Review, Holiday Cookbooks

An African American Cookbook: Traditional and Other Favorite Recipes is a bountiful collection of favorite foods and the memories that go with them. The traditional foods reflect the ingenious, resourceful, and imaginative Africans who made them. Woven among the four hundred recipes are rich historic anecdotes and sayings. They were discovered or lived by the cookbook’s contributors, many of whose ancestors participated in the Underground Railroad or lived near where it was active. This is a cookbook rich in history and rich in easy-to-prepare, wonderfully tasty food! Recipes include: * Collard greens with ham hocks * Cornbread sausage stuffing * Smoked turkey and black-eyed pees * Pan-fried okra * Fried green tomatoes * 14-day sweet pickles * Yogurt and chives biscuits * Sweet potato pie * And more! Author Phoebe Bailey’s congregation in historic Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has a long history with Underground Railroad activity. This cookbook celebrates those historic events, when this church fed and then helped to spirit enslaved Africans to safety.

Mexico: The Cookbook is the definitive bible of home-cooking from Mexico. With a culinary history dating back 9,000 years, Mexican food draws influences from Aztec and Mayan Indians and is renowned for its use of fresh aromatic ingredients, colorful presentations and bold food combinations. The book features more than 700 delicious and authentic recipes that can be easily recreated at home. From tamales, fajitas, and moles to cactus salad, blue crab soup, and melon seed juice, the recipes are a celebration of the fresh flavors and ingredients from a country whose cuisine is revered around the world. Organized by food type/style (Street Food, Starters, Drinks, Fish and Seafood, Meat and Poultry, Vegetables, Pulses and Rice, and Dessert), Mexico: The Cookbook also includes an extensive introduction to Mexican culinary history, ingredients, and techniques, while a Chef Menu section proffers inspirational recipes and menus by some of the world's most prominent Mexican chefs.

Raw food diets have exploded in popularity in recent years; some believe that the cooking process destroys nutrients and even produces dangerous chemicals through the interaction of heat with fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Enter Aaron Ash, a charismatic chef whose organic raw vegan restaurant Gorilla Food has taken Vancouver by storm for its inventive and delicious dishes, all prepared without the use of animal products or a stove. Aaron is a conscientious raw vegan whose beliefs about food are tied to personal and social well-being. Gorilla Food strives to promote the idea that a sustainable, healthy culture depends on humankind living as "lightly" as possible, mitigating the damage wrought on the environment and ourselves. Gorilla Food the book is both an innovative cooking manual and a raw vegan bible; recipes include a raw lasagna made with zucchini noodles, kale, and a "cheese" made from walnuts, and a raw soup made from seasonal greens, tomatoes, and avocado. There are also amazing raw pizzas, fruit pies, and chocolate desserts that will delight vegans and non-vegans alike with their surprisingly complex flavours. The book also contains recipes for dehydrated and cultured foods, important for a raw food diet and surprisingly simple to prepare. Gorilla Food will make you go ape for living life to the rawest!

All the soups any cook could ever want are here in one stunning collection. Here is an international selection of enticing soups: choose from British Creamy Tomato, Seafood Gumbo from Louisiana and Moroccan Harira with Lamb and Chick-peas, and many others. Select an aromatic soup for a delicious appetizer or a hearty broth for a healthy lunch. Make a smooth bisque to impress your guests or cook up a chunky soup - big enough to be a meal in itself. The introduction has basic recipes for a wide range of stocks.With 800 photographs, informative text, easy-to-follow steps and superb recipes, this is an essential guide to the art of soup-making.

From its founding in 1935 to the present, trips to American Beach have meant good times, good friends, and great food. nbsp; Located on Amelia Island in northeast Florida and established by the Pension Bureau of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company, American Beach today is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains a beloved vacation destination as well as a year-round home for many African Americans. nbsp; For The American Beach Cookbook, Marsha Dean Phelts has collected nearly 300 recipes passed down through generations. Over the years, many influences have found their way into the dishes and are represented here by everything from pig's feet to sweet potato pone and from smothered shrimp to bourbon slushes. Mouths will water at such treats as fried cheese grits, she-crab soup, seafood casserole, crab coated shrimp chops, cornbread dumplings, chicken curry, corn relish, pickled peaches, Big Mama's fruitcake, and much more. nbsp; In addition to the recipes, readers will enjoy compelling vignettes that illustrate the heritage of people and potables, vintage photographs, and area maps that together tell one of the great stories of a unique community. nbsp;

What's for dinner? Not just in America, but around the world? And how is it cooked, what's the historical significance of that food, how is it served and consumed, and who gets to clean up? This book provides fascinating insight into how dinner is defined in countries around the world. * Provides intimate insights into a broad range of international food habits, thereby affording readers a glimpse into the daily lives of people around the world and offering immense opportunities for cross cultural comparisons * Compares cooking methods, gender roles regarding food and meals, and the places of children or extended relatives at meal time * Underscores how food culture is universally and intrinsically related to ethnicity, family, and meal-time tradition * Presents a combination of reference narrative, photographs, and recipes that make this a one-stop reference source ideal for students learning about other cultures