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New cookbooks are a bright spot in spring, and this year’s crop is a bumper one.
One emerging theme is: Go easy on yourself. Among this season’s favorite books, Los Angeles writers and chefs especially — including Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour, Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill, Kogi’s Roy Choi and Becca Millstein of tinned fish company Fishwife — set out to make things a little simpler, boosting our kitchen confidence along the way.
Get comfortable in the kitchen and out in the world. You could make a sandwich and go to the beach, as author Hailee Catalano recommends. Read a juicy memoir (thanks to Laurie Woolever). Take a culinary road trip with the chef who opened a luncheonette in a historic train caboose on the Pacific Coast Highway. Or explore the flavors of Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, St. Lucia, Ghana, Hong Kong or Bahrain.
These are the 21 new cookbooks we’re diving into this season.
By Heart: Recipes to Hold Near and Dear
by Hailee Catalano (DK)
Hailee Catalano first caught my eye with her intuitive beach-picnic sandwich tutorials, and I’d wager that’s the case for at least a few hundred thousand of her millions of followers spread across Instagram and TikTok. But with her debut cookbook, “By Heart,” the professionally trained chef who blossomed on social media dives into so much more than sandwiches. Catalano’s from-the-heart recipes pull from her Midwestern upbringing, her years in professional kitchens and a childhood spent cooking with her Sicilian grandmother, resulting in the likes of celery root-and-potato pierogi; mint-topped lamb-stuffed shells with smoked mozzarella; bar-style pizzas; dips, spreads and pickles galore; and plenty of breads to form the base of your sandwiches (recipes also included) — which, yes, are still perfect for a picnic on the beach. — Stephanie Breijo
Care and Feeding: A Memoir
by Laurie Woolever (Ecco)
This isn’t a cookbook, but we loved it too much to exclude it from our seasonal list. The world sees plenty of food-related memoirs sticking to details of meals and tiptoeing around the most squeamish, least flattering moments of their authors’ lives. Laurie Woolever takes the opposite tack. Her words tug you along for jet-lagged, hungover embarrassments at an Australian food festival; trips in and out of beds with chefs of questionable hygiene; and glimpses into infuriating exchanges with a cruel man with whom she cheats on her husband. It’s a lot, and it’s a tribute to her gifts as a storyteller that the pages fly by. In essence this is a story of a careerist navigating the ugly realities of restaurant culture and food media in the last 20 years. If you’ve heard about Woolever, you likely know she was an assistant to Mario Batali and also to Anthony Bourdain, about whom she previously wrote “Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.” If either of those names bring you to the book, well enough. You’ll finish it understanding this is a writer who has far more to give to literature than her adjacency to famous men. — Bill Addison
From ‘The French Laundry Cookbook’ to ‘The Joy of Cooking,’ these are the cookbooks every kitchen needs, according to chefs and food writers.
The Choi of Cooking: Flavor-Packed, Rule-Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life: A Cookbook
by Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen and Natasha Phan (Clarkson Potter)
Roy Choi’s “The Choi of Cooking” is a collection of recipes for life, little and big bits of wisdom he wants to share. It’s deeply personal, with stories of Choi’s mental and physical struggles written in his engaging and casual voice. But it’s far from preachy, with an “I’ll meet you where you are” sort of mentality about eating healthier and being kind to yourself. The largest section of the book is devoted to vegetables, in the form of towering sandwiches, salads and even pancakes. If you’re looking for the cooking you’re used to on the Kogi trucks, the big flavors are there; the ingredients are just a little lighter. — Jenn Harris
Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria
by Ozoz Sokoh (Artisan Books)
“Chop chop,” in Nigerian and West African pidgin, translates to a food lover — and it’s hard not to love Nigerian food. It’s a cuisine celebrated for bold long-simmered stews, sweet-sticky pounded yams, bright spiced jollof and vibrant sauces, among other hallmarks. Food writer Ozoz Sokoh began sharing and documenting Nigerian food in 2009 when she launched the blog Kitchen Butterfly, chronicling recipes, foodways and her Warri upbringing. In her debut cookbook, Sokoh explores what she’s long called “the new Nigerian kitchen” along with traditional recipes, covering Nigeria’s vast regionality from angles both old and new. Pages devoted to plantains, grilled meats, leaf wraps, steamed puddings and Nigerian breakfasts are interspersed with historical and cultural context for deeper understanding beyond a delicious meal. With how-to’s for suya, soups, swallows, stews and salads, you’ll be biting into chops of all sorts. — S.B.
Coastal: 130 Recipes From a California Road Trip
by Scott Clark with Betsy Andrews (Chronicle Books)
The verve and the flavors of Dad’s Luncheonette — a restaurant serving roadside “classics” from a train caboose on the side of Cabrillo Highway in Half Moon Bay — leap from the pages of “Coastal.” Scott Clark worked at Benu and Saison in San Francisco and faced chef’s burnout before embracing his own journey by opening Dad’s. He amps up mac ’n’ cheese with puffed rice seasoned with nutritional yeast, bolsters fudgy brownies with rhubarb jam, and smokes mussels foraged from Martins Beach, incorporating them into a savory custard. Some recipes are involved, but then the payoff is outsize. The book is its own road trip: In between recipes, you’re driving down PCH along California’s Central Coast, stopping at fishing spots, a goat farm, a winery and tide pools, among many other places depicted in photographs that honor the beauty of the state. — Betty Hallock
Dessert Course: Lessons in the Whys and Hows of Baking
by Benjamin Delwiche (DK)
There’s more than science and math to baking, but the precise chemical reactions required to make a brownie chewy, cakey or fudgy, or the kinds of cause and effect that determine whether a dough rises or falls, can sometimes feel daunting. That’s why Benjamin Delwiche — a.k.a. “Benjamin the Baker” on social media — and his debut cookbook want to explain the science and quell the fears. In the extremely thorough “Dessert Course,” the math teacher and near-lifelong baker breaks down the basics but also dives deep into methodology and how small tweaks can yield major results depending on flavor and texture preferences. Delwiche offers plenty of recipe variations for classics like chocolate chip cookies, pie crusts, brownies, icings, biscuits and beyond, with diagrams and photos to build understanding and, ideally, your dream dessert that’s tailored just to your liking. — S.B.
Fat + Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake
by Nicole Rucker (Knopf)
A lot has changed since Nicole Rucker’s 2019 cookbook, “Dappled.” For one, when it comes to the baking basics, one of her pillars of methodology shifted. Her new ethos — called “Cold Butter Method,” or “CBM” — works cold butter into a recipe’s dry ingredients, saving time and resulting in a kind of crumbly dough for cookies, pies, cakes and beyond. She embarked on this more streamlined approach for home bakers and in both locations of Fat + Flour, one of the 101 best restaurants in L.A. In the Culver City cafe and the stall in downtown’s Grand Central Market, wedges of fruit and cream pies and stacks of cookies never fail to catch the eye. With her new cookbook, some of the bakery’s signature items — and some new desserts — can be made at home and, sure enough, fairly simply. “Dappled” focused on spotlighting the best seasonal fruit, and there’s still plenty of that in “Fat + Flour.” There are sour-cherry pies with bourbon; sesame-crumble apple pies; and pies laced with rhubarb, raspberry and blood orange. But there are also comforting classics like ginger molasses cookies, polvorones and sour cream chocolate bundt cakes. This is a tome for all of us who’ve become Fat + Flour disciples over the years. — S.B.
Feature with Nicole Rucker of Fat & Flour (cookbook special section)
Fat + Flour's London Fog Brownies
The Fishwife Cookbook: Delightful Tinned Fish Recipes for Every Occasion
by Becca Milstein and Vilda Gonzalez (Harvest)
Everything about this book — the bright cover, picnic ideas, foil-wrapped dinners, a chapter dedicated to cozy tinned-fish season — says fun. Many of the recipes are beginner-level easy, but they’re interesting enough to entice advanced tinned-fish lovers. Appealing for single cooks (see the chapter “A Meal for One”) and party planners alike, the book also presents innovative ways to use tinned fish, whether you love smoked salmon, sardines packed in tomatoes or anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea. Anyone who has a tower of tinned fish cans in their pantry will appreciate new ideas for using them. Make chowder, Bolognese sauce, congee, tacos, udon or anchovy-laced potato casserole. It’s all in here. — B.H.
How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea: Broil, Bake, Poach & Grill Your Way to Exceptional Fish & Shellfish
by Ari Kolender and Noah Galuten (Artisan)
Ari Kolender opened his always-crowded clam shack, Found Oyster, in 2019 in a tiny 28-seat space on Fountain Avenue across the street from “Big Blue,” as the Scientology command center is casually known. More than five years (and a million oysters) later, Kolender and co-writer Noah Galuten have penned an essential book on cooking seafood at home. Smartly organized by technique, it lends itself to the ways we want to cook all kinds of fish and shellfish. The point is to help readers feel confident about cooking a diversity of seafood. Perfectly broil scallops; or make a bright mackerel tartare folded with crème fraîche and showered with herbs (the way they do at Kolender’s restaurant Queen Street). Plus: the primer that opens the book is a handy guide to shopping for, preparing and storing fish and shellfish. — B.H.
Chef Ari Kolender’s L.A. restaurants Found Oyster and Queen St. combine the charm of Charleston and the cult of seafood with chill cross-coastal vibes. His first cookbook is out: “How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.”
(You Will Love This) Mackerel Tartare With Horseradish and Dill
Ghana to the World: Recipes and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past
by Eric Adjepong with Korsha Wilson (Clarkson Potter)
“Ghana to the World” shares author Eric Adjepong’s sankofa cooking style — one that speaks to honoring where you came from while also looking forward. Traditional recipes passed down from his family join modern interpretations of West African dishes that bridge the chef’s perspective as a Ghanaian American who grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., with his experience cooking in professional kitchens. Recipes like eggs Benedict with scallops and piri piri hollandaise or crab fried rice with benne miso and scallions point out the synchronicities between Ghanaian and American cuisines. Others, like fufu (made with boiled cassava and plantains, as opposed to yam or cassava alone), are specific to Adjepong’s lineage. Personal stories include a loving tribute to his mother, Abena Agyeman, and a retelling of his appearance on “Top Chef: Kentucky.” Photos of Ghana’s palm-tree-shaded beaches, bustling food markets and baroque buildings make this a cookbook that serves as a display on your coffee table when you’re not leafing through it for recipes. — Danielle Dorsey
Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings From a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey
by Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn (Clarkson Potter)
Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn’s new book is a total immersion into the world of Kwéyòl and a celebration of African heritage. It’s a journey that takes you from St. Lucia, where Compton is from, to Jamaica, where she continued her culinary career, on to Miami and finally to New Orleans, where Compton’s three restaurants are located. The book invites readers to reconsider the meaning of home as not just the place you’re from but something you bring along with you. Compton’s history and the stories behind the ingredients and recipes in this book are as vibrant as the dishes themselves, exploring an entire spectrum of Caribbean cooking. — J.H.
Lugma: Abundant Dishes & Stories From My Middle East
by Noor Murad (Quadrille)
Lugma, Arabic for “bite” or “mouthful,” is the first solo cookbook from Ottolenghi recipe developer Noor Murad — an ode to where she was born: the island country Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. I fell hard for the book as soon as she explained the word used for rice in Bahrain — aish, which translates to “living.” “There is no table setting without rice because, well, rice is living,” writes Murad, who is based in London and co-wrote the cookbook “Ottolenghi Test Kitchen.” The beautiful cover dish layers saffron rice with tomatoes and potatoes. Spiced with cardamom, cloves and bay, it’s as gloriously delicious as any of the Gulf countries’ elaborate rice dishes. The mezze are vibrant; the vegetables, luscious; and every dish sounds like something I want to make on repeat. I made the roasted cauliflower mutabal (traditionally made with eggplant) and ate it entirely by myself. And now my new go-to easy dessert is dates with tahini, chile and salt. — B.H.
Margarita Time: 60+ Tequila and Mezcal Cocktails, Served Up, Over and Blended
by Caroline Pardilla (Ten Speed Press)
My preference for mezcal- and tequila-based cocktails is well-documented. The margarita is no doubt the most widely known drink in that category, and author Caroline Pardilla offers 60 riffs from all manner of spirit experts, including local legends like Max Reis of Mirate, Ivan Vasquez of Madre Restaurant and Mezcaleria and Bricia Lopez of Guelaguetza. Pardilla honors the mutable margarita with recipes for every occasion, from the San Francisco-born Tommy’s Margarita that subverts the original recipe by substituting orange liqueur with agave nectar to an entire section of “blended renditions.” Providence bar director Kim Stodel’s Mano de Chango balances lime, grapefruit and guava. Travel to Mexico City with Licorería Limantour co-founder Benjamin Padrón’s Margarita al Pastor, a savory version that replicates the flavors of the city’s most popular taco. And for party hosts who don’t want to play bartender all night, Pardilla offers recommendations for the best premade mixes. — D.D.
Mother Sauce: Italian American Recipes and the Story of the Women Who Created Them
by Lucinda Scala Quinn (Artisan Books)
There’s a lot of mythos surrounding the Italian nonna — or grandmother — in cooking, but the attention usually ends at the romanticization of them. Lucinda Scala Quinn looks beyond it with “Mother Sauce,” which pays tribute to the hardships and the struggles of the Italian American immigrants, especially women, who made their way to America between 1880 and 1924. As she shares recipes for lasagna with mini meatballs; stromboli; stuffed squid in tomato sauce; chicken cacciatore; espresso granita; ricotta pie and beyond, she traces today’s Italian American cuisine to its roots in peasant cooking, or cucina povera, and the women who — often silently — helped evolve and popularize it. “Mother Sauce” is just as much an ode to her own Italian American family, sharing generational recipes culled from memory and even handwritten notes from the 1930s. — S.B.
Pakistan: Recipes and Stories From Home Kitchens, Restaurants, and Roadside Stands
by Maryam Jillani (Hardie Grant)
Some culinary evolutions are far more thoroughly documented in the English language than others, a sticking point that propelled Maryam Jillani to research and write her debut cookbook. Moving to the U.S. in the late 2000s from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, she struggled to find recipes, in print or online, that reflected the regionality of her home country — or that recognized the way traditions had shifted from Indian culture since the violent Partition in 1948. It led Jillani to begin a website, Pakistan Eats, in 2016, and then to travel across her homeland, documenting dishes cooked in kitchens of every kind, personal and professional. “Pakistani cuisine is colorful, global and breaks the rules,” she asserts in her introduction. Recipes span chile-sparked spinach with handmade whole wheat noodles (a vestige of Chinese traders who traveled along the Silk Road through the northern Hunza Valley), fish simmered in fenugreek-scented yogurt and gingery, saucy chicken karahi. Essays illuminating the country’s regions and gorgeous location photography by Waleed Anwar and Insiya Syed complete Jillani’s eye-opening achievement. — B.A.
Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories From a Cantonese American Home
by Calvin Eng with Phoebe Melnick (Clarkson Potter)
Chef Calvin Eng’s modern take on Chinese food is squarely Cantonese American, the kind of food he serves at his Brooklyn restaurant: taro root hash browns with sweet-and-spicy ketchup; tinned dace turned into a dip with cream cheese and sour cream; long beans in a glaze of fermented bean curd garlic butter. The restaurant is Bonnie’s, the American name that his aunt chose for his mom when they moved to New York from Hong Kong. Many recipes highlight classic Cantonese techniques — some of which he learned from his mother — but expand on flavors and ingredients, what he calls “a true mishmash of identities.” They glow with deliciousness and nostalgia. — B.H.
Scratch That: Embrace the Mess, Cook to Impress
by Alix Traeger (Union Square and Co.)
Alix Traeger’s bubbly, infectious and often self-deprecating personality shines through on every page of her debut cookbook, “Scratch That.” The book is organized into categories that reflect how Traeger likes to cook and eat, with Weekend Breakfasts; her quintessential lunch foods presented as Salads, Soups & Sandy’s; Dips, Snacks & Apps you can turn into a meal; Dinner, Mains & Sweet Treats (bananas foster cinnamon rolls!). She gleefully shares the mistakes she’s made so you can avoid doing the same, or not. By the time you reach the dessert chapter, you’ll think of Traeger as a friend, and you’ll be inspired to make a little mess and have a lot of fun in the kitchen. — J.H.
Tanoreen: Palestinian Home Cooking in Diaspora
by Rawia Bishara (Interlink Books)
I’m not the only food obsessive whose first taste of home-style, technique-driven Palestinian cooking was at Tanoreen, the restaurant that Rawia Bishara opened in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1998. Her menu has always been a mix of the mezze dishes (hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush) common across the region, punctuated with recipes like maqluba (spiced chicken and rice flipped upside-down from the pot) specific to her family’s heritage. “Tanoreen” is an update of Bishara’s cookbook “Olives, Lemon & Za’atar” originally published in 2014. Every aspect feels brighter, with more colorful photography and more personal anecdotes about her upbringing and favorite dishes. She mingles specific, detailed dishes like hossi, a unique chile paste rounded with marjoram and allspice made to flavor kibbeh, with creations such as a seafood soup for her son warmed with cumin and fragrant with fresh basil, cilantro and dill. — B.A.
The Scarr’s Pizza Cookbook: New York-Style Pizza for Everybody
by Scarr Pimentel with Kimberly Chou Tsun An (4 Color Books)
For pizza fanatics, this book is a long time coming. Scarr Pimentel’s famous New York pizzeria, now nearly a decade old, draws legions. Now the pizzaiolo’s first cookbook brings his New York- and grandma-style pies to everyone’s house. It’s a trip through Pimentel’s story: growing up rough but surrounded by family in New York City, working his way through pizzerias and eventually launching his own. All recipes are written for a home oven with a pizza steel, though pizza stones, sheet pans or an upside-down cast-iron pan also could do the trick. The book delves into the breakdown of wheat grain and how to mill (and store) your own flour at home, landing the right flour and cheese blends, hydrations and temperatures and how to check them, nailing the sauce-to-cheese ratio, and the best way to reheat pizza. And while the Scarr’s cookbook outlines home pizza in its various forms (including vegan and, of course, the signature Scarr’s Hotboi), there’s so much more, including fried meatballs, handmade chicken sausage, calzones, cocktails and vegan garlic knots. — S.B.
Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes
by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn (America’s Test Kitchen)
What’s embedded in the pages of “Umma,” by Sarah Ahn and her mother, Nam Soon Ahn, is the singular love shared by a mother and daughter, and the myriad ways to demonstrate that love in the kitchen. It’s also an extensive primer on cooking Korean food, with tips on how to build a pantry, useful kitchen tutorials and a section on how Nam Soon chooses produce. There are recipes for everything from gimbap to kimchi grilled cheese, but what really makes this book special are the stories that accompany some of the recipes and the notes that read like handwritten tips meant just for me. — J.H.
We the Pizza: Slangin’ Pies + Savin’ Lives
by Muhammad Abdul-Hadi, recipes by Michael Carter (Clarkson Potter)
Muhammad Abdul-Hadi understands firsthand how incarceration can derail someone’s life. Just as he was preparing to open his mission-driven pizzeria in North Philadelphia, he was hit with a federal indictment that put him on house arrest. That incident strengthened his resolve to use his pizza shop as a tool to reduce recidivism rates, employing only formerly incarcerated people. “We the Pizza” doubles down on this ethos with stories about Down North Pizza and its staff, recipes plucked from its maximalist, Philly-style menu and history about the U.S. carceral system. Pizzas are named after rap and soul songs by Philadelphia artists, with a QR code to a playlist. “Summertime” is studded with pan-roasted tomatoes, basil pesto and roasted red peppers, and “My Part of Town” reinterprets the classic Philly cheesesteak as a pizza. There’s an entire section dedicated to vegetarian and vegan pies, and a chapter with collaboration recipes from chefs like Shenarri Freeman and Marcus Samuelsson. Hadi includes resources for how to help. To start, any net proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to his Down North Foundation. — D.D.
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