7 Cookbooks I Really Like

One of my favorite holiday traditions is that I usually get a new cookbook on Christmas because the people who love me know that I love cooking and eating. This year I actually chose a cookbook for a gift because Kelly, my mom, and I are cooking from it on a monthly basis and sharing dinner over a Google Meet.

I selected Alex Guarnaschelli’s The Home Cook, and so far it is fantastic. I’m kind of a weirdo in that when I get a new cookbook I immediately read it cover to cover like a novel. This lets me identify the recipes I’m interested in, yes, but it also allows me to see the author’s overall approach to cooking, pull out any tips that can help me right away, and enjoy their unique story and personality.

Alex is one of my favorite Food Network chefs. She is a badass cook, I thoroughly enjoy her sense of humor, and her approach seems to encourage chefs who aren’t yet as talented or experienced as her. This cookbook is focused on solid recipes to have in your repertoire and eventually know by heart, which I find more useful than recipes with extravagant techniques and ingredients. I also like that I learned about her mom (a former cookbook editor), her dad (a fan of Chinese cooking), and her daughter (who helped inspire the more straightforward approach to the recipes), and I think it’s cool that she signs the books purchased from her website:

I can tell right now that this book will join the shelf of my other go-to’s. Here are 7 other cookbooks I really like:

1. Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

In the introduction, Samin writes “This book will change the way you think about cooking and eating, and help you find your bearings in any kitchen, with any ingredients, while cooking any meal. You’ll start using recipes, including the ones in this book, like professional cooks do—for the inspiration, context, and general guidance they offer, rather than by following them to the letter.” I found that statement to be exactly true, and this is one of the books that most benefits from actually reading it instead of only focusing on the recipes (in fact, the first 200 pages are mostly cooking theory). It helped me learn how to taste and adjust because it helped me understand what I was actually tasting for, and how to course correct. Before this book I sure did use recipes like I was assembling IKEA furniture step by step, but the clear explanations, charming illustrations of cooking science, and multiple variations on recipes transformed the way I cook.

Go-to recipes for me: The buttermilk-marinated roast chicken is can’t miss and also a very flexible base concept; there’s a Wheel of Flavor that helps group tastes; it drastically improved how we cook rice; and it put simmered beans into regular rotation for us.

2. Shaya by Alon Shaya

We were headed to New Orleans for a trip in 2016 and I asked a local chef we knew where he would recommend we eat. He told us to have Israeli food at Shaya, and I managed to take a break from boudin balls and gumbo long enough to have lunch there one day. That’s when I had my first life-changing taste of za’atar, and my second, and my third, and I couldn’t stop eating it so I went back again two days later to have more of everything.

I bought this cookbook as soon as it was released in 2018, the year that chef Alon opened his restaurant Safta across the train tracks from our home. We went to the soft opening, and wouldn’t you know it Alon was there saying hi to diners. He asked how we liked the food, and Kelly told him that I had his cookbook. “Oh,” he said, “What have you made from it?”

Simple question, right? Well, not for me …

First of all, I loved this cookbook because it had so many flavors that I had never experienced, so every recipe I made was exciting. Also, it is written in a more autobiographical style befitting the tagline “An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel,” so I sort of felt like I already knew him a bit.

Starstruck, here’s what I said:

“I’ve made the fried eggplant, I’ve made the Israeli salad, I’ve made the schmaltzy potatoes, I’ve made the turkey sandwich, I’ve made the paprikash, I’ve made the hummus, I’ve made the ribeye with za’atar chimichurri, I’ve made the onion soup, I’ve made the …” and it went on and on from there until he graciously excused himself with something like, “Well, I’m glad you like it. I hope you enjoy your meal.”

As he left, Kelly asked me if I was feeling OK.

Alon was at another Safta event a year or so later, and I was determined to redeem myself. I went up and told him that I’d just cooked the red beans and rice recipe from his book, and it was a hit. “Thank you, but that’s actually my wife’s recipe,” he said (which of course I did know because I’ve read every word in this cookbook because everything in it is mouth-wateringly good).

Anyways, I hope to try again someday …

Go-to recipes for me: The fried eggplant with caramelized tomato and goat cheese is my vegetarian standby; I love the muhammara; and I will never not have za’atar in my spice collection since that first taste.

3. Appetites by Anthony Bourdain

Boy do I miss Anthony Bourdain, but at least I have this cookbook. It contains some of the tastiest recipes I know, and it’s written with the same reverence for people and their culinary traditions that is on display in his tv shows. It makes me sad to think about him as I write this, but cooking from the book makes me very happy.

Go-to recipes for me: As you can see from the picture below, I’ve made the bodega breakfast sandwich once or twice; I organize my Thanksgiving cooking schedule around this book’s chapter on the holiday; of the roasted cauliflower with sesame he says, “This shit is compulsively delicious,” and that’s why I’ve made it probably forty times.

4. Cookish from Milk Street/Christopher Kimball

From the back cover of the book: “Big flavors in minutes. Cookish is a fresh take on fast food at home. Six ingredients. Minutes, not hours. Fresh bold flavors for any night of the week. It’s not cooking, it’s Cookish. Make a Cookish recipe once and you can easily make it again—no recipe required.” I think it’s the best cookbook for people who are new to cooking or strapped for time because it uses flavorful ingredients and simple techniques to make very tasty food quickly.

Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street in Boston is a cooking school that produces a magazine, a radio show / podcast, cookbooks, a tv show, and a whole lot of good cooking instruction. My mom got us this book as well as a copy for herself, and making things from it helped us get through COVID isolation (and made those scary shopping trips much easier). There’s a huge range of cooking traditions represented in the book, and the aforementioned flavorful ingredients significantly upgraded our pantry, making it easier to throw together any dinner.

If you don’t consider yourself a cook but want to, this is a great place to start.

Go-to recipes for me: Zhoug, a spicy green herb sauce, is fantastic; foil-wrapped salmon is a simple and reliable method; and my note on the spicy cumin-beef noodles says, “Kel liked it (she said it five times).”

5. My America: Recipes by a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi

I love the way this book opens:

Show me an America made of apple pie and hot dogs, baseball and Chevrolet and I won’t recognize it. That’s a foreign land to me. Maybe that’s someone’s America but it isn’t mine … My America is full of internal rhymes, studded with a thousand languages, references, allusions, bits snatched from here or there, some bits shared, but mostly taken. It’s a country of countless flavors and endless adaptation, an America that didn’t just arise but was built on something.

I am inspired by this, and by the way that food is often the first invitation to move outside of wherever and however we grew up to build a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the world of experiences around us. I aspire for my America to be similarly broad.

The food in this book is excellent, the personal history is expertly complemented with historical context, and the approach to making pantry ingredients that can be used across many dishes really elevated the way I cook. This is a newer book, and I am very much enjoying the process of making my way through it.

Go-to recipes for me: We have adopted the pantry approach of making ginger-garlic purée, house spice, berbere, jerk powder, remoulade, and pique to make any dish better; the red bean sofrito seriously upgraded my bean cooking; and the awaze tibs is one of my favorite flavor profiles for a beef braise.

6. Genius Recipes by Food52

Billed as “100 recipes that will change the way you cook,” the premise of this book is that it compiles the best recipes for specific dishes from all different amazing chefs. While it doesn’t have a personal story or point of view, which I miss, it probably has the highest recipe-to-recipe consistency—they are all can’t-miss, and I know because I have probably cooked the highest percentage of recipes from this book out of any that I own.

See:

Go-to recipes for me: The only tomato sauce I make now is Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with butter & onion; believe it or not if you know me, but I make the kale salad from Northern Spy Food Co. featuring butternut squash all the time; I always use red wine vinegar with my fried eggs thanks to Roger Vergé; the dry-brined turkey from Russ Parsons is my Thanksgiving method of choice; and the ginger fried rice from Jean-Georges Vongerichten & Mark Bittman is the base for all our fried rice.

7. Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child

I think I have five French cookbooks because I fell in love with eating French food, and the desire to eat it at home unlocked my desire to be a better cook. That desire combined with a series of essential classes at Denver’s Cook St. gave me an appreciation for the classical techniques that populate French cooking. Also, those classes taught me how to cut things the right way, which made cooking a whole lot more fun and more delicious.

These two cookbooks are special because they were given to me by a dear family friend George. They contain just about every French recipe you could want, and when I want to feel fancy and eat comfort food, this is where I turn. I don’t know that there’s anything new I can say about these books, you could just watch Julie & Julia instead.

Go-to recipes for me: coq au vin; anything with cream; lots of things with bacon; vinaigrettes.

Want to come over for dinner and cook with me? Do you have a cookbook you love that I should know about? Let me know!