Cookbook Review

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Eastern Mediterranean mezze get the José Andrés treatment in his wonderful new 'Zaytinya' cookbook

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By Leslie Brenner

A month ago, you might have been tempted to think the world already had enough Mediterranean cookbooks — and then José Andrés published one.

The prolific restaurateur and founder of World Central Kitchen seems to have put his heart and soul into Zaytinya, which celebrates the mezze (shared small plates) tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean — Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. (Zaytinya means “olive oil” in Turkish).

More specifically, it celebrates “José’s way” with those dishes — just as the Washington, D.C. restaurant it’s named for does. The result is one of the most exciting cookbooks published in the last few years. The recipes are tremendously appetizing and do-able, and the dishes that wound up on my table were, without exception, pretty spectacular.

Most exciting to me is the book’s deep dive into Greek culinary traditions and ingredients. Serious titles on the subject are uncommon on the American cookbook landscape, and it’s such an appealing cuisine. Happily, it is a strong focus in the book.

But it’s not Greek grandma cooking (nor Turkish or Lebanese grandma cooking) that’s on display in this volume. As Andrés writes in his introduction, his mezze honor the region’s traditional dishes but “created in a new way — using ingredients and techniques that inspire me and my team. That’s what gives Zaytinya its unique style, and what has filled the restaurant from the first day it opened, two decades ago.”

Seared Scallops with Tzatziki, prepared from a recipe in ‘Zaytinya’: This is not Greek grandma cooking.

José’s way with scallops

Andrés’ recipe for Seared Scallops with Tzatziki is a case in point. The tzatziki is pretty straightforward-traditional; garlic confit in place of raw garlic is a worthwhile cheffy touch, and the tzatziki on its own is wonderful. Here it gets spread it on a plate, topped with seared scallops and garnished with shaved radishes, herbs and Sumac Rose Spice — a magical blend of pink peppercorns, dried rose petals, sumac, cumin, Urfa pepper and sesame seeds. The use of rose petals is more Persian, Turkish and Indian than Greek, and that’s the kind of flair that makes so many of the recipes stand out.

That spice mix also happens to be gorgeous, so it’s surprising that the photo of the scallops in the book leaves it off. (When was the last time a recipe you attempted at home was prettier than the photo in the book?) Since testing the recipe, I’ve been using the mix on all kinds of things: sprinkled on other fish besides scallops; over leeks vinaigrette, or over labneh for a snack. (It would also be fantastic on cacik, the Turkish yogurt-and-cucumber soup, or on minted pea soup, hot or cold.)

The book does include some recipes that are completely traditional, particularly in the chapter on sauces and spreads. There you’ll find straight-ahead hummus and toum; I didn’t test those, but I did test a recipe for muhammara. — roasted red pepper and walnut spread. Andrés’ headnote explains that the dip is “often associated with Syria, but it’s also claimed by Lebanon and Turkey,” where the dish is made with Marash pepper, very similar to Aleppo (which is what Andrés’ recipe calls for). Andrés has you roast the peppers partway, then scatter walnuts over them and continue roasting, then sprinkle Aleppo pepper and cumin over those and roast a little longer. Then everything gets blitzed together. Very smart, simple and user-friendly, and that muhamarra was easily the best that’s ever come out of my kitchen.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ Muhammara

Zaytinya’s introduction provides a lot of rich background — about what first drew the Spanish-born chef to the Eastern Mediterranean, and about all the history and shared culture that connect modern-day Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. “The connections between the people of this region are old and deep,” he writes, “and their shared food traditions prove that what brings us together is more powerful than what separates us.”

He tells us about the time he and his wife spent in Athens, Santorini, Thessaloniki and Istanbul more than two decades ago, doing research for the restaurant, and particularly time spent with the Kea, Greece-based cookbook author Aglaia Kremenzi, who became an important “mentor and guide.” It’s so delightful to read about restaurant R&D with that kind of depth and seriousness — such a rarity. America is filled with restaurants that get their ideas about the cuisines they represent from other American restaurants representing those cuisines, without their chefs and owners going back and diving deeply into those food cultures where they were born. That depth of research is felt throughout the book.

Gigantes star in a Turkish-Greek crossover

Once of my favorite dishes (at least so far; I have a couple dozen Post-Its on the pages of dishes I still want to make) is Andrés’ spin on piyaz, traditionally a Turkish bean-and-onion salad. Here it’s given a Greek twist with the addition of dill and ladolemono, a lemon-honey dressing. It’s served warm, more of a bean stew. Andrés calls for dried gigante beans or large limas; I used heirloom Royal Coronas from Rancho Gordo, which were ideal.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ White Bean Stew

A few tiny quibbles

The book isn’t perfect. Some of the yields were off (the Muhammara recipe says it makes about 1 cup; in fact it made nearly 2 cups); a recipe for Greek almond cookies (amygdalota) yielded 39 cookies, nine more than the 30 stated. Not a big deal, but 30 would have fit on one baking sheet, and 39 do not. An otherwise excellent recipe for meatballs in spiced tomato sauce, or soutzoukakia, makes far more sauce than needed for the one-pound-worth of ground beef it calls for; next time I’d make one-and-a-half times as much of the meatballs.

Also, I couldn’t help but wonder, other than the larger-format dishes in a chapter called “Family & Fire,” are these dishes really all meant to be mezze? I dearly love those scallops, but if they’re only meant to be one part of a big spread, that’s a lot of work. It’s not too much work for a main course, though — especially one that’s such a show-stopper.

A bit of explanation about how to approach menu-planning would have been appreciated. How many dishes would you plan for a spread, or how should one strategize executing them? Should you do a few cold ones and a few hot?

Finally, it seems crazy, in this day and age, not to include metric measures in a cookbook. I added metric equivalents in my adaptation of Andrés’ recipes, but they’re not in the original.

These are small quibbles, though, especially as everything tested was so delicious and appealing; there wasn’t a single dish I wouldn’t make again. (The spiced tomato sauce for those meatballs was outrageously good.)

I’ll certainly make Zaytinya’s Garides Me Ánitho (Buttery Shrimp with Dill) again, but I’ll need to get signed permission slips from my guests’ cardiologists: The mezze, which serves four, uses an entire stick of butter. I almost didn’t make it, until I read in the headnote that “shrimp like these are served in tavernas throughout Greece, along with a glass of ouzo,” and that it’s been on the menu at Zaytinya since it opened. (Damn — I missed it the couple times I dined there!)

Here Andrés’ twist is adding a touch of grainy mustard. It’s really good.

RECIPE: ‘Zaytinya’ Greek Taverna Shrimp (Garides Me Ánitho)

And those recipes with Post-Its?

There are so many I’m eager to make. Hommus with Spiced Lamb. Taramasalata Andrés promises will be a revelation (a jar of tarama, or carp roe, is on its way to me). Handmade Phyllo. Turkish Stuffed Eggplant (Mam Bayikdi). Cod Steamed in Grape Leaves (Bakaliarios Se Klimatofila). Manti (the iconic Turkish savory dumplings in yogurt sauce). A spice-rubbed Roasted Lamb Shoulder that looks amazing; you serve it with lettuce leaves, harissa, tzatziki, toum and pita bread. A beautiful parfait of Greek Yogurt with Apricots. Walnut Ice Cream.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying if you love cooking Mediterranean food, you definitely want this book.

Zaytinya: Delicious Mediterranean Dishes from Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon by José Andrés, Ecco, 2024, $45.

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Taiwanese and Taiwanese American culinary traditions shine in three exciting cookbooks

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Taiwanese beef noodle soup prepared from a recipe in‘First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home’ by Frankie Gaw

By Leslie Brenner

A Taiwanese American identity movement is gathering strength in the United States. For those of us who love to cook and want to learn about Taiwan’s culinary culture — and for Taiwanese Americans keen to celebrate and cook the dishes of their beloved island nation — three recent cookbooks provide a delicious way in.

Each is appealing in its own way. Each also brings something uniquely valuable to the table. One is the perfect primer if you’re looking for Taiwanese culinary history and cultural context. Another is filled with great recipes and soulful personal takes on the Taiwanese American experience. The third shows you how to make beloved dishes from a cult-favorite Brooklyn restaurant and bakery.

‘Made in Taiwan’: Thoughtful overview, wide-ranging recipes

Many non-Taiwanese Americans’ knowledge of Taiwanese cooking is fuzzy at best. We might know that Din Tai Fung, the global chain of soup dumpling restaurants, began in Taiwan. Or that boba tea (also known as bubble tea) is iconically Taiwanese. We might even know — for instance, if we’ve ventured into a Taiwanese restaurant here and there — that beef noodle soup and scallion pancakes are Taiwanese favorites. Maybe we’ve heard of stinky tofu: Yes, that’s Taiwanese, too.

If you’re looking for a thoughtful overview that provides excellent context, background and history of Taiwanese culinary culture and all it has to offer, Made in Taiwan is the book for you. “I hope the world can see Taiwan as more than just a geopolitical chess piece or a controversial island near China with great night markets,” writes author Clarissa Wei in her introduction. She’s an accomplished Taiwanese American journalist who was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is now based in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. She adds:

“Our cuisine is a hodgepodge of cultures, colored by our indigenous tribes, influenced by Japanese colonists, inspired by American military aid and shaped by all the various waves of Chinese immigrants and refugees who have arrived and made this island their home.”

We learn in an excellent chapter on the culinary history of the island that 95% of Taiwan’s population is Han Chinese, which Wei points out is but a “vague umbrella term for people who have ancestry in China.” In the 17th century the first wave of Chinese immigrants, from Fujian in south China, brought “the love of seafood, rice and pork.” Taiwanese cooking is similar to Chinese, with food that is “fried or braised in large woks, or softened in hot and steamy bamboo baskets stacked on top of one another.” Taiwan and Fujian share a common love for “lightly seasoned food, occasionally heightened with a minimalistic trinity of ginger, garlic and scallions.” Sweet potatoes — which thrive on the island’s subtropical climate — is the dominant carb, along with rice. Because the mountainous terrain lacks wide grazing lands, pork, not beef, is the de facto protein; seafood is also important.

In 1949, when the communists (under Mao Zedong) took power in China over the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang fled to Taiwan, establishing the Republic of China (R.O.C.), Taiwan’s official name. The R.O.C. and the U.S. became close allies and the U.S. pumped extensive military aid and exports to the island — including wheat. As a result, Taiwan fell in love with American food culture. America’s fried chicken inspired Taiwanese popcorn chicken; refugees from North China turned the wheat into dumplings and noodles.

The Recipes

Wei enlisted the help of Ivy Chen, a Taiwanese cooking instructor with deep knowledge of the island’s countryside culinary traditions that Wei says is lacking among “younger city folk.” The two traveled widely around the R.O.C. to gather inspiration from far-flung cooks.

Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup (Zhà Cài Ròu Sī Miàn)

This comforting noodle soup features preserved mustard stems, which you can make yourself (there’s a recipe in the book) or pick up at a well stocked Asian supermarket; there you can also look for fresh (or fresh frozen) Taiwanese wheat noodles, or use dried. Homemade pork broth makes the difference between a good soup and a great one in this case; I tried it both ways and vote for the homemade broth over purchased chicken broth.

RECIPE: Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup (Zha Cai Rou Si Mian)

I also enjoyed making Braised Napa Cabbage with shiitake, wood-ear mushrooms and carrots; with steamed or brown rice, it makes a lovely plant-forward dinner; and I’m eager to make Sweet Potato Leaves Stir-Fry, once I can get my hands on sweet potato leaves. A Quick Seafood Congee looks wonderful, and so does Smoked Betel Leaf Pork Sausage — though I don’t know if I’m up to wrangling hog casings. Made in Taiwan’s recipe for Three-Cup Chicken was satisfying, but the sauce didn’t work properly; it wouldn’t reduced to the “treacly, sticky glaze” the recipe promises and the famous dish is known for.

Pickled Mustard Greens, on the other hand worked great. Once I sun-dry them and age them, I can use them next time I make the Pickled Mustard and Pork Noodle Soup.

Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation by Clarissa Wei with Ivy Chen, Simon Element, $40.

‘First Generation’: Storytelling with a giant heart, and recipes that work

If you want to gain a sense of what it’s like growing up in a Taiwanese American family, Frankie Gaw’s debut book (published in late 2022) has your name on it. You’ll eat super well along the way.

I fell hard for Gaw, the cook behind the delightful Little Fat Boy blog; His headnotes are some of the most engaging I’ve ever read. Here’s how he introduces his Grandma’s Pearl Meatballs:

“This was one of the very first recipes my grandma taught me when I started learning to cook fro her. I had never even seen it before she taught me. I remember following her lead as she combined a familiar mixture of pork, ginger and scallions into a meatball, then rolled it in grains of sweet glutinous rice that looked like pearls. After an 18-minute steam, lifting the steamer lid revealed glistening sticky rice balls, every grain soaked with pork juice and the aroma of bamboo. I can trace this recipe back to the Hubei province of China; it’s one of the dishes that makes me proud to be Asian.”

Who could resist?!

RECIPE: Frankie Gaw’s Grandma’s Pearl Meatballs

Gaw’s recipes are a pure pleasure to make — they’re as much about having fun with the process as they are with the end result. Excellent step-by-step visuals (expertly illustrated and photographed by Gaw himself) show how to pull noodles, wrap wontons, make braided bao wrappers and more.

Dan Bing

When Gaw writes that the egg crepes known as Dan Bing are a traditional Taiwanese breakfast dish his grandma used to make for him — and the simplest dish in the entire book — of course I had to make that, too. I loved them.

RECIPE: Dan Bing

And here’s his recipe for his Uncle Jerry’s Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup, shown at the top of this review:

RECIPE: Frankie Gaw’s Uncle Jerry’s Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Meanwhile, smack in the middle of the book, Gaw includes a full-page coming-out letter to his dad. It’s adorable, funny, poignant and brave — and followed by a recipe for Scallion Pancakes, whose headnote literally made me cry. Don’t ask why; just buy the book and read it all.

FIRST GENERATION; RECIPES FROM MY TAIWANESE-AMERICAN HOME BY FRANKIE GAW, TEN SPEED PRESS, 2022 $32.50.

‘Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook’: Razzle-dazzle from a Brooklyn hot spot

This book from Josh Ku and Trigg Brown, the founders of Brooklyn’s Win Son and Win Son Bakery, (with an assist from writer Cathy Erway) is pure, exuberant fun — the kind of fun that one imagines makes the restaurant and bakery such hot tickets.

What sets it apart from First Generation and Made in Taiwan is that the recipes explode with creativity, and they don’t shy away from embracing wild fusions.

Lamb Wontons

Case in point: a platter of gingery, garlicky lamb wontons set on a schmear of labneh (yes, labneh!), dusted with cumin seeds, then sprinkled with a special “lamb spice mix,” drizzled with sweet soy dipping sauce and chile oil and showered with cilantro leaves. Weird-sounding? Maybe. Over the top? Definitely. Delicious? Absolutely.

RECIPE: Win Son’s Lamb Wontons

Win Son’s recipes are very cheffy, and not always in a user-friendly way. There are lots of sub-recipes, and in amounts that don’t make sense for a home cook. (What are you going to do with 2/3 cup of leftover lamb spice mix? Our adapted recipe adjusts so you only make enough for the wontons.) Yields are sometimes off. (The wonton recipe says it makes about 35; we had enough filling for 65.)

And sometimes the recipes just don’t behave. When I made Sun Cookies — a bakery signature — I took the authors’ suggested shortcut, using purchased frozen puff pastry instead of spending hours making a rough-puff pastry. Coming out of the oven, the cookies seemed to be complete flops, with lots of (very expensive!) pine nuts and caramelly filling spilling out of them as they baked. They looked nothing like the photo in the book. I nearly threw them away.

A sheet pan of Sun Cookies, their filling half-leaked out and looking strange, next to a photo of the cookie from the book

But once they cooled, I flipped them over, and hey! — they looked much like the ones in the book. That filling was almost painfully sweet, but the cookies were kind of evilly good — though I’m guessing the ones from the bakery starring freshly made rough puff are a thousand times better.

The Sun Cookies, once I flipped them over

These are the kinds of problems that are typical for chef books — which is why it’s so important the recipes are thoroughly tested before publication, along with careful editing and copy editing. Alas, these important steps are falling more and more by the wayside.

That said, Win Son Presents has an awful lot of charm, especially for fans of the restaurant and bakery. If you’re going to buy the book and attempt the recipes, best if you’re a more experienced cook, so you can spot any potential problems before getting too far into them. (Fear not — our adapted recipes fix all such rough spots.) If you are a confident chef who can adapt when things don’t go as anticipated, there’s plenty of worthwhile inspiration in Win Son Presents’ pages.

Win Son’s Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad

Fortunately I had my guard up when I made the Green Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad: The recipe called for 4 ounces, or 115 grams, of roasted seaweed snacks, which you’re supposed to crush and toss with the salad. I figured it was a mistake — seaweed snacks usually come in 4-gram or 10-gram packs. One hundred fifteen grams is a comical amount, a giant bowlful that would have completely overwhelmed the salad. I used 10 grams, which was more than enough, and adjusted our adapted recipe accordingly. The salad was a winner — fresh, fun and different. (And vegan!)

RECIPE: Win Son’s Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad

Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, by Josh Ku and Trigg Brown with Cathy Erway, abrams, 2023, $40.

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The ultimate cookbook gift guide: New and notable titles from 2023

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is part II of our two-part Ultimate Cookbook Gift Guide. Read Part I.]

Deliciously all over the map: That’s this year in cookbooks. One dives into Italian peasant food. Another offers Japanese home cooking as expressed by a fairly recent immigrant and a nice Jewish boy who fell in love, both chefs. The next explores the Mexican tradition of backyard grilling, carne asada. Yet another illuminates the Taiwanese American experience as played out at a popular Brooklyn restaurant and bakery.

In fact, Brooklyn restaurants expressed in books was big this year. That Japanese-Jewish fusion happens in Williamsburg, at Shalom Japan. A Persian place in Prospect Heights — Sofreh — gave us another exciting title.

The renowned Washington, D.C. restaurant Maydan and its siblings spawned its own volume, filled with gorgeous Lebanese-inspired dishes. And that Mexican grilling book? It’s from the co-owner of Guelaguetza, the legendary Oaxacan restaurant in L.A.

All those volumes try not to be too cheffy or restauranty, instead skewing delightfully homey. That’s no doubt in response to a publishing backlash against restaurant cookbooks; the cooking public, these days, wants great recipes for real food that can be achieved at home without too much fuss. That’s always been our jam, too, at Cooks Without Borders.

If only the recipes that filled all these books this year had been properly tested and more carefully copy-edited. As a group, this year’s new books are rife with mistakes that can easily lead to recipe flops. Not all, to be sure; those from seasoned pros, like Nancy Silverton, Andrea Nguyen and Katie Parla, have yielded only fabulous results in our test kitchen. Some other books on this list are recommended with caveats; there may be problems lurking in their pages, but they’ll still make great gifts for certain kinds of cooks (or armchair cooks). Still others are included that we have yet to test recipes from — yep, I’m an incurable optimist. The untested titles are flagged.

Here’s the good news: Any problems we find in recipes get corrected as we adapt them for this site. Click on our recipe links, and you can feel confident the recipe will work. We very much hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did.

Here we go: our recommended new and notable titles for 2023. Between this, and Part I of our Ultimate Cookbook Gift Guide, you should have no trouble finding the perfect gift for every cook in your life. And maybe a little something for yourself, too — you deserve it.

 

The Cookie That Changed My Life

It’s not every day that Nancy Silverton publishes a cookbook. “Making the absolute best version of the familiar baked goods that we all know and love” was her idea behind this one, and the results are (so far) pretty wonderful. We’ve now tested three — a Devil’s Food Cake with Fudge Frosting, Almond Biscotti in the style of soft cantucci (the real Italian word for biscotti), and Cheese Coins rimmed with cracked black pepper, which I’m calling Cacio e Pepe Cheese Coins. This is a baking book that every serious cook needs to own. I can tell you that Silverton pulls no punches in her recipes. She’s not afraid of using a pound of chocolate, and she triples our previous conception of how much vanilla to use in anything.

Find the recipe for the Cacio e Pepe Cheese Coins here. Look for a review soon.

The Cookie That Changed My Life: And More than 100 Other Classic Cakes, Cookies, Muffins and Pies That Will Change Yours, by Nancy Silverton (with Carolynn CarreñO), Ten Speed Press, $40.

BUY ‘The Cookie’ at Bookshop
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Cucina Povera

I love the concept of this book, which is stuck throughout with Post-Its on the myriad recipes I can’t wait to try. Three involve Savoy cabbage, which I adore and haven’t been able to find lately. (Buckwheat Pasta with Cabbage and Cheese!) A few others I have my eye on: Artichoke, Fava Bean, Pea and Lettuce Stew (for the spring); Pork Braised in White Wine; Savory Swiss Chard and Parmigian-Reggiano Pie. The vibe is irresistible comfort. The one recipe I’ve tried turned out great: Roasted Pepper Rolls Stuffed with Tuna and Capers (Involtini di peperoni alla piemontese).

Cucina Povera: The Italian Way of Transforming Humble Ingredients into Unforgettable Meals, by Giulia Scarpaleggia, Artisan, $44.

BUY ‘Cucina Povera’ at Bookshop
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Ever-Green Vietnamese

Andrea Nguyen, the preemient authority on Vietnamese cooking in the United States, is also one of our best cookbook authors. Her recipes are wonderfully appealing, and they work — beautifully. Her seventh cookbook focuses on a loose definition of plant-based: It’s not strictly vegetarian or vegan, but vegetables take center stage. Read our review, try the recipes, buy the book.

Ever-Green Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea, by Andrea Nguyen, Ten Speed Press, $35.

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Food of the Italian Islands

Treat someone you love to a trip Capri — and Sardinia, and Sicily. Vicarious, perhaps, but they can count on lots of messy, delicious food along the way. Read our review, try the recipes, buy the book.

Food of the Italian Islands, by Katie Parla, Parla Publishing, $35.

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Love Japan

Co-authors Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel are the married couple and the chef-owners of Shalom Japan in Brooklyn (she’s Japanese, he’s Jewish). They may be restaurateurs, but happily the recipes in this enticing book skew homey; many point to what they love to cook in their own home. Most of the dishes are Japanese; others are Japanese-Jewish fusion. (Home-Style Matzoh Ball Ramen? Sign me up!) Their Smashed Cucumber and Wakame Salad was super easy and turned out well — here’s the recipe.

Love Japan: Recipes from our Japanese American Kitchen, by Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel with Gabriella Gershenson, Ten Speed Press, $30.

BUY ‘Love Japan’ at Bookshop
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Asada: The Art of Mexican Style Grilling

This season, the greatest excitement I had flipping through a book and identifying can’t-wait-to-cook recipes was when Asada — Bricia Lopez’s book — came in the mail. So many dishes looked so amazing. Lopez co-owns Guelaguetza, L.A.’s legendary Oaxacan restaurant, but this book is about carne asada: the backyard grilling tradition that’s popular all over Mexico, and anywhere Mexican ex-pats, immigrants or their offspring live. It includes lots of centerpieces to grill, along with all the salsas and sides to serve with them.

We dove in and tried the recipe for Carne Asada Clásica — flap steak marinated overnight, grilled, sliced and served with homemade tortillas and salsas. [Try the recipe.] We were so glad we did. We also loved a recipe for Guacamole Tatemado en Molcajete — which adds lots of grilled scallions and fresh mint to the classic avocado mash.

Some other recipes gave us trouble. A small salad of 2 Persian cucumbers and 8 radishes, for instance, called for a tablespoon of salt and two teaspoons of pepper; I cut the salt by two thirds and the pepper in half, and even that was on the salty-peppery side. Still, there are some wonderful ideas in the book, and so much deliciousness. Therefore I recommend it — with that caveat that it’s best for experienced cooks who know how to eyeball a recipe and spot potential pinch-points, or for those keen on flipping through for inspiration.

Asada: The Art of Mexican Style Grilling, by Bricia lopez with Javier cabral, abrams, $40.

BUY ‘Asada’ at Bookshop
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Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook

So much fun in the pages of this book from Josh Ku and Trigg Brown, the founders of Brooklyn’s Win Son and Win Son Bakery. Again, I marked oodles of recipe to try. Like the Shrimp Cakes that fill Win Son’s “Nutritious Sandwich.” Or Flies’ Head — the dish that inspired them to form a partnership and start a restaurant. (There are no flies in it; rather flecks of pork and fermented black beans, along with a lot of flowering chives.) Clams with Basil, a classic Taiwanese re chao (hot stir-fry) dish, looks splendid as well.

We dove in and fell in love with Lamb Wontons, served on a shmear of labneh (how original!), and drizzled with a Sweet Soy Dipping Sauce, cilantro leaves, cumin seeds, chili crisp and a fantastically vibrant “‘Lamb’ Spice Mix.” Wow! That recipe worked great, and so did Green Soybean, Tofu Skin and Pea Shoot Salad (though I had to adjust amounts on radically on one of the ingredients). San Bei Ji — Three-Cup Chicken (another Taiwanese classic) — turned out well, but the instructions needed some clarification and timing required adjusting. That’ll all be fixed when we bring you a full review. In the meantime, please try the Lamb Wontons. Again, this is a book that’s more suited to experienced cooks who will love the ideas and know when to tweak, compensate and fix.

Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook, by Josh ku and Trigg Brown with Cathy Erway, Abrams, $40.

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Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking

Here’s one I’d recommend for fans of Emiko Davies — the Tuscany-based Japanese-born food writer and photographer who blogs and writes about regional Italian cooking. Those diving into Japanese cooking for the first time will also find it interesting. “Gohan’ means ‘rice’ in Japanese, and it also refers to the “everyday home-cooked meal.” As Davies’ Japanese mother explains it, “Nothing fussy, but quick and easy, and nourishing. One that is made with love.” I appreciate the section on hosting a temaki (sushi hand-roll) party, and went crazy over her recipe for Chilled Dressed Tofu. The illustrated cover captures its charms, and the photos (and more illustrations) inside are lovely.

Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking, by Emiko Davies, Smith Street Books, $35.

BUY ‘Gohan’ at Bookshop
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We’re Also Excited About . . .

The following titles are those we haven’t yet tested recipes from, but we have high hopes for.


Sofreh: A Contemporary Approach to Classic Persian Cuisine

By Nasim Alikhani with Theresa Gambacorta, Knopf, $40.

Nasim Alikhani has such a great story: She opened her Brooklyn restaurant Sofreh five years ago at the age of 59, never having worked in a restaurant, but with a wealth of Iranian home cooking experience under her belt. Based on the gorgeous photos and the way the recipes are written, we can’t wait to dive in and cook. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘Sofreh’ at Bookshop
BUY ‘Sofreh’ at Amazon

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The Korean Cookbook

By Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi, Phaidon, $55.

This impressive, 496-page volume was written by two chefs, but the focus is home cooking and tradition. The history-filled introduction to hansik (Korean cooking) is on its own worth the price of admission, and the recipes — particularly the banchan (side dishes) — look wonderufl. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘The Korean Cookbook’ at Bookshop
BUY ‘The Korean Cookbook’ at Amazon

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On the Curry Trail: Chasing the Flavor that Seduced the World

By Raghavan Iyer, Workman Publishing, $30.

From the award-winning author of 660 Curries, this smart little illustrated volume tackles the question what makes a curry — with enticing recipes from six continents. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘On the Curry Trail’ at Bookshop
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Taste the World in Marseille

By Vérane Frédiani, Éditions de La Martinière/Abrams, $30

From all reports, the multicultural food scene in Marseille is exploding, and this exuberant book captures it all with a giant heart. It’ll make you want to go there, as much as it’ll make you want to cook. And if you do go, you’ll certainly want to have the book (a paperback) in hand as a guide. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘Taste the World in Marseille’ at Bookshop
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Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation

By Clarissa Wei with Ivy Chen, Simon Element, $40.

Taipei native and food writer Clarissa Wei has put together an ambitious and impressive volume, in collaboration with Taiwanese cooking instructor Ivy Chen, that aims to tell the full story of Taiwanese cuisine. Home cooks from all over the island nation contribute their dishes. The result is a book that anyone who loves Taiwanese cooking or interested in learning about it should be thrilled to receive. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘Made in Taiwan’ at Bookshop
BUY ‘Made in Taiwan’ at Amazon

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Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond

By Rose Previte with Marah Stets, Abrams, $40

Rose Previte, owner of Washington, D.C. restaurants Maydān, Compass Rose, Kirby Club and Medina, mined her travels all across the Levant, North Africa and Georgia to put together this gorgeous book. From Taktouka (Moroccan roasted pepper and tomato spread) to a lamb shoulder with Syrian seven spice that takes 8 hours to roast to Lebanon’s famous date-filled butter cookies, mamouls, the recipes look incredible. Plus, the book itself is a beautiful object — a rarer thing these days. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘Maydān’ at Bookshop
BUY ‘Maydān’ at Amazon

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Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes

By Hillary Dixler Canavan, Abrams, $35.

Eater’s Restaurant Editor chose iconic recipes from establishments all over the U.S. for this super-fun book, a snapshot of eating in America in our time. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘Eater’ at Bookshop
BUY ‘Eater’ at Amazon

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The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope

By José Andrés & World Central Kitchen with Sam Chapple-Sokol, Foreword by Stephen Colbert, Clarkson Potter, $35

“This is a place that is full of empathy and hope, a place where we are building longer tables, not higher walls,” writes super-hero chef José Andrés in his Introduction. He’s talking about the world of World Central Kitchen. “Wherever there’s a fight so that hungry people may eat . . . we’ll be there.” The book is meant to inspire to us to cook for a neighbor in need, volunteer at a local food pantry, or join WCK’s Relief Team responding to a disaster. Andrés uses the phrase “Cooks Without Borders” as a section head, which tickles us. Of course we support the organization! Please join us in raising money for their efforts. Buy the book; cook the recipes that come from WCK’s missions. [Recipes not yet tested.]

BUY ‘World Central Kitchen Cookbook’ at Bookshop
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The greatest cookbook gifts: Back-list treasures and new classics

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part I of our 2-part Ultimate Cookbook Gift Guide.]

We’re doing something a little different for our holiday cookbook gift guide this year.

Most roundups like this one exclusively cover books that are new this year, or this season. But that doesn’t address the way people really buy book gifts.

Most of us are more concerned with how much the giftee will love, use and treasure a cookbook than whether it was published this year or last — or five years ago or ten. Those older volumes, known in book publishing as “backlist” titles, are the ones with staying power. They’re the books that are good enough to keep selling for years (or decades), making it worth publishers’ while to keep them in print. Season after season, they’re some of the best cookbooks money can buy.

Meanwhile, as we have been testing the recipes from new books this particular year, we’ve bumped into an awkward problem. The books look wonderful, the photos are tempting and the dishes sound great. But a crazy number of the recipes don’t work, or have egregious mistakes. They seem not to have been tested at all, or only spottily tested. They might get a gazillion views on Instagram, they might even win an award, but they won’t be treasured backlist books.

That’s why this year, we’ve put together a gift guide in three parts. Part 1 rounds up our tried-and-true favorites, mostly backlist classic, but also newer treasures. Part 2 will recommend exciting new cookbooks from which we’ve tested at least one recipe, followed by promising titles whose recipes we haven’t yet tested.

Following the publication of Part 2, our guide will be updated periodically. Notable new books will be added, those that test well will move into favorites list, and others will drop out of the guide — if we have poor results or too much difficulty with the recipes.

One more thing: Cookbooks are a great gift any time of year, not just for the holidays. We’ll keep the guide pinned on the Cookbooks page of the site, for your handy reference year-round.

Baking with Dorie

Award-winning, best-selling cookbook author Dorie Greenspan is one of America’s most outstanding. Her 14th book, partly inspired by her travels and filled with must-bake recipes, encourages home bakers to riff and play. Read the review and purchase the book.

Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty and Simple, by Dorie Greenspan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021, $35

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Classic Indian Cooking

I’ve cooked quite a bit from this encyclopedic book, published more than four decades ago, leaning on it when I want to remind myself of basics like the best way to make basmati rice, or making a wonderful rogani gosht (lamb braised in aromatic cream sauce). Sahni’s recipes work brilliantly, and she gives plenty of valuable context, including how to make them part of a meal. Here’s a sample recipe — for Yerra Moolee, a gently spiced, herbal dish of shrimp poached in coconut milk from Kerala.

Classic Indian Cooking, by Julie Sahni, William Morrow, 1980, $29

BUY ‘Classic Indian Cooking’ at Bookshop

BUY ‘Classic Indian Cooking’ at Amazon

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Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean

One of the revered author’s greatest works. Read the review and purchase the book.

Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel, Ten Speed Press, 2021, $40

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Every Grain of Rice

Dunlop's approachable, reliable book is one of our favorite cookbooks ever. Read the review and purchase the book.

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, by Fuchsia Dunlop, Norton, 2012

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Falastin

Exuberantly delicious recipes that work brilliantly fill the pages of this book about Palestinian cooking and culture, from Yotam Ottolenghi’s business partner (Tamimi) and a longtime member of the Ottolengi team (Wigley). Read the review and purchase the book. Watch CWB’s Q & A with Tara Wigley.

Falastin: A Cookbook, by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, Ten Speed Press, 2020, $35

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Food of Life

Batmanglij is the undisputed queen of Persian and Iranian cooking. The recipes in her mammoth 1986 book, revised in 2020, are astounding in how much they delight — from the moment you start prepping the aromatic, beautiful ingredients, through the inevitably pleasurable cooking, through every last bite. Read more and purchase the book.

Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, by Najmieh Batmanglij, Mage Publishers, 2020, $55

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Gâteau

This charming 2022 collection from Aleksandra Crapanzano speaks to people who love cakes but don’t want to fuss over them; you won’t think twice about whipping up these delightful and easy treats. Still, if you want to dive into an ambitious project, she has you covered; her baba au rhum recipe is a knockout. Review coming soon - for now, try a recipe and purchase the book.

Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, by Aleksandra Crapanzano, ILLUSTRATIONS BY CASSANDRA MONTORIOL, SCRIBNER, $30.

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Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

Still in print since 1980 for a reason: It's essential. Here’s a sample recipe.

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji, Kodansha America, 2006, $45

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Jubilee

Tipton-Martin's award-winning 2020 book is already a classic. Read the review and purchase the book.

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, by Toni Tipton-Martin, Clarkson Potter, 2019, $35

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Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Julia Child’s essential 2-volume set. Of course I love Julia — she taught me to cook!

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes i and ii, by Julia Child, knopf

BUY ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II’ at Amazon

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Mother Grains

This groundbreaking book from L.A.’s star baker, the co-owner of Friends & Family, eloquently explicates the grain revolution. Organized around 8 “mother grains” (barley, buckwheat, corn, oats, rice, rye, sorghum and wheat), it’s filled with fabulous recipes that will change the way you think about baking. Since reviewing it, I’ve continued reaching for it regularly (the rye bagel recipe is fantastic). Read the review and purchase the book.

Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution, by Roxana Jullapat, Norton, 2021, $40

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My Korea

The Michelin-starred New York-based chef hit a home run with his approachable and authoritative primer. Read the review and purchase the book.

My Korea: Traditional Flavors, Modern Recipes, by Hooni Kim, Norton, 2020, $40

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Ottolenghi Simple

This is probably my favorite book from the Israel-born London super-chef. Read my review and purchase the book.

Ottolenghi Simple, by Yotam Ottolenghi with Tara Wigley and Esme Howarth, Ten Speed Press, 2018, $35

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The Perfect Scoop

The Paris-based former Chez Panisse pastry chef, David Lebovitz, is the undisputed king of ice cream. His recipes are great for following to a T, but they're also imminently riffable. Read the review and purchase the book.

The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas and Sweet Accompaniments, by David Lebovitz, Ten Speed Press, 2007

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Peru: The Cookbook

Worth it for the ceviche chapter alone, this is the authoritative work from Peru’s most famous chef.

Peru: The Cookbook, by Gastón Acurio, Phaidon, 2015, $55

Buy ‘Peru’ at Bookshop

Buy ‘Peru’ at Amazon

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The Rise

Marcus Samuelsson is one of the most talented and accomplished chefs of our time, and his recipes — inspired by Black chefs, activists and cooks — are thrilling. Osayi Endolyn’s essays about those cooks and activists are wonderful, enlightening reads. Read our review and buy the book.

THE RISE: BLACK COOKS AND THE SOUL OF AMERICAN FOOD, BY MARCUS SAMUELSSON WITH OSAYI ENDOLYN, RECIPES WITH YEWANDE KOMOLAFE AND TAMIE COOK, PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANGIE MOSIER, 2020, LITTLE, BROWN, $38

Tu Casa Mi Casa

If I could only own one book on Mexican cooking, this would be it. Read the review and purchase the book.

Tu Casa Mi Casa: Mexican Recipes for the Home Cook, by Enrique Olvera, Luis Arellano, Gonzalo Goût and Daniela Soto-Innes, Phaidon, 2019, $40

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Vegetarian India

Jaffrey’s 2015 classic is one of our all-time faves. Read the review and purchase the book.

Vegetarian India, by Madhur Jaffrey, Knopf, 2015, $35

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Via Carota

Cooks Without Borders’ 2022 Cookbook of the Year. Read the review and purchase the book.

Via Carota, by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, with Anna Kovel, Knopf, 2022, $40

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Zuni Cafe Cookbook

From the late Judy Rodgers — filled with recipes culled from her legendary San Francisco restaurant — this is one of our favorite cookbooks ever. It’s just as valuable for the myriad quick ideas Rodgers talks through, not-quite-recipes like seven different crostini — one with bean purée and sardines in chimichurri, another with egg salad, fava beans and smoked trout. Of course you’ll find her famous Zuni roast chicken in its pages, and so much more. Try this recipe for her favorite New Year’s Eve hors d’oeuvre: gougères stuffed with bacon, pickled onions and arugula.

The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, by Judy Rodgers, Norton, 2002, $35

Buy ‘The Zuni Cafe Cookbook’ at Bookshop

Buy ‘The Zuni Cafe Cookbook’ at Amazon

READ: Part II of our Ultimate Cookbook Gift Guide — New and notable titles from 2023

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Cookbooks We Love: Vegetables are the stars of Andrea Nguyen's 'Ever-Green Vietnamese'

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By Leslie Brenner

Ever-Green Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea, by Andrea Nguyen, PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUBRIE PICK, Ten Speed Press, 2023, $35.

Light, fresh, tangy and enticing: Doesn’t that sound like just what’s needed between the turkey, the latkes and the bûche de noël? Southeast Asian flavors are a natural antidote to richness, and Andrea Nguyen’s Ever-Green Vietnamese is a title we’re loving now — one we’ll keep turning to when January kicks us in the butt and healthy eating becomes a thing again.

Backgrounder

Nguyen is the preemient authority on Vietnamese cooking in the United States, and this is her seventh cookbook. Her ambitious debut volume, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, broke ground when it was published in 2006, and it remains the best introduction to Vietnamese cooking in English on the market. Since then, Nguyen — who is also a cooking teacher, editor, the publisher of Viet World Kitchen and author of an outstanding Substack newsletter, Pass the Fish Sauce — has evolved into one of the U.S.’s best cookbook authors in any genre. In 2018 she won a James Beard Award for The Pho Cookbook, along with an IACP Cookbook Award for Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, which she edited.

Nguyen’s recipes work beautifully, she explains them clearly and thoroughly, and she’s a wonderful writer who’s brilliant at providing cultural context. She also has a great palate. Whether she’s offering up a traditional Vietnamese dish or something of her own creation, chances are excellent that it will be fabulous and you’ll be able to execute it beautifully in your own kitchen. We profiled Nguyen in 2021, and featured her (with the photographer An-My Lê, who is also Cooks Without Borders’ Vietnamese cooking advisor) in a live CWB video event.

Why We Love It

Ever-Green Vietnamese adopts a loose, omnivorous interpretation of “plant-based.” Following a health scare she had in 2019, Nguyen wanted to change her own eating habits, so she doubled down on vegetables and minimized her consumption of animal protein. The approach felt natural to her: Traditional Vietnamese cooking so strongly emphasizes plants. It uses meat largely as an accent, and relies on fish sauce for umami. A book was born.

The 125 recipes and variations in Ever-Green Vietnamese are vegetable-centric; some 100 (by Nguyen’s count) are vegetarian, and most of those are vegan. Importantly, for vegans, Nguyen offers a recipe for a fishless “fish” sauce — made with two kinds of seaweed, pineapple juice, salt, MSG or Asian mushroom seasoning and Marmite. That gives vegans access to recipes like the Bánh Cuốn Chay, the beautiful rice-paper rolls shown below.

The book’s omnivorously plant-centric vibe is one reason why we love it; that’s the CWB way as well. We also appreciate the excellent introductory material on ingredients, including the fact that Nguyen calls out her preferred brands. There’s a fantastic spread of Vietnamese herbs — keep a photo of it in your phone to help with shopping.

Vietnamese herbs explained in ‘Ever-Green Vietnamese.’ The book was photographed by the late Aubrie Pick.

Speaking of spreads, the book was gorgeously shot by Aubrie Pick, a talented, San Francisco-based lifestyle photographer who died of lymphoma at the age of 42 last month. Pick also photographed Nguyen’s Vietnamese Food Any Day.

Mostly, we love Ever-Green Vietnamese because everything we’ve made from it so far has been absolutely delicious.

Do Try This at Home

Bánh Cuốn Chay — Shiitake-Cauliflower Steamed Rice Rolls — prepared from a recipe in ‘Ever-Green Vietnamese’ by Andrea Nguyen

Bánh Cuốn Chay — Shiitake-Cauliflower Steamed Rice Rolls — are a case in point.

In her headnote, Nguyen calls this type of roll, bánh cuốn, “more delicate than Chinese cheung fan rice-noodle rolls.” They’re served either warm or at room temperature, topped with fried shallots and and eaten with nuoc cham — Vietnam’s ubiquitous dipping sauce — plus herbs, cucumber and blanched bean sprouts. These particular bánh cuốn are filled with a mixture of finely cut-then-cooked cauliflower, shiitake mushrooms, carrots and shallots. Spoon nuoc cham over them, scatter fresh herbs and fried shallots and pass more nuoc cham at the table.

Traditionally, cooking bánh cuốn wasn’t usually attempted at home, Nguyen explains. That’s because it involved the elaborate process of making rice sheets. Recently, though, clever cooks in Vietnam and elsewhere have figured out how to use easy-to-purchase rice paper (steamed rice sheets that have been dried), soaking them to rehydrate and roll, and then briefly steaming or microwaving them with excellent results. Nguyen includes instructions for both in her original recipe in the book. We tested it by steaming, so that’s what our adapted recipe reflects. The recipe is long nonetheless, but that’s because Nguyen holds your hand tightly every step of the way. Do it once, though, and the next time it’ll be easy.

RECIPE: Banh Cuon

Want something simpler?

Vietnam’s beloved dipping sauce also animates this easy weeknight number — Roast Chicken and Broccoli with Nuoc Cham Vinaigrette (Gà Rô Ti). A paste of garlic, shallots, cilantro and seasonings is rubbed on the chicken and stuffed under its skin, then you roast a sheet pan of that, along with a sheet pan of broccoli florets. Dress it all in a nuoc cham vinaigrette and finish with mint leaves and you’ve got a terrific dinner with little effort that deliciously satisfies cravings for umami-tang.

Five-Spice Mushroom-Walnut Pâté

Feeling a need for a mushroom pâté in my life, I had been developing a recipe for one in my head, and then boom — Nguyen beat me to the punch. So glad she did — hers is perfect, simple to achieve and can be made either vegetarian (with butter) or vegan (with canola or peanut oil). It’s perfect for setting out with drinks all through entertaining season.

Try this Comforting Braise

This dish, Peppery Caramel Pork and Daikon (Thịt Heo Kho Củ Cải), is one Nguyen says she craves and prepares often — an example of what she calls “món ăn người nghèo (poor people’s food).

Caramel sauce for savory dishes is a cornerstone of Vietnamese cooking (along with nuoc cham and rice); it’s also technically a bit challenging, and needs to be made with care and attention. There’s a full recipe for the sauce early in the book, but Nguyen is all about practicality, and she offers a quickly made substitute within the recipe for the braised dish.

Mastering Vietnamese caramel sauce is definitely on my meters-long to-do list; meanwhile, I appreciate the workaround, and loved the resulting easy dish — which I served with brown rice.

RECIPE: Peppery Caramel Pork and Daikon (Thịt Heo Kho Củ Cải)

Ready To Dive in?

Try one or more of the recipes linked above. If you enjoy them as much as we do — or want a gift for someone who will — you’ll want to buy this outstanding book.

READ: More Cooks Without Borders cookbook reviews

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Cookbooks We Love: Katie Parla treats us to 'Food of the Italian Islands'

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By Leslie Brenner

Food of the Italian Islands, by Katie Parla, Parla Publishing, 2023, $35

Who doesn’t dream of traveling to a sun-drenched, sea-splashed island in Italy? Now we can treat ourselves to a vicarious experience, jam-packed with its fabulous flavors — thanks to Katie Parla’s new Food of the Italian Islands: Recipes from the Sunbaked Beaches, Coastal Villages, and Rolling Hillsides of Sicily, Sardinia, and Beyond.

Backgrounder

Parla is a Rome-based, New Jersey-raised, ridiculously well educated force of nature — master of everything Italian in food, travel and now publishing (she founded her own publishing house last year). Food of the Italian Islands is her second solo cookbook; her first, published in 2019, was Food of the Italian South. Prior to that she co-authored a gaggle of Italo-centric titles, including Tasting Rome (2016, with Kristina Gill), and American Sfoglino (Evan Funke’s 2019 pasta manifesto). On her own, she’s author of a number of guidebooks (Eating and Drinking in Rome, National Geographic Walking Rome). Food of the Italian Islands is the first title published by Parla Publishing. Going to be in Rome? You can book an eating tour with her through her website — where you can also order a signed copy of her new book. Or should I say “newish” — it was published in March.

Why we love it

Exuberant and fun, its (not-glossy) pages are filled with images of messy-and-delicious-looking food, island life and lots of Parla. Parla wolfing down a sandwich (hands full, mouth full). Colorful produce on the back of a truck. Parla, sunburned nose as red as her short glossy nails, digging into a grilled horse (!) steak with chile and oregano. Sweater-vested nonna serving Parla a spatula-ful of something gooey. Beaming fishmonger in a plastic apron cutting tuna on newspapers. The vibe is the opposite of romanticized: It’s loud, vibrant and bold, like the flavors. You can definitely make food that looks (and tastes) like this.

In fact, the recipes are pretty loose-limbed. They’re the kind of recipes you might make once as written, and then use them as rough guides and just eyeball amounts, doing what feels right.

It’s a great read, too; you learn so much. About the knife-making tradition of Sardinia. How capers are grown and harvested on Pantelleria (the smallest are most prized) — and the fact that the brined leaves are now a thing, one not necessarily appreciated by the locals but apparently delicious. (Yep, there’s a recipe.) How to order a spleen sandwich in Palermo. How and why to make your own rosolio — Sicilian-style infused spirit, a traditional wedding gift.

And about pesto culture. Forget about Genoa — did you know that Sicily is the “pesto capital” of Italy?

Love this pesto — with pistachio and mint

Pesto, Parla reminds us, is any sauce made by mashing ingredients together in a mortar or food processor, usually some kind of herbs, nuts, cheese and olive oil. Tomatoes are added to pestos in Trapani, Pantelleria and Linosa. She provides recipes for all of those — and this one, with pistachios, mint and basil, that has become a “modern classic” in Sicily. It’s wonderful.

Serve it with this salad

On Panatelleria and the Aeolian Islands (just off Sicily), a salad like this — with tomatoes, potatoes, capers, olives, red onions and oregano — is served as a side dish with or after a main course. Simple, zingy and fun, it would be perfect with the pistachio pesto. Or add fabulous canned tuna like ventresca, suggests Parla, and call it a main course.

RECIPE: Insalata Pantesca

So, lots of fish and seafood recipes?

Not as many as you’d think. Because historically islanders were vulnerable to attack and invasion from the sea, they ate more land-based foods, such as pork, lamb, rabbit, goat and beef; preserved fish, such as anchovies, conserved tuna or bottarga (cured mullet or tuna roe); and lots of seasonal vegetables. Not so much poultry — it didn’t become common on the islands until the mid-20th-century.

I definitely want to try Parla’s recipe for Ischia’s famous braised rabbit. Thumbprint Pasta with Tiny Meatballs and Pecorino sounds great, too. I’ll probably skip the Grilled Horse Steak with Chile and Oregano.

Cauliflower steak, on the other hand . . .

I’m all in — this was so good — with lemon, anchovies, bread crumbs, grated cheese and mint. Meaty, sumptuous and umamiful, it’s a fantastic main course. (Parla’s recipe goes rather heavy on the olive oil; second time I made it, I cut it back from 8 tablespoons to 5 and enjoyed it even more.)

You’ve gotta try this

The island of Capri (pronounced CAH-pree, not ca-PREE, as Parla reminds us) is known for its chocolate-and-almond-meal flourless cake. There on the island, they come decorated with powdered sugar shapes representing the faraglione rock formations off its coast, and lettering that says “Caprese” — made using a stencil sold locally. Parla says to go ahead and just dust it all over with powdered sugar. Instead, I ran with the stencil idea, cutting up a parchment round, snowflake-style, laying it over the finished cake and dusting the sugar over that. It worked!

RECIPE: Torta Caprese

Just one small suggestion

It seems odd in the 21st century not to include metric measurements, especially as these are recipes from a country that uses the metric system — and doesn’t everyone use weights for baked goods and homemade pasta anymore? If Parla ever produces a revised edition, I hope she’d consider doing that. Till then, I’ve got you covered — our adaptations of these terrific recipes include both English and metric measurements.

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Cookbooks We Love: 'Claudia Roden's Mediterranean' is one of the revered author's greatest volumes

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By Leslie Brenner

Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel, by Claudia Roden, Ten Speed Press, 2021, $40

Somehow, Claudia Roden’s latest cookbook — reprising her cooking life and travels over the last three and a half decades — was passed over last year from the major cookbook awards. It’s hard to understand why, as Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean is one of the revered cookbook author’s very best collections.

Backgrounder

Born in Cairo, Egypt to Jewish-Syrian parents, and now based in London, 87-year-old Roden has made a brilliant career of studying and writing about the foods of the Middle East and Mediterranean. Her 2011 title, The Food of Spain — a 609-page magnum opus — won first prize for International Cookbooks by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Her 1968 book, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, was updated 32 years later, then inducted in 2010 in the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame. In 1997, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York won the James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year.

Want a behind-the-scenes peek at how this cookbook review came to be? Become a paid subscriber to my weekly newsletter — preview the post, and get a free 7-day trial subscription.

To put together her latest book, Roden looked back at her travels all around the Mediterranean over the last thirty-five years — since her three children left home. Arriving in Alexandria at the start of the adventure, she was exhilarated to find the “city of freedom and pleasure” she remembered from childhood. “You felt the exuberant lighthearted mood in the cafés along the seafront,” she writes in the introduction. “Italian, Greek and French were spoken on the street. The city was part of another world, one to which Marseille and Barcelona, Genoa, Athens and Algiers, Beirut and Tangier also belonged.” That revelation sent her into a decades-long search of that spirit again, and this book is the result.

When the book was published in November, 2021, Melissa Clark visited Roden at her home in London to interview her for a profile — one that’s a must-read if you’re a Roden fan.

Why We Love It

Easy, breezy and relaxed, Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean is filled with recipes that feel like the way Roden might cook at home; her personality comes through in this book much more vividly than in her earlier ones. Many of the recipes serve two people (and are easy to scale up), perfect for weeknight dinners that pack maximum deliciousness into minimum effort. Others are ideal for laid-back entertaining.

When I close my eyes and open the volume, I can almost be sure to be looking at something I want to make: Eggplants with Pomegranate Dressing and Yogurt Sauce. Bullinada (a Catalan fish stew enriched with mayo). Stuffed Peppers with Breadcrumbs, Anchovies, Olives and Capers. Chicken and Onion “Pies” with Moroccan Flavors. Tagliolini with Lemon. Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Ganache. Those are literally random page-opens.

I’m excited to write about the book now, because so many of its recipes are perfect for summer.

Fennel, Peach and Goat Cheese Salad

Case in point: a graceful salad of thin-sliced fennel tossed with fresh peaches, cucumber and goat cheese — summer on a plate.

Delay This Gratification — or Not!

This gorgeous Green Olive, Walnut and Pomegranate Salad, will be perfect come fall, but I loved it so much I couldn’t leave it out of this review. It’s a specialty of Gaziantep, a Turkish city on the border with Syria.

Should you decide to make it right away, I won’t blame you — it’s wonderfully tangy, thanks to pomegranate molasses, with earthy walnuts for crunch and a lot of parsley and scallions.

Beguiling Turkish Yogurt Soup with Chickpeas and Orzo

Also from Gaziantep is this quickly put-together chickpea and yogurt soup, enriched with an egg yolk; Roden writes in her headnote that she was charmed by at at a dinner in Istanbul to celebrate Gaziantep’s adoption by UNESCO as a Creative City for its gastronomy.

Canned chickpeas make it a breeze to assemble — perfect for weekday lunch or easy dinner.

My New Favorite Dish

Saucy, garlicky, lusty and hassle-free, this chicken dish with green olives and boiled lemons was the first thing I made from the book, and I’ve made it three more times since — it’s that good.

In her headnote, Roden writes that it was inspired by “the sharp lemony flavors of one of the most famous Moroccan tagines.” Sized for eight, and ideal for relaxed entertaining, as you assemble it in a snap, then shove it in the oven and forget about it while it bakes for an hour.

Serve it with couscous. Roden offers a brilliant hack for giving it the light, fluffy texture of the grains made traditionally, steamed two or three times in a couscoussier, but with minimum hassle.

RECIPE: Claudia Roden’s Chicken with Olives and Lemon

Only One Miss

Only one recipe I tested (there were three more) was one I wouldn’t make again: A muhammara (walnut and roasted pepper dip) had the wrong texture — it was runny rather than a thick paste — and it was overwhelmed by too much pomegranate molasses. (Nothing, of course, that a few tweaks wouldn’t fix.)

On the other hand, I loved a Spanish dish of alubias con almejas — clams with white beans. And also garlicky pan-fried fish with with Sherry vinegar and Aleppo pepper. Both are sized for two.

Meanwhile, there are so many things I still want to try. A slow-roasted shoulder of lamb with couscous, dates and almonds. A potato salad with green olive tapenade. Almond pudding with apricot compote. Maybe that last one this weekend — after all, it’s apricot season.

If you love Mediterranean flavors, may this book land in your kitchen soon.

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Cookbooks We Love: Hannah Che's 'The Vegan Chinese Kitchen' is gorgeous and inspiring

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By Leslie Brenner

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories from a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition, by Hannah Che, Clarkson Potter, 2022, $35

Last year, we included Hannah Che’s The Vegan Chinese Kitchen in our Best Books of 2022 roundup, having pored through its recipes, read Che’s story, marveled at her exquisite photos (yes, she does them herself!) and tested one of the recipes. Since then, The New York Times chose the book as one of its 10 best cookbooks of the year (the Washington Post had already done the same); a few months later, the James Beard Foundation honored it with a Best Cookbook Award nomination for Vegetable-Focused Cooking.

I’ve finally had a chance to test three more of the recipes, and continue to be thoroughly impressed. The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a thoroughly wonderful book — one that anyone seriously interested in Chinese cooking and food culture, or vegan cooking (or both) would do well to explore.

Backgrounder

Che, the Portland, Oregon-based creator of the excellent blog The Plant-Based Wok, was raised in Detroit, Michigan, by Chinese immigrant parents; she founded the blog when she was in college at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Having fallen in love with plant-based cooking, she worried that her vegan lifestyle was at odds with her Chinese culture, but in time she came to understand much of Chinese cooking is “inherently plant-based,” and in fact offered her a way to connect in a deeply meaningful way with her heritage. After graduate school (in piano) she left for China, where she studied at the only vegetarian cooking school in the country, in Guangzhou. China. There she immersed herself in zhai cai, the plant-based cuisine with centuries-old Buddhist roots that emphasizes umami-rich ingredients. She had been to China before (with her family), and has returned since; along the way she interned at a renowned tofu restaurant and taught English in Taiwan — soaking up foodways everywhere she went.

Why We Love It

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a beautiful book in every way, and Che is a wonderful story-teller. Even if you’re tempted to skip the intro, don’t — in the course of its six or seven pages, Che manages to convey a life-lesson about mindful cooking and the Chinese spirit that’s truly inspiring.

Following that is a useful roadmap about how to create a vegan (or really any) Chinese meal: “you serve enough rice for everyone to eat their fill, along with a spread of accompanying dishes.” The rule is to plan one dish per person, plus one extra, and “aim for a variety of textures, tastes and colors” — and cooking methods. Noodle dishes or other one-pot meals are the standalone exceptions.

If, like me, you’re attracted to cookbooks that open up cultures from within and help you better understand something deep about that culture, The Vegan Chinese Kitchen delivers.

How to Kick Off a Chinese Vegan Meal

Two recipes that Che characterizes as popular appetizers in restaurants in China caught my eye. One is Blanched Spinach with Sesame Sauce — I’ll make that soon. Another is Smashed Cucumber Salad, which Che calls “one of the most ubiquitous Chinese starter dishes.” About a decade ago, the dish was super trendy stateside. I hadn’t made it in some years, and Che’s version (a particularly good one) is a reminder of why it’s so appealing: It’s craveable, crunchy, vinegary, delicious and quick to achieve.

Let Us Cook the Salad, Shall We?

Che’s photo of Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Soy Sauce was the image that first grabbed me hard when I cracked open the book: I had to make it. (Her photo is a lot nicer than mine.)

Skeptical about cooked lettuce? Che was, until she learned that “Chinese cooks treat lettuces like any other leafy green” and tried dishes like this one.

Once you blanch the romaine leaves, the sauce comes together in a flash. Put them together, and you’ve got something simple and fabulous.

You Want This in Your Fridge

Here’s another crave-able, zingy one. Che writes in her headnote that she often makes a big batch of Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad to enjoy for weekday lunches. I’ve taken her suggestion and wholeheartedly recommend it.

RECIPE: Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad.

One of Che’s Personal Faves

Che’s chapters on Tofu and Tofu Skin are particularly compelling, not only for the recipes, but also for the history and discussion of the culture around it. Before living in China and learning how it’s traditionally made, Che had viewed tofu — as many Chinese people do — as an inferior food. “It’s a cheap, common food in China,” she reflects, “not as refined or exalted in tradition as it is in Japan, where tofu, brought over by monks, first entered as a temple delicacy for the samurai class.” That all turned around for her the more she dove into the culture — including her internship with a tofu master.

I swooped in on one of the humbler recipes because Che wrote in her headnote that she makes it probably three or four times a week. “The easiest way to cook tofu,” she writes in the headnote, “is to quickly blanch it, then season with salt and sesame oil and fold in a handful of finely chopped scallions or fresh herbs.” It’s a preparation known as liangban. This was very good as written, and I’ll definitely be riffing on it for years to come.

RECIPE: Hannah Che’s Fragrant Dressed Tofu

Still Wanna Make

So many dishes! Blanched Sweet Potato Greens (which Che says are available in many Asian supermarkets, though I’ve never noticed them) with Crispy Shallots. Stir-Fried Diced Choy Sum and Tofu. Stir-Fried Water Spinach with Fermented Tofu (Che calls fermented tofu “the vegan chef’s secret ingredient”). Slivered Celtuce with Sesame Oil. Stir-Fried Garlic Chives with Pressed Tofu. Clay Pot-Braised Eggplant with Basil. Stir-Fried Potato Threads with Fragrant Chiles. Soft Tofu with Black Bean Sauce. Steamed Tofu Skin with Ginger, Black Beans & Frizzled Scallions. Braised Tofu Skins in Chili Bean Sauce.

So much tofu, so little time, right?!

Oh, more more thing. Only after I my last spate of cooking from the book did I realize that many of the dishes are served room temperature or cold — which means that not only are the great for do-ahead entertaining, but also that they’re great for summer picnics and potlucks. Just in the nick of time!

Go ahead and take the recipes for a spin. If you like them as much as I do, treat yourself to the book. I think you’ll be glad you did.

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Why my desert-isle cookbook author would probably be Claudia Roden

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Medley of Spring Vegetables from Claudia Roden’s ‘The Food of Spain’

By Leslie Brenner

[Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.]

If I had to choose just one cookbook author and live with only that author’s books for the rest of my life, it might well be Claudia Roden. Somehow, after decades of cooking, I haven’t paid nearly enough attention to the widely lauded, highly accomplished, deeply interesting 87-year-old author of 20 cookbooks. Foolish, foolish me!

I own four Roden titles, and I’ve cooked from them all, always with excellent results. I’ve called upon her books frequently for research; they’ve informed my approach to baba ganoush and helped me develop a recipe for pita bread. But somehow I have rarely just relaxed and cooked from Roden’s books, and never fully recognized how much I love them. It’s a little like one of those old-fashioned romantic comedies where the young, handsome, gallivanting star suddenly sees that the love of his life has been right there under his nose the whole time: the girl next door. Only I’m not young, handsome or a gadabout, and Claudia Roden is definitely not the girl next door.

Born in Cairo, Egypt to Jewish-Syrian parents and now based in London, Roden has made a brilliant career of studying and writing about the foods of the Middle East and Mediterranean. Her 2011 title, The Food of Spain — a 609-page magnum opus — won first prize for International Cookbooks by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Her 1968 book, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, was updated 32 years later, then inducted in 2010 in the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame. In 1997, The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York won the James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year.

Ab Ghooshte Fasl (Iranian Bean Soup) from Claudia Roden’s ‘The New Book of Middle Eastern Food’

I love Roden’s aesthetic, she’s a great cook and a captivating food historian. Just about any other author I might choose to focus on for the rest of my life would have depth of knowledge in one or two, or maybe three food cultures. Roden has taken deep dives into so many. In one book alone — The New Book of Middle Eastern Food — she covers Albanian, Algerian, Armenian, Bedouin, Egyptian, Greek, Iranian, Tunisian, Turkish, Syrian, etc. etc., the work of more than two decades. She spent five intensive years researching Spanish cooking for the aforementioned magnum opus. Arabesque focuses on Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon.

As if that weren’t enough, 16 months ago she published Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel. And you know what? If you think the world already had enough Mediterranean cookbooks, it didn’t — Roden’s is one of the most quietly captivating ever published.

In the Introduction, Roden writes that after her children left home thirty-five years earlier, she embarked on a solo trip all around the Mediterranean inspired by a childhood memory of visiting Alexandria. Traveling alone was “strange and suspect” in those days, but it allowed her to meet people everywhere. “My interest was in home cooking and regional food,” she writes. “I was invited into homes where people still cooked as their parents and grandparents did.”

After so many decades, the Mediterranean — and all that she has encountered in her travels — continues to inspire her. Working on this particular book, she explains,

“has kept me happy, thinking of people and places, magic moments, and glorious food. It might be cold and raining outside, but in my kitchen and at my desk in London I am smiling under an azure sky. The smell of garlic sizzling with crushed coriander seeds takes me back to the Egypt of my childhood. The aroma of saffron and orange zest mingled with aniseeed and garlic triggers memories of the French Riviera.”

How beautiful is that?

I only started cooking from that last book a month ago; there are enticing recipes on nearly every page. The first dish I made was so wonderful, I made it again two weeks later: chicken thighs baked saucily with green olives, boiled lemons and lots of garlic. To accompany it Roden offers (practically in an aside), the most brilliant method for making couscous I’ve ever found — you pour salted warm water over the grains, stir them, let them swell for 10 minutes, then add olive oil and rub the couscous between your hands to “aerate the grains” and break up lumps. Cover it with foil and bake it for 10 or 15 minutes. The result is nearly as perfect as the traditional way, when you painstakingly moisten, rub, and steam the grains two or three times. I promise recipes soon, accompanying a review of the book.

Till then, please treat yourself to these Roden recipes:

Tender veg for early spring

If you can’t wait for spring, try this Medley of Spring Vegetables, inspired by the traditional Spanish soup menestra de primavera, from The Food of Spain. I made it last night, and I’d make it again next week.

RECIPE: Claudia Roden’s Medley of Spring Vegetables

Soup for a chilly late-winter day

On a cold day (there are surely still a few to come this season), simmer a pot of Ab Ghooshte Fasl — Iranian Bean Soup. The recipe is adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

RECIPE: Ab Ghooshte Fasl (Iranian Bean Soup)

Savory snack for anytime

Cod Fritters from Claudia Roden’s ‘The Food of Spain’

Finally, these tender, fabulous Buñuelos de Bacalao — Cod Fritters — are made with fresh fish rather than salt cod. That means no soaking the fish, so you don’t have to think about them a day in advance.

RECIPE: Buñuelos de Bacalao (Cod Fritters)

I’ve only just scratched the surface in discovering all this cookbook giant has to offer. Hopefully I still have a long cooking life ahead of me because Roden’s thousands and thousands of pages promise infinite deliciousness.

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Cookbooks We Love: ‘The Woks of Life’ brims with outstanding Chinese and Chinese American recipes

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By Leslie Brenner

The Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American Family by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin Leung, Clarkson Potter, $35

“The best dumplings I’ve ever had.” That’s how my son Wylie described the Pork, Mushroom and Cabbage dumplings from The Woks of Life — the debut cookbook from the Leung family behind the website of the same name. I’d made the dumplings last month and frozen most of a batch, anticipating he’d enjoy them when he visited from Southern California for the holidays.

That’s right — Wylie lives in California, which means he has access to the best Chinese restaurant scenes in the U.S., and one of the best outside of China. He loves dumplings, and eats a lot of them. That his favorite so far came from The Woks of Life is a meaningful endorsement.

Want great Chinese food? You don’t have to live on the West Coast or restaurant-rich New York to get it. Whether it’s Chinese American restaurant classics you’re after, home-style Cantonese or Shanghainese dishes or many other regional styles, you can make it at home. The Woks of Life is a great guide: fun, approachable, relatable and highly user-friendly.

Backgrounder

In 2013, the Leungs — a Chinese American family living in New Jersey — created their blog to document their family history through recipes. It grew an impressive following and evolved into the preeminent United States-based Chinese cooking site. We spotlighted The Woks of Life in a story two years ago, then featured the eldest Leung daughter, Sarah, on our first Makers, Shakers & Mavens live video event. After we finished the live event, Sarah told me she and her family were working on a cookbook, and I waited eagerly for it for nearly two years; it was published in early November, quickly became a best-seller and garnered a ton of press. The New York Times, Bon Appétit and the San Francisco Chronicle all wrote wonderful stories about it.

Why we love it

The book distills the winning personality of the site into a tangible, approachable, delightful and eminently useful volume. A good part of the fun is getting to know the family: Judy, a native of Shanghai; Bill, a Chinese-American whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant in New Jersey called Sun Hing; and daughters Sarah and Kaitlin, who bring contemporary sensibility, curiosity and enthusiasm to the family’s life-project.

I particularly enjoyed an essay by Bill depicting “The Friday Night Rush at Sun Hing,” which segues into a recipe for Beef and Broccoli — one of the “Special House Dishes” on the Sun Hing menu reproduced in the essay.

Organized by type of dish (dim sum; starters; noodles; rice; poultry & eggs; pork, beef & lamb; etc.), the book is an enticing mix of those Chinese-American restaurant dishes I’m constantly craving, plus regional Chinese specialties and Chinese home cooking as practiced by the Leungs.

Throughout the book, there’s plenty of helpful hand-holding, including things like the Leungs’ preferred brand of light soy sauce (Pearl River Bridge) and how to prevent food from sticking to your wok (before adding oil, heat it till it just starts to smoke).

Mastering technique

I also like the fact that when a video is most useful, QR codes lead you to instructions on the website — such as “How to Fold a Chinese Dumpling (4 Techniques!).” I doubt I could have achieved all those pleats without watching.

So, yes, back to those dumplings!

The filling is easy to achieve: Vigorously stir together ground pork and seasonings, then stir in dried shiitakes that you’ve rehydrated, chopped and stir-fried, plus chopped napa cabbage (which you’ve salted, rested and squeezed).

Put a spoonful of the filling in the center of a round, Shanghai-style dumpling wrapper, moisten the edges, fold it in half and make pleats as you seal it at the top. But even if you seal them simply without pleating, they’re delicious. The book gives directions on how to steam, boil or pan-fry them; our adaptation calls for steaming.

The recipe makes about 6 dozen dumplings, which (again) freeze very well; pack and stash in the freezer before they’re cooked. Steam and enjoy some right away; freeze the rest for another day. Ten or 11 minutes takes them straight from frozen to hot, tender and enticing.

Assembling the dumplings is a great cold-weather project — one that’s perfect for Lunar New Year, which will be here before you know it. (The year of the rabbit begins on Sunday, January 22.) Traditional for the holiday, dumplings represent wealth, as they’re shaped like Chinese silver or gold ingots. Making them at home is also said to be good for chopping away bad luck.

Next time I make them, I’ll try fashioning homemade wrappers. Complete instructions are included in the book, but basically it’s 1 1/3 cups of tepid water slowly stirred into 4 cups of all-purpose flour, kneaded about 10 minutes until it’s smooth, rested 1 hour, then rolled into 18-gram rounds. (If you’re that level of cooking geek, you’ll surely want to purchase the book.) Not quite there yet? Making these dumplings — or one of the recipes that follows — may well hook you.

An easy, healthy, delicious stir-fry

Looking for something much simpler to achieve? This quick stir-fry has been in the Leung family’s rotation for as long as they can remember, according to the headnote in the book, so I had to try it. For me there was a bonus: I love pickled mustard greens; I’m always picking up plastic containers of it when I go to Chinese supermarkets. I never know what to do with it, so I usually wind up just eating it straight out of the container. This dish makes great use of them.

The stir-fry starts with frozen edamame — another fine thing to keep in your freezer. Stir-fry it for two or three minutes, then stir-fry ginger, chiles, pickled mustard greens, garlic and cubes of pressed tofu, add back in the edamame and a quickly stirred-together seasoning sauce. Done! Heathy! Delicious!

Another Leung family favorite: Cantonese Steamed Fish

“No fish preparation has played a bigger role on our dinner table than Cantonese steamed fish,” writes Bill Leung in the book’s headnote for this recipe. The flavor profile is a classic Cantonese combo of ginger, scallions, cilantro and soy sauce. It’s one I’ve been improvising my entire cooking life; the Leung’s recipe finally gave me the right technique: sizzling the ginger, scallion and herbs in hot oil and pouring it over the fish only after it has been steamed. It also gave me the idea of using branzino, which means I can find it — along with all the other ingredients — in my neighborhood supermarket.

Oh, and whole steamed fish is also traditional for lunar new year –– new year’s eve in particular.

You’ve gotta try this

My favorite recipe in The Woks of Life cookbook (so far!) is what I reach for when I’m craving American Chinese restaurant comfort food: Shrimp in Lobster Sauce. To achieve it, start by blanching ground pork, then rinsing it; that gives depth and texture to the sauce you’ll build on it, but keeps it clean. Stir-fry that with shrimp and garlic, add Shaoxing wine, then chicken broth, peas and seasonings. Simmer, add a cornstarch slurry to thicken, then add, without mixing it in just yet, beaten egg and chopped scallions. Let the egg set briefly on top, then quickly fold in the egg so it forms ribbons in the dish rather than dissipating.

The dish — one of our favorites made from cookbooks last year — is delightful and rewarding. The book recommends serving it with pork fried rice, a dreamy combo to be sure (you could make this fabulous and simpler Yangzhou Fried Rice if you don’t want to go to the effort of making char siu pork). Steamed white rice is lovely as well; I happen to also love the dish with plain old steamed brown rice — a dear, old friend I’ll be spending quality time with as I try to eat as healthy as possible this month.

RECIPE: Woks of Life Shrimp in Lobster Sauce

Still wanna make

So many things! Starting with Garlic Chive and Shrimp Dumplings. I’ve spent some time on this classic har gow variation before; it requires a challenging handmade wrapper made from tapioca starch. I’m hoping The Woks of Life’s hand-holding will make me a champ. Also Classic Scallion Pancakes, Chili Oil Wontons, Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup, Shanghai Cold Noodles, Special Golden Fried Rice (where the grains are coated in egg yolk before cooking), Chinese Crispy Salted Duck, Beef and Broccoli, Shanghai Street-Stall Wonton Soup, Hot & Sour Soup.

Yep, it’s a keeper

The Woks of Life has already found a permanent spot on the Chinese essentials area of my shelf. Congratulations to the Leung family on a fabulous achievement, and thank you for giving us lovers of Chinese American cooking such a valuable and delightful volume!

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Holiday gift guide: Most exciting cookbooks of 2022 (Part II)

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part II of our two-part Cookbook Gift Guide.]

Part I of our roundup of our favorite and most promising cookbooks published this year included 8 outstanding new titles. Here is the second inspiring batch. We’re working on full reviews of a number of them, and have already cooked from most.

Any one of the books below will thrill an adventuresome cook on your list.

Mezcla: Recipes to Excite

Author Ixta Belfrage had a truly international childhood. She grew up in Tuscany, with a Brazilian mother and a New York-born father whose family relocated to Mexico during the McCarthy era (when his own British-born father was deported). Italian, Brazilian, Mexican, American and English culture — including food culture — were important parts of Belfrage’s life, as she spent a good deal of time as a child with her grandparents in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in her mother’s hometown of Natal, Brazil, and, as a 19-year-old, living in Rio de Janeiro. All of these culinary cultures come to play in her cooking, along with the outsized influence of Yotam Ottolenghi — with his wide palette of flavors. She worked for the chef-author for five years, first at NOPI restaurant, and then in the OTK (Ottolenghi Test Kitchen).

Belfrage’s first solo book celebrates this far-flung mix of influences (mezcla means “mixture” in Spanish), and the result is a collection of highly original recipes expressing a fresh, open cooking style that you might think of as joyous fusion. It’s a style very much in the idiom of Ottolenghi Flavor, which she co-authored. She divides Mexcla into two sections: “Everyday” (quick and easy recipes) and “Entertaining” (more elaborate, weekend-project-type recipes). Sometimes, but not always, the fusion is within a dish, such as Hake Torta Ahogada with Shrimp Miso Bisque. We test-drove one recipe that keeps the flavor profile Italian and preparation minimal: an ingenious vegetarian dish of tagliatelle dressed in an intensely flavorful porcini ragù that cooks in about 10 minutes. Verdict: Want to cook more!

Mezcla: Recipes to Excite by Ixta Belfrage, photographs by Yuki Sugiura, Ten Speed Press, $35.

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen

Hannah Che, creator of the excellent blog The Plant-Based Wok, has published one of the most inspiring and beautiful books to hit the shelves in some time. (Our Cookbook of the Year, Via Carota, is another.) Now based in Portland, Oregon, Che studied in Guangzhou, at the only vegetarian cooking school in China. There she immersed herself in zhai cai, the plant-based cuisine with centuries-old Buddhist roots that emphasizes umami-rich ingredients. If you like flipping through a cookbook filled with photos of dishes that are absolutely gorgeous, you’ll love this — and Che took those photos herself. I’ve marked probably at least three-quarters of the recipes as “want to cook,” and very much enjoyed the first one I tried: Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad.

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories from a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition by Hannah Che, Clarkson Potter, $35.

Dinner in One: Exceptional and Easy One-Pan Meals

In Dinner in One, New York Times cooking columnist and award-winning author Melissa Clark focuses on streamlining: All 100 recipes wrap maximum deliciousness in minimum effort. Her smart introduction explains why home cooking is fundamentally different than restaurant cooking — and consequently most chef recipes — requiring a completely different approach. In her new book, she explains in the intro, “The recipes are simple but not simplistic, with complex, layered flavors that you can achieve with minimal stress.” Mission accomplished: Cooks both experienced and just starting out will love the results. Try this recipe for a sheet-pan chicken “tagine” to see what we mean.

Dinner in One: Exceptional and Easy One-Pan Meals by Melissa Clark, Photographs by Linda Xiao, Clarkson Potter, $29.99.

Masa

Jorge Gaviria’s important, encyclopedic volume is a must-have for Mexican cooking aficionados, including chefs and serious home cooks. We reviewed it last month.

Masa: Techniques, Recipes, and Reflections on a Timeless Staple by Jorge Gaviria, photographs by Graydon Herriott, Chronicle Books, $35.

First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home

Here’s another super-appealing debut from the creator of a popular blog. If there’s someone on your list who loves dumplings and appreciates wonderful writing, choose First Generation. Author Frankie Gaw, the cook behind the delightful Little Fat Boy blog, weaves terrific personal stories into his headnotes. Excellent step-by-step visuals (expertly illustrated and photographed by Gaw) show how to pull noodles, wrap wontons, make braided bao wrappers and more. I haven’t yet cooked from it, but can’t wait to let Gaw teach me how to make Sesame Shaobing, Lau-Kee Congee, Pork Belly Mushroom Corn Soup and more.

First Generation; Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home by Frankie Gaw, Ten Speed Press, $32.50.

In Diasporican, Illyanna Maisonet reflects, unflinchingly, on the Puerto Rican disapora and why it’s been so difficult for the cooking of Puerto Rico to take off stateside. “The truth is,” she writes, “Puerto Rican cuisine shares a lot in common with the cuisines of Hawai‘i, Guam and the Philippines — all the places that got fucked by Spanish and United States colonialism.” Winner of an IACP award for narrative food writing and former columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, Maisonet offers a compelling collection of very personal recipes mixed in with traditional ones, many inspired by her grandmother, from whom she learned to cook when she was growing up in Sacramento, California. High on my list of dishes to try is saucy shrimp with chorizo served over funche, the cornmeal-and-coconut milk pudding that historically was eaten by enslaved people working on sugar-cane plantations. Maisonet’s holiday recipes are particularly enticing; I might just make her fabulous-looking, oregano-happy Pernil (long-roasted pork-shoulder roast) this Christmas, and her Thanksgiving Leftovers Pavochon Pasta Bake may become a serious challenger to my Turkey Tetrazzini. This much I know: Next time I see ripe hachiya persimmons, I’ll be making Maisonet’s Persimmon Cookies.

Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook by Illyanna Maisonet, Ten Speed Press, $32.50.

The Mediterranean Dish

The debut cookbook from Suzy Karadsheh, founder of the hugely popular cooking and lifestyle website The Mediterranean Dish, includes recipes drawn from the Middle East to North Africa and Southern Europe. Born and raised in the Egyptian city of Port Said, Karadsheh began to learn to cook from her mom, who loved to entertain, and after she was married and living in the United States, from her Jordanian mother-in-law. I love reading about how her mom would prepare for an Egyptian azooma (feast), or about making mahshi — stuffed vegetables — which Karadsheh describes as “a sport among Egyptian women, who compete to throw the best mahshi dinner in the neighborhood.” Better to wait for the next tomato season to make her recipe for stuffed bell peppers and tomatoes. In the meantime, her Sicily-inspired saucy baked cod, which uses Roma tomatoes, is delicious any time of year. This one’s a great choice for cooks who are just starting out.

The Mediterranean Dish By Suzy Karadsheh with Susan Puckett, photographs by Caitlin BenseL, Clarkson Potter, $32.50.

Evolutions in Bread

Ten years after the publication of the ground-breaking, IACP and James Beard Award-winning bread-baking bible Flour Water Salt Yeast, Ken Forkish gives us Evolutions in Bread. A focus on artisan pan loaves is what the evolution is all about; it was borne from Forkish’s fondness for the artisan pan loaves that are constantly selling out at his Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon. But that’s not the only innovation: Forkish also developed a new, simplified, flour-efficient way to establish and maintain your sourdough — which is not required in most of the recipes, but benefits them. Ancient grains such as einkorn, emmer and spelt also figure prominently. If I were to own just one book about bread-baking, this would be it.

Evolutions in Bread: Artisan Pan Breads and Dutch-Oven Loaves at Home by Ken Forkish, photographs by Alan Weiner, Ten Speed Press, $35.

Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking

Finally, three years after the first Pasta Grannies cookbook, based on Vicky Bennison’s popular YouTube channel, comes Volume II — Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking. The myriad pasta dishes look incredible, from Ernestina’s Cannelloni Verdi Ripieni di Carne (Spinach Cannelloni with Meat Filling from Romagna) to Iginia’s Princisgras (Porcini and Proscuitto Lasagna from Macerata) to Biggina’s Fettucine con Coniglio all’Ischitana (Fettuccine with Braised Rabbit from Ischia). And the other comfort dishes are just as enticing: Enrica’s Torta Verde con Prescinsêua (Cheese and Chard Pie from Genova); Teresa’s Tajedda Salentina (Mussel Bake from Salento); Ida’s Chocolate Bunet (Chocolate Pudding from Piedmont). I love flipping through its pages and seeing the smiling faces of those beautiful nonnas and their irresistible dishes: How refreshing to see older cooks celebrated and appreciated.

Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking by Vicky Bennison, Hardie Grant Books, $32.50.

Buy Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking at Bookshop

Buy Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking at Amazon

Also recommended:

The Wok: Recipes and Technique by Kenji López-Alt, W.W. Norton, $50.

Buy at The Wok at Bookshop.

Buy The Wok at Amazon.

Masala: Recipes from India, the Land of Spices by Anita Jainsinghani, Ten Speed Press, $35.

Buy Masala at Bookshop.

Buy Masala at Amazon.

Ottolonghi Test Kitchen Extra Good Things, Clarkson Potter, $32

Buy OTK Extra Good Things at Bookshop.

Buy OTK Extra Good Things at Amazon.

Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home by Eric Kim, Clarkson Potter, $32.50.

Buy Korean American at Bookshop.

Buy Korean American at Amazon.

READ Part I of our Holiday Cookbook Gift Guide: “The year’s best cookbooks make the season’s greatest gifts”

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The year's best cookbooks make the season's greatest gifts

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part I of our 2-part Cookbook Gift Guide. Here is Part II.

What an exciting season it is for cookbook lovers! Cooks Without Borders has reviewed a number of wonderful titles in recent weeks, including Budmo!, Kolkata and Masa — and we recently named our first-ever Cookbook of the Year: Via Carota.

Our favorite books published in 2022 cover culinary cultures from a wide swath of the world, and include volumes focused on cross-cultural cooking experiences, such as Chinese American, Korean American, pan-Mediterranean, African diasporan and California Puerto Rican.

We’re excited to present the year’s titles that most strongly captured our imagination — those that I’ve cooked from (perhaps reviewed) and already know are great, and others that I’ve pored through and marked myriad recipes that entice. We’ll work on getting as many of these books reviewed as possible in the coming year, and Part II of this roundup is coming soon!

One thing is certain: Among them you’ll find a cookbook gift for every kind of cook on your list.

The Woks of Life

We’re longtime fans of The Woks of Life — the Chinese and Chinese American cooking site from the wonderful Leung family. Sarah Leung, in fact, was our first-ever guest (two springs ago) on our Makers, Shakers and Mavens series, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting this book ever since.

The cookbook is as delightful as the site. We have a review coming soon; in the meantime, help yourself to a sample adapted recipe — a quick stir-fry of edamame, tofu and pickled mustard greens (a delicious, healthy, vegan respite between heavy holiday feasts!).

The Woks of Life: Recipes to Know and Love from a Chinese American Family by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin Leung, Clarkson Potter, $35

Tanya Holland’s California Soul

The new book from the host of ‘Tanya’s Kitchen Table’ and the podcast ‘Tanya’s Table’ features 75-plus recipes inspired by the Great Migration of African American families from the South to California. Organized by season, it’s filled with enticing dishes. We’ve tested two so far, with great results: Shaved Brussels Sprouts Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing, and Braised Chicken Thighs with Barbecued White Beans and Scallions. They’re both listed in the “Fall” chapter, but delectable all year long. I really love the barbecue beans with the chicken.

Tanya Holland’s California Soul: Recipes from a Culinary Journey West by Tanya Holland, ten speed press, $35

Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes

Know anyone who likes cakes but doesn’t want to fuss over them? This book from longtime Wall Street Journal columnist (and James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award recipient) Aleksandra Crapanzano is for them. Take a Gâteau Simple aux Noix — Simple Walnut Cake — for instance. Writes Crapanzano in the headnote: “Easily put together in ten minutes with nothing but pantry staples, it is one of those recipes that will save you a hundred times over.” Sold, right?! It took me a few more minutes than 10, but not many — and the cake’s a keeper. Meanwhile, here’s a recipe for a simple and delicious chestnut cake, which is perfect for the season. I’m also excited about a chapter on “Les Cakes Salés” — the savory cakes that are so chic in France these days.

Recipes include not one but six bûches de Noël (yule logs), and one Galette des Rois. Delightfully illustrated by Cassandra Montoriol.

Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, by Aleksandra Crapanzo, illustrations by cassandra montoriol, scribner, $30.

Budmo!

Subtitled “Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen,” the debut cookbook from San Francisco-based chef, blogger and cooking instructor Anna Voloshyna is a winner. We reviewed it in October.

BUDMO!: RECIPES FROM A UKRAINIAN KITCHEN, BY ANNA VOLOSHYNA. RIZZOLI, $39.95.

Mi Cocina: Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico

Here’s another one I haven’t yet cooked from but can’t wait to dive into. Seeking to explore his Mexican roots, Austin, Texas-born author Rick Martínez flew to Mexico City in 2019, bought a car and ate his way through the country — visiting all 32 states and 156 cities. He asked every cook he met which of their own dishes they like best; his interpretation of 100 of them comprise the book. Martínez found himself along the way, and wound up buying a house in Mazatlán, which is where he now lives. All the food looks wonderful, and the writing is terrific. He’s host of the YouTube series Purébalo and the Food52 video series Sweet Heat, and co-hosts the Borderline Salty podcast.

Mi Cocina: Recipes and Rapture from My Kitchen in Mexico, by Rick Martínez, Photographs by Ren Fuller, Clarkson Potter, $35.

Via Carota

This book is so deliciously inspiring, we named it Cooks Without Borders 2022 Cookbook of the Year.

VIA CAROTA: A CELEBRATION OF SEASONAL COOKING FROM THE BELOVED GREENWICH VILLAGE RESTAURANT, BY JODY WILLIAMS AND RITA SODI WITH ANNA KOVEL, PHOTOGRAPHS BY GENTLY & HYERS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, $40.

My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef

“When a dish tells a story, it has a soul,” writes Kwame Onwuachi in the dedication (to his mother) of his second book; his first was the acclaimed memoir Notes from a Young Black Chef. The dishes in My America — inspired by the African diaspora and Onwauachi’s slice of it — look not just soulful, but insanely delicious. Raised in New York City, Onwauachi has lived in Nigeria, Louisiana and Washington, D.C. The San Francisco Chronicle called him “the most important chef in America,” he was a Food & Wine Best New Chef and a James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year. I’m dreaming of being snowed in with a full pantry to start exploring this one.

My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef, by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein, photographs by Clay Williams, Knopf, $35.

Kolkata: Recipes from the Heart of Bengal

Send Indian food-loving cooks on your list on a delicious journey to Kolkata — the city that was known under colonial rule as Calcutta — with Rinku Dutt’s enchanting debut book. We reviewed it in October.

KOLKATA: RECIPES FROM THE HEART OF BENGAL, BY RINKU DUTT, PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN JOYCE; 2022, SMITH STREET BOOKS, $35.

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'Via Carota' is Cooks Without Borders’ Cookbook of the Year

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By Leslie Brenner

Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant, by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi with Anna Kovel, photographs by Gently & Hyers, Alfred A. Knopf, $40.

For those of us who love to devour new cookbooks, it has been a truly outstanding year. Exciting titles published this fall include Masa, Budmo! and Kolkata, and we have reviews of many more exceptional volumes planned for the coming weeks.

Now, after poring through dozens of titles over the course of the year and cooking from loads of them, a clear favorite has emerged: Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant.

If you’re not familiar with Via Carota, it’s the New York City restaurant Jody Miller and Rita Sodi opened in 2014 — the one the New Yorker called, four years later, “New York’s most perfect restaurant.” People who don’t live in New York, or who don’t follow such things but love to cook, might know Via Carota by its famous green salad — you know, the one The New York Times Magazine called “The Best Green Salad in the World.”

Yep, there’s just something magical and irresistible about the place, its food and its vibe — hence the generous side order of superlatives.

Yet Via Carota is anything but snazzy or flashy; in other words, not the type of place that would seem to inspire hyperbole. It’s laid-back, casual and quietly delicious — self-assured in its seasonal, produce-driven, understated way.

We’ll need to wait till spring to try the first recipe in ‘Via Carota’: Bacelli e Pecorino.

That appealing aesthetic is expressed brilliantly in Miller and Sodi’s book (the partners are co-chefs and co-owners). Flip through its pages and it is impossible not to get drawn in by its lovely images and glorious-sounding dishes. They’re beautifully photographed (by Gentl & Hyers), but as much as anything, it’s their simplicity and harmony that make it all so enticing.

It’s all right there in the first recipe: Baccelli e Pecorino — Young Favas, Radishes, and Fresh Pecorino. The lead-off for the “Spring” chapter, it’s an effortless toss of sliced spring onions, fresh favas, basil, mint, radish slices and crumbled pecorino Romano, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Think you don’t need a recipe for that? Maybe you don’t. But Williams and Sodi’s attention to detail and proportions are what make these simple dishes great, so I’ll follow it to the letter the first time I make it, come spring.

The book has a way of making you slow down and take pleasure in the process of creating beautiful, delicious food. Sodi grew up near Florence, in Barberino di Mugello, and Williams learned to cook working at a celebrated cafe in Emilia-Romagna. They met in the West Village, where Sodi had her restaurant I Sodi, and Williams had a French place, Buvette; they loved spending time together at Sodi’s home in a restored 17th-century stone villa on Via del Carota. They both were so busy running their respective New York restaurants (and Williams had just opened a second Buvette, in Paris) that they had less time to spend in Italy, Sodi sold the villa, and they leased a space on Grove Street to open something together, not knowing what it would be.

“We did not know what to expect of our collaboration,” writes Sodi in the introduction. “We had no name or specific plans — we only had our time in Italy. We knew we wanted to recreate our experience there, the place we loved most with the food we relished most. If we were lucky, it could be a place full of life where people would feel welcome and nourished.”

Of course it became Via Carota. And of course the famous Insalata Verde — which nearly every table orders — is in the book, along with advice about “taking good care of your leaves,” and permission to eat the salad with your hands.

Via Carota’s pages are jammed with enticing recipes. Stracci — big, floppy squares of handmade pasta dressed in a Pesto di Fave (fava pesto). Garlic Scapes with Lima Beans. Braised Lamb Shoulder with Lemon Zest, green olives and capers. Lasagna Cacio e Pepe. Smashed Figs with Sesame and Honey, which also has a little aged balsamic vinegar. Here’s all there is to that one: “Slice the figs in half or tear them with your hands. Arrange them on plates and smash the interiors lightly with a fork. Drizzle with honey and balsamic vinegar. Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, shaking the pan until they’re aromatic, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle the seeds over the figs.” How inspiring is that?

After plastering the book with Post-its marking my need-to-makes, I dove in and made one just right for the current season: Insalata di Cavoletti — Brussels Sprouts Salad with Walnuts and Apples.

Williams and Sodi have you massage the Brussels sprouts leaves with Via Carota Vinagrette (secret ingredient: water). Then add apple matchsticks, toasted walnuts, crumbled aged cheese and orange zest, and toss again. Let the salad “settle” for 10 minutes (how nice to have one that doesn’t have to get right to the table!), then top with more apple matchsticks and pomegranate seeds. Sure, it’s a bit time-consuming removing the leaves from the Brussels Sprouts, but the salad is so good, I’ll do it again a hundred times.

RECIPE: Via Carota Insalata di Cavoletti (Brussels Sprouts Salad)

Laced throughout Via Carota are interesting side notes about ingredients, scenes from the authors’ Italian days and nuggets of kitchen wisdom. For instance, I never quite know how to handle spring onions (not scallions, but the ones with the enlarged white bulbs). Williams and Sodi have you soak slices of them in water for a minute or two, to take away their edge — same thing they do with minced shallot, in their vinaigrette. (Water is an important ingredient at Via Carota — a couple teaspoons of it balance the vinaigrette.) A quick two-paragraph footnote offers a career’s-worth of actionable info about the joys of pecorino cheese, followed by the best thing I’ve ever read about how to choose, cook and peel favas. Later, we’re advised to collect Pecorino Romano or parmigiano rinds and make stock with them — which we can use to make a peppery besciamella (bechamel) with the flavors of cacio e pepe.

This book will make just about anyone a better cook; it’s the opposite of the kind of chef books that blithely assume we home cooks have access to 9,000 special ingredients and a walk-in full of advance preps.

Heartwarming in Cold Weather

Lenticchie con Cavolo Nero — Braised Lentils and Kale — is about as demanding as it gets in that regard. It calls for either black Umbrian or French green lentils, Tuscan kale (also known as lacinato or dinosaur kale) and either pancetta or guanciale, plus onion, carrot, garlic and sage. It’s a breeze to put together, and soul-satisfying this time of year. It’s in the “Autumn” chapter, but I’ll be making it all through the winter. I just bought a hunk of pancetta, sliced it and froze it; I always keep lentils and aromatics on hand, so kale will be the only necessary purchase whenever I want to simmer up a pot.

Naturally I had to try one of the handmade pastas in the book, so I went for a shape I’d never made: pici, which are hand-rolled thick spaghetti. Made from semolina and 00 flour, with no eggs, pici are traditional in the Tuscan province of Siena, where they’re commonly served with ragù of duck or boar, or with mushrooms.

The pasta dough came together easily, and Williams and Sodi’s instructions for rolling them with your fingers and palms into long, uneven snakes (like Play-Doh!) were simple to follow. In fact I was surprised at how easy they were to achieve, and it didn’t take as long as I’d expected. Making them was delightfully contemplative. It invited taking pleasure in the process; it would also be a lot of fun to do with kids of just about any age.

And they were insanely good, with fabulous texture. Delicious with the extremely rich duck ragù.

Pici — Hand-Rolled Thick Spaghetti — ready to be cooked. They’re meant to be imperfect.

RECIPE: Via Carota Pici all’Anatra (Hand-Rolled Spaghetti with Duck Ragù)

A few wee glitches

Wonderful as it is — and I highly recommend buying a copy not just for yourself, but for every Italophile cook on your holiday list — the perfect restaurant’s cookbook isn’t perfect. There was too much ragù, for instance, for the 14 ounces of pici the pasta recipe yields. (We adjusted, so our adapted recipe makes more pasta — perfect for the amount of sauce.) And a recipe for a gorgeous Crosta di Mandorle — Almond Tart — has you roll out a 10-inch circle of dough that is not large enough to go up the 1-inch sides of the 9-inch tart pan it calls for. I rolled it out as thin as I could, but it fell apart, and I wound up pressing it into the pan, without a millimeter to spare. I baked it till the almonds were golden-brown, as instructed, but the filling wasn’t quite cooked through — which I didn’t learn till I served it.

But the wee glitches were far outnumber by the wild successes — like this Torta al Cioccolata, which might well be the best flourless chocolate cake I’ve ever made. It’s puffed when it comes out of the oven, and then it collapses (it’s supposed to), and the top forms a kind of crackly crust that contrasts wonderfully with the soft interior.

RECIPE: Torta al Cioccolata

For people who love to spend time playing with gorgeous produce, communing with pasta dough or meditatively simmering, Via Carota is a true gift — one that’s sure to inspire endless pleasurable time in kitchen and at table. As my grandma — who taught me to bake and to love literature — used to tell me, I envy you the pleasure of reading it for the first time.

We’re excited to dub it Cooks Without Borders’ first-ever Cookbook of the Year.

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'Masa' is a must-have cookbook for Mexican cooking aficionados and aspirants

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By Leslie Brenner

Masa: Techniques, Recipes, and Reflections on a Timeless Staple, by Jorge Gaviria; photographs by Graydon Herriott, Chronicle Books, $35.

For those of us who are passionate about Mexican cooking — whether we are practicing it ourselves or enjoying the creations of chefs and other cooks — the ground has shifted in a very exciting way in the last couple of years. The appearance of heirloom corn, in the form of dried heirloom maíz (field corn kernels) for chefs, and heirloom masa harina (just-add-water masa dough flour) for home cooks, has changed everything.

The seismic shift was fomented and forged in large part by a behind-the-scenes hero: Jorge Gaviria. Now the Miami-born chef and entrepreneur has written a book about it all — Masa: Techniques, Recipes, and Reflections on a Timeless Staple. Though the book is primarily directed at chefs, there’s also plenty in it that will captivate home cooks who are serious about Mexican cooking.

WATCH: “Masa and Heirloom Corn Culture with Olivia Lopez and Jorge Gaviria”

READ: “Next-wave masa: A forward-looking purveyor and passionate chefs bring heirloom corn from Mexico to their table and yours”

Masa is an important, encyclopedic work that provides a fascinating, complete history of masa, from its Mesoamerican roots all the way up to the present — what Gaviria refers to as the “third wave masa movement.” It’s a great foundation for understanding the basis and evolution of Mexican cooking.

Gaviria’s obsession with masa began in 2013, when he became entranced with the heirloom seed movement during an apprenticeship at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Dan Barber’s famed upstate New York restaurant. That led him to focus on heirloom corn and travel to Oaxaca. Building on Sin Maíz No Hay País (Without Corn There Is No Country, a grass-roots corn culture movement that had been established in Mexico six years earlier), Gaviria went on to create Masienda— a Los Angeles-based company devoted to heirloom maíz from Mexico. Masienda imports the dried heirloom kernels from small farms in Mexico and sells them to the chefs around the U.S. who nixtamalize it (simmering it with culinary lime) then grind them to make masa.

The resulting heirloom-corn masa is far more flavorful and aromatic — and much better for Indigenous farming communities and the earth — than masa made from the genetically modified commodity corn that during the previous century was the only game around. Fans of groundbreaking Mexican restaurants such as Enrique Olvera’s Cosme in New York and Carlos Salgado’s Taco María in Southern California (among others) have been treated to dishes fashioned from heirloom masa in the years since.

Tetelas made from blue, yellow and red heirloom masa harina

In 2019, Gaviria created and began marketing a game-changing piece of equipment: the Molinito. A miniature version of the mammoth industrial molinos (mills) used to grind masa in restaurants (and the freestanding masa shop/tortillerías all around Mexico), the Molinito suddenly made grinding masa much more accessible to independent start-up chefs and food entrepreneurs stateside without deep pockets or huge kitchens. That helped spark a nationwide heirloom masa movement of pop-ups and small kitchens that includes Brooklyn’s For All Things Good, the California Bay Area’s Bolito, Nashville’s Alebrije, Las Vegas’ Masazul, Houston’s Tatemó and Austin’s Nixta Taquería — whose chef Edgar Rico earned the James Beard Award this year for Emerging Chef. And of course Dallas’ Molino Olōyō, whose chef and co-owner Olivia Lopez is Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican Cuisine Expert.

For home cooks, Gaviria and Masienda also introduced an exciting innovation: masa harina made from the new/old heirloom-corn masa. In the past, the only widely available masa harina was made from that awful GMO commodity corn, whether the Maseca brand (developed and first marketed in 1949 in Nuevo Leon, Mexico) or other brands that came later.

Red, white and blue heirloom-corn masa harina from Masienda

How the book works

The first third of Masa consists mostly of a lengthy section, primarily directed to chefs, explaining how to make nixtamal, how to operate and maintain a molino or Molinito and how to grind masa.

Next comes “Contextualizing Masa.” Here we learn how to press and cook a tortilla, the starting point for many of the shapes that follow. Gaviria explains how to get “puff” — the sought-after effect when a perfectly made tortilla fills with air after being flipped on the comal (griddle). “The puff is to tortilla making what the crumb is to bread baking,” writes Gaviria.

A tortilla made using blue and yellow heirloom masa harina puffs on the comal.

A compendium of masa shapes

The heart of the book is a valuable guide to making 28 masa “shapes” — alphabetized from arepas to chochoyotes, memelas, quesadillas, tamales, tetelas and tlayudos. The shapes originate not only from Mexico; they also come from Central America, South America and even the United States (puffy taco!). For all of them, you can use masa made from masa harina (as well as fresh masa made from nixtamal).

Home cooks will need to be self-directed, figuring out fillings and toppings on their own; recipes for those aren’t included in the book. The 3-page entry on Tlacoyo, for instance, describes “A football-shaped or oval masa pocked, commonly filled with puréed beans, favas, or other pulses and topped with cheese, crema, salsa, and/or onions with cilantro . . . “ (You can find complete recipes, along with salsas and fillings, in Cooks Without Borders Mexican Cuisine Guide, and in other cookbooks.)

What we are given are tlacoyo’s roots (Mexico — Estado de México, Hidalgo, Pueblo); the format (“stuffer and topper”) and cooking method (“comal or fried”). Next comes practical information about mixing fat into the masa if you intend to freeze the tlacoyos, and then written instructions on shaping, filling and cooking the tlacoyo. Step-by-step photos (by Graydon Herriott) are excellent visual aids.

Ten chef recipes

The final short section, “Modern Masa Explorations,” is where you find the book’s only conventionally formatted (headnote, ingredient list, detailed instructions) recipes — 10 cross-cultural recipes from chefs. Among them are Blue Masa Sourdough Bread from Philippine-born Karlo Evaristo; Lamb Birria with Masa Gnocchi from Gerardo Gonzalez (Lalo, New York City); Shrimp and Masa Grits from Sean Brock (McCrady’s, Charleston, SC); and Masa Samosas from Saw Naing (Tallula’s, Santa Monica, CA).

The one I tested — White Chocolate Chip Cookies — came from Jess Stephens, who worked in the pastry program at Empellón in New York City.

Buttery and irresistible, with a bit of masa harina incorporated into the dough, they begin with white chocolate chips that are caramelized and melted in the oven, then hardened and broken into chunks — resulting in a flavor is so much more interesting than plain white chocolate.

Gaviria tells me he has begun work on developing a second book, one geared more directly for home cooks — which is great news.

Until then, his outstanding debut effort — which I highly recommend — gives us plenty to chew on.

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Cookbooks We Love: 'Budmo!' deliciously captures the spirit of Ukraine (we laughed! we cried!)

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By Leslie Brenner

Budmo!: Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen, by Anna Voloshyna. Rizzoli, $39.95.

Here’s one to judge by its irresistible cover: Budmo!, a Ukrainian cookbook from San Francisco-based chef, blogger and cooking instructor Anna Voloshyna. With its borscht-pink rose motif, enticing assorted zakusky (cold apps) and built-in exclamation point, it promises — and delivers — an exuberant, delicious good time.

Why We Love It

Budmo! means “let us be!” — the Ukrainian equivalent of “cheers!” At this moment in history, that beet-pink exhortation speaks volumes. So much more than just a toast, it’s the spirit of Ukraine existentially defending itself against Russia. No way will we let you beat us; we’re Ukraine! Look at our fabulous, irrepressible, irresistible culture! Our food! Our drink! Our resolve! Budmo! Let us be!

Author Voloshyna was born and raised in a small town called Snihurivka in the southern part of the country, 120 miles from Odessa. Her introduction is a terrific mini-tour of “the breadbasket of Europe,” as the country is known. Its various regions are their own distinctive micro-cultures, from Western Ukraine (the Carpathian Mountain region that borders with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova) with its sheep’s milk cheese and Hutsul polenta, to the meat-potato-and-cabbage lands of central Ukraine, to the sour cream, dill and herring of Odessa.

Yet there’s plenty of overlap, and anyone of Eastern European ancestry will likely recognize touchstones.

My family has Ashkenazi Jewish roots in Western Ukraine on my dad’s side and Odessa on my mom’s side, and when I came upon Voloshyna’s recipes for chicken noodle soup, cold beet borscht, eggplant “caviar” and “Famous Odessa Forshmak” — a herring mousse served on toasted rye bread — I was quite literally brought to tears. I never knew exactly why my family ate these kinds of things when I was a child, and turning the pages of Budmo! for the first time was like a culinary coming home.

How About Those Recipes?

Never one to resist a Russian Potato Salad, I dove in with Voloshyna’s vegetarian version, an herbal, pickle-y regional spin. So good! Its elevated pickle level makes it highly crave-able.

I also had to try Georgian eggplant rolls, studded with pomegranate seeds, which are now in season. Filled with a paste made from walnuts and herbs and drizzled with pomegranate molasses, they were wonderful — and fun to make.

RECIPE: Anna Voloshyna’s Georgian Eggplant Rolls

Conveniently, both of the above recipes can be prepared in advance, making them ideal to bring to a potluck or serve at a holiday party.

Feasting Ukrainian-Style: Zakuska!

Or do as the Ukrainians do, and serve them as a zakuska. “All kinds of salads, spreads, cold cuts, cured meats, and fish are called a ‘zakuska,’ which simply means ‘appetizer,’” Voloshyna writes in a chapter devoted to them.

“Zakuska arrive at the beginning of the meal to arouse appetites and accompany first toasts. Some zakuska, especially various cold cuts and briny pickles, stay on the table throughout the whole meal for following every shot. Those small, flavorful bits are perfect for mellowing out fiery horilka (vodka) or other hard liquors. Don’t forget to say ‘Budmo!’ right before you drink your first shot.”

I adored another appetizer, that Famous Odessa Forshmak pickled herring spread — a herring-lover’s treat, for sure, fabulous with dark rye. Suddenly, those little jars of pickled herring perpetually in our fridge when I was a kid made sense: our roots in Odessa! But Southern Ukraine isn’t the only herring-loving place in the world; in France, marinated herring with boiled potatoes is a bistro classic, and in Sweden pickled herrings in myriad forms can be found on smorgasbord spreads. In Japan, herring roe (kazunoko) is a prized delicacy, and the forshmak’s assertive flavor would likely be appreciated by aficionados of hikarimono — the category of sushi known as “shiny silver fish,” which are often marinated.

Also, I love the name of the dish — say it out loud and you can’t help but feel Ukrainian: Famous Odessa Forshmak!

RECIPE: Famous Odessa Forshmak

Of course Budmo! is about much more than zakuska. There are wonderful-looking soups, including three borschts — a beautiful cold beet version for summer; a warm, mushroomy vegetarian one for winter and a green sorrel borscht for spring. There’s a chicken soup that looks like it might rival my mom’s, with the added advantage of hand-cut noodles. I also have my eye on a hearty chicken and vegetable soup with buckwheat dumplings that look suspiciously like matzoh balls.

There are enticing rye pelmeni filled with beef and pork and sauced with brown butter, spices and herbs; a recipe for crispy potato kremzykly (kremzykly is the Ukrainian word for latkes), and a really cool-looking set of garlicky yeasted rolls baked in a cast-iron skillet, called Garlic Pampushky. (A better name even than forshmak?!)

A Warming, Transporting Stew

The book’s homey, rustic main courses made long for the Ukranian grandparents I never knew. (My parents were both orphans, raised by aunts and uncles, with no great cooks among them that I found. For the record, my beloved great-aunt who raised my mom was a wonderful baker, not so hot as a cook.)

Don’t look for Chicken Kyiv (or even Chicken Kiev). Instead there’s a garlicky Georgian chicken in a pot; voluptuous cabbage rolls stuffed with barley and mushrooms; Voloshyna’s grandma’s roasted duck; pork shank braised with sauerkraut and beer; and one that I tried but wouldn’t make again — bell peppers filled with ground pork and rice (the recipe worked fine, but the dish was dull).

I did love a Crimean Beef Stew with Chickpeas. Voloshyna writes in the headnote that she had tried the dish many years ago in a small Tatar restaurant in Crimea, but after Russia annexed the country she was unable to return for the recipe, so she re-created the dish from memory. First it’ll fill your kitchen with enchanting aromas; and then it’s soul-satisfying to eat. It’s excellent served with buttery rice and topped with pickled red onions, as Voloshyna suggests, but honestly just as good without the pickled onions if you’d rather skip them.

RECIPE: ‘Budmo’ Crimean Beef Stew

In terms of sweets, there are baked apples filled with Tvorog cheese (you can sub French fromage blanc) plus raisins, pine nuts and cinnamon; vyshyvanka, or baked bars filled with plum or black-currant jam. Most exciting to me is a many-layered, dreamy-looking “Glorious Honey Cake,” the signature dessert at Voloshyna’s pop-ups.

I do need to note that inexperienced cooks may hit some snags with the recipes in Budmo!. Yields were sometimes wacky; if cooked exactly as printed, the forshmak and Russian potato salad recipes would each have served a small army, so I halved the ingredients for each in our adaptations. Instructions were sometimes unclear, as with the Georgian Eggplant Rolls, which, had I exactly followed the instructions would have made eight gigantic knife-and-fork rolls rather than a passel of hors d’oeuvre-sized ones as shown in the book’s photo. (Again, our adaptation corrects that.) And ingredients could be more precise: What does a “medium potato” weigh, and is it red, Idaho or Yukon gold? Perhaps One the book was rushed to press due to its newsworthiness, and didn’t benefit from as careful an edit as it deserved.

Still, the recipes themselves are solid and absolutely worthwhile, so hopefully Voloshyna will sell a jillion copies, and she can do a bit more hand-holding and recipe-zhuzzhing in a future edition.

I do hope that will be in the stars, because all in all, Budmo! is a wonderful book, delightfully animated by Voloshyna’s engaging voice and charming stories, and brought to life by her vivacious photos. Yes — save for the shots of herself cooking (nicely shot by Maria Boguslav), the author is also responsible for the appealing photography.

Clearly it was all a labor of love — from apples to zakusky.

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Cookbooks We Love: The flavors of India's cultural capital shine in 'Kolkata'

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By Leslie Brenner

Kolkata: Recipes from the Heart of Bengal, by Rinku Dutt, photographs by Steven Joyce; 2022, Smith Street Books, $35.

We’ve fallen in love with ‘Kolkata’ — the debut cookbook from London food-truck proprietor Rinku Dutt — set to be published this week, on Tuesday, October 18.

Backgrounder

Author Dutt was born and raised in London, but her family is from Kolkata (the Indian city that was known under colonial rule as Calcutta), and has always maintained close ties. In the heart of West Bengal, Kolkata is considered the cultural capital of the country; it’s nicknamed “The City of Joy.” It was there that her great-grandfather founded a restaurant, Central Hotel, whose named changed after Independence to Amber. (It’s still open!) Dutt began her career in banking, and was also a classical Indian dancer. She later spent three years living in Kolkata, working in the fashion industry, diving deep into the food culture and falling even more in love with the city than she already was.

Returning to London in 2014, she founded the Bengali food truck and pop-up restaurant Raastawala with her father and brother, and contributed Indian recipes to several of the Leon cookbooks.

Why We Love ‘Kolkata’

Dutt paints a captivating picture of the city and its culture (aided by Steven Joyce’s evocative photographs), offering such a strong sense of it that invokes a sudden longing to get there. “The architecture may be damp and deteriorating,” she writes, “but it is all so vibrant with colour. The bells ringing in the temples, incense sticks burning, smelling the aromas of food being cooked in the houses as you walk by, the balconies, the crumbling paint, the rickshaws, autos and yellow taxis . . .”

Happily for those who mean to get there, Dutt provides (buried near the end of the book) a compelling list of restaurants to visit.

Meanwhile, Dutt does a wonderful job explaining how people within the culture eat — something that too few cookbooks achieve:

“Unlike many cuisines where a meal may be comprised of one or a few courses, in Bengali cuisine, all (and often that means many) dishes are served together, but their are eaten in very specific combinations, one after the other. A classic order (and one that we use at our family table when entertaining and when in Kolkata) starts the meal with rice, followed by a bitter (shukto or shaak) palate cleanser, then a dal (a lentil dish) with a bhaja (battered fried vegetables), then a vegetable dish, a fish dish and next a meat dish, with a chutney and a salad on the side.”

She adds that an everyday meal in most Bengali households consists of “rice, dal, a vegetable and either a meat or fish dish.” That’s a useful blueprint for how to use the book — for weeknight dinners, or for more elaborate entertaining.

Masoor Dal (Red Lentil Dal) from ‘Kolkata’

Dutt’s recipes, many gleaned from her grandmother and other family, are wonderful — particularly in the way they layer spices — and they’re simple enough to be do-able for home cooks. Many are prepared using a karai (or kadhai, an Indian pan with steep, sloped sides) or a wok. We tested them using a wok; a deep skillet with sloped sides would work just as well for those we tested.

A Delicious Place to Start

Kolkata is on the Hooghly River, just inland from the Bay of Bengal, and Dutt describes a food culture that reveres seafood, so we dove in with Shrimp with Poppy Seeds — Chingri Posto. A dish the author learned from her mother, who had fond memories of her own mother making it, it’s easy, memorable and delicious.

This Cauliflower Dry-Fry — Phulkopi Bhaja — is also excellent, and easily achieved, cloaked with nigella seeds, turmeric, a bit of dried red chile and chopped cilantro. Our only complaint was there was too little of it; we doubled Dutt’s ingredients in our adaptation to make enough to serve 4 to 6. (It seems more worth the effort to make a whole cauliflower head’s worth; if there are leftovers, they’re still delicious.)

RECIPE: ‘Kolkata’ Cauliflower Dry-Fry (Phulkopi Bhaja)

And here’s a heart-warming Red-Lentil Dal (Masoor Dal, shown abobve) we’ll be making on a regular basis.

You’ve Gotta Try This

This sumptuous dish gets a one-two-coriander punch, as chicken thighs are marinated in a thick paste involving lots of fresh cilantro (coriander) leaves and stems, and then ground coriander seeds are added as the dish cooks. Cumin, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns and chiles add layered complexity. Once marinated (ideally overnight), it’s a snap to pull together.

RECIPE: Rinku Dutt’s Coriander Chicken

Still Wanna Make

So many things! I’ll want to concoct some Tomato and Prune Chutney to go with the Coriander Chicken next time I make that. There’s a “Rich and Thick” Lamb Curry (Kosha Mansho), “served up at most weddings and family gatherings” — high on the list. Lentil Cakes in Gravy looks magnificent, as do Onion Fritters (Piyaji). Eggplant and Spinach Dry-Fry will likely be on our table soon; ditto Ron’s Chicken Biryani (the author’s dad’s recipe). In the seafood department, Jumbo Shrimp in a Thick Coconut Gravy looks incredible, and so does Banana-Leaf Steamed Mustard Fish.

Speaking of which, considering that Kolkata is such a seafood town, I do wish there were more seafood recipes. Several of them call for salmon or tuna, as cooks outside of Bengal wouldn’t have access to the fishes used there; I found myself wishing Dutt stretched a bit to suggest less-Western solutions.

One more wish — in case the author has a second book in mind (which I hope she does!): a bit more help with ingredients, techniques and equipment. I know readers often skip over such “basics” chapters, but I felt this book could have used a brief one, answering questions like what’s the difference between white and black (aka blue) poppy seeds, something about various lentils, whether it’s worth buying karai if you don’t already own one, what type of potatoes are favored for these dishes, a bit about the dry-frying technique used a number of times, and so forth.

That’s small stuff, though. This debut cookbook is one we highly recommend. Grab a couple: one for yourself, and one for an Indian-food-loving friend. And it’s so pretty, it’ll make a fine holiday gift.

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Cookbooks We Love: Hooni Kim's 'My Korea' is a knockout of a Korean cooking primer

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By Leslie Brenner

My Korea: Traditional Flavors, Modern Recipes, by Hooni Kim with Aki Kamozawa; photographs by Kristin Teig; 2020, W. W. Norton & Company, $40.

A serious craving for Korean flavors — that’s what bit me on the flight home from a recent trip to France. Tangy-spicy, hot, cold and pickly, packed with umami, sometimes a little sweet. I needed those flavors in my life, and fast.

Immediately I thought of My Korea. The highly regarded chef Hooni Kim published the cookbook two years ago; it’s the first book I reached for when I landed. Covid time-warp is my official excuse for taking so long to get to it.

Backgrounder

Kim, who was born in South Korea, is chef and owner of Danji in New York City; he opened the tiny place (named for the small clay jars that hold traditional foods for daily use in Korea) in 2010. A year later, it became the first Korean restaurant anywhere to earn a Michelin star. He opened a second restaurant, Hanjan, the following year, and recently Meju, a fermentation studio. He’s now preparing to open Little Banchan Shop, featuring Korea’s beloved small plates.

Raised in London and the U.S., Kim took a hiatus halfway through medical school to study at the French Culinary Institute in New York (now the International Culinary Center), did a couple of stages, graduated from FCI and then interned at Daniel, which he considered to be “the best restaurant in New York City.” He thought he’d return to med school, but when Daniel Boulud’s legendary French restaurant offered him a permanent position, he bit. After that, desiring to learn to cook the food of his own culture at a lofty level, he sought a respected Korean chef to train with at an excellent Korean restaurant, couldn’t find one in the U.S., and so went to work at the closest thing he could find: Masa, the superlative Japanese restaurant from chef Masa Takayama. Kim made an impression on Masa’s famous chef-owner with the Korean dishes he prepared for family (staff) meals. Several of them are included in My Korea — which Kim reportedly worked on for eight years.

Kim sums up his own cooking like this:

“My food is what you might get from a Korean grandmother if she went to culinary school, interned at high-end Michelin restaurants, and settled in New York City (and perhaps had an addition to White Castle sliders).”

Why we love ‘My Korea’

It’s a rare chef cookbook that’s filled with recipes that are approachable and practical enough for home cooks, and My Korea is all that and then some. Especially if you’re new (or newish) to Korean cooking, I’d recommend starting at the beginning and reading the whole intro. Kim’s taste-memories of visiting his relatives in South Korea when he was a small child speak volumes about the heart and soul of Korean food; reading about them is a gorgeous immersive education in itself.

Don’t be tempted to skip “The Korean Pantry” chapter. It’s filled with immensely useful information, including what brands of ganjang (Korean soy sauce), sesame oil and dangmyeon (sweet potato noodles) to look for, how to shop for gochugaru (Korean red chile flakes) or rice cakes, and what a difference a great doenjang (fermented soybean paste) or gochujang (fermented red chile paste) makes. Kim offers an invaluable paragraph about cleaning, long-rinsing and slicing scallions — and then squeezing them dry in a kitchen towel and letting them air-dry 10 minutes. That way you can store them, covered, in the fridge, and they’ll be “fluffy and light” when you’re ready to use them.

The book’s 90 recipes are extremely well chosen — so many scream “cook me, cook me!" — and the seven I tested worked beautifully. The authors hold your hand more than is usual in cookbooks; it’s probably not a great leap of faith to guess that co-author Aki Kamozawa has more than a little to do with their general excellence.

So, where to start?

Marinated Spicy Cucumbers, or Oee Muchim, hits the spot for that tangy, spicy, cold and pickly wish. Easy to make, it’s Kim’s “favorite summer muchim” — muchim are quick-pickled vegetable dishes that can be served as banchan. As Kim explains it, “Muchim are more convenient than kimchi because you do not have to wait for them to ferment — they can be eaten the same day they are prepared.” Nevertheless, some have similar flavor profiles to kimchi — that spicy, salty, sour thing.

You’ve gotta try this

Dangmyeon — stretchy, clear noodles made from sweet potato starch — are the stars of japchae, a beloved traditional dish. Those noodles are dressed with a salty and lightly sweet sauce kissed with sesame oil, and lots of julienned vegetables, including red and green bell peppers, fresh shiitake mushrooms, plus spinach.

Kim says it’s best served warm — and it is — but I’m here to tell you I ate the leftovers cold the next days, and it was nearly as fabulous. It’s a dish I could probably eat once a week for the rest of my life, and I’d die happy. Oh, and it’s vegan if you use the water option instead of dashi, or use dashi made with kombu and shiitakes. Swap gluten-free tamari for soy sauce and it’s gluten-free.

Bar food extraordinaire

“Kimchi and pork are the ultimate classic combination in Korean cuisine,” writes Kim in the headnote to his recipe for Warm Tofu with Kimchi and Pork Belly Stir-Fry. The stir-fry part — dubu kimchi — is the classic anju (a dish to eat with soju), served at pojang machas in Korea. Pojang machas are street-side tent restaurants that are open only at nighttime, “where locals go to drink close to home or work while munching on anju.” Traditionally dubu kimchi is served with rice; Kim loves it with tofu.

RECIPE: Hooni Kim’s Dubu Kimchi

Still wanna make . . .

A gazillion things, starting with Napa Cabbage Kimchi. After that, I’ll just rattle ‘em off: Soy-Marinated Perilla Leaves; Simmered Fish Cakes; Spicy Garlic Chives; Spicy Brussels Sprouts; Soy-Marinated BBQ Beef Short Ribs (Yangnyeom Galbi); Braised Beef Short Ribs (Galbi Jjim); Rice Cake Soup; Marinated Rice with Sashimi Salad.

I did try Spicy Bean Sprouts and Steamed Egg Custard with Shrimp (both very good), and Soy-Poached Black Cod with Daikon. That last dish, which Kim describes as a favorite at family meal at Masa, worked gorgeously, but it’s too sweet for my taste (there’s three-quarters of a cup of sugar in the sauce for a dish that serves four). I’ll make it again and decrease the sugar.

Oh, I also made a cocktail — one Kim calls “Makgeolli Made Easy.” Makgeolli is the name for the lightly sweet rice beer that’s popular in Korea; you can find it easily at Korean supermarkets such as H Mart. The drink, which blends makgeolli with gin, cucumber purée, ginger syrup and lime juice, is absolutely delicious.

RECIPE: Makgeolli Made Easy

Obviously this book is a keeper — it’s one of the best primers among the hundreds of volumes on my shelves.

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Cookbooks We Love: Reem Kassis' 'The Arabesque Table' offers irresistible spins on Levantine tradition

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By Leslie Brenner

The Arabesque Table: Contemporary Recipes from the Arab World by Reem Kassis; photographs by Dan Perez; 2021, Phaidon, $39.95.

Backgrounder

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Reem Kassis — who now lives in Pennsylvania, and lived in four other countries in between — is a former McKinsey consultant with two undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from Wharton and an MSc in social psychology from the London School of Economics. Following the birth of her first of two daughters, she stepped back from her 10-year career and decided to follow her “real passion” — cooking, food and food history. Her first cookbook, The Palestinian Table (2017), wove recipes from her family together with Palestinian culture and history. It won the British Guild of Food Writers First Book Award and was nominated for a James Beard Award.

Kassis’ aim with The Arabesque Table, as she explains in its introduction, was to write about and express in recipes “the evolving and cross-cultural Arab table.”

Why we love it

Kassis has created a fabulously rich collection of recipes and stories that manage to do three things at once. First, they ground us in the culinary traditions of the Arab world — particularly the Fertile Crescent (a.k.a. the Levant or the Middle East). Second, they paint an evocative picture of her Jerusalem childhood through food and her family traditions. And third, they give us a delicious collection of recipes that have her own very personal stamp.

Relatively new to the world of food-writing and professional cookery as Kassis may be, she has a great palate and a wonderful creative instincts. Her recipes respect and pay tribute to the flavors, ingredients and vibe of the Levant, but she’s not afraid to take liberties and risks — often to delightful effect. Many of these dishes will become permanent fixtures in my repertoire. Impressive!

For instance: a magnificent mega-mezza

Not a traditional dish, this roasted eggplant salad on a cushion of tahini is Kassis’ invention — combining elements of mutabal (roasted eggplant dip with tahini) and bitinjan al rahib (“monk’s eggplant” — roasted eggplant with fresh vegetables). As a result, it’s kind of like everything you want in a mezze assortment but all on one plate. The eggplant salad part, which has a gorgeous zing from just the right amount of pomegrante molasses, has pops of salty-meaty umami flavor from sliced green olives; walnuts add complexity and a bit of crunch. The tahini sauce is a creamy, rich foil. Swipe a piece of warm pita through it and you’re transported to everywhere you ever wanted to visit in the Levant.

And an elegant main you can make in a flash

I love this dish of shrimp sautéed with artichoke hearts, turmeric and garlic, enriched with a splash of half-and-half and brightened with slices of fresh lemon — with the salty undertone of preserved lemon. And once you have the shrimps peeled and deveined, it comes together nearly as quickly as you can read that sentence. (Seriously, you can have it to the table in 15 minutes.) In fact, I’ve made it twice in two weeks.

This goes great with that

If you’re a fan of fresh fava beans, but don’t enjoy spending the time peeling every single one, you’ll be glad to know that the bags of frozen ones (already peeled!) you can buy in well stocked Middle Eastern groceries are nearly as good. Or maybe you already knew. In any case, Kassis reminds us — and offers her original take on a Levantine classic. In the traditional version, made with fresh favas, the skins are left on, and the beans are chopped then cooked in “a generous amount of oil” to the point of very soft, then flavored with garlic and coriander.

Kassis prefers them bright green and free of skins — and having tasted favas in their skins, I agree. She most often makes this using frozen favas, and again: agreed. The dish is easy, delicious and I’ve already made it thrice.

Gotta try this!

Every comprehensive Middle-Eastern cookbook offers instructions on making labneh (or labaneh), the thick, creamy fresh yogurt-cheese that’s ubiquitous in the region. But somehow I’d never tried it till Kassis sung its praises. You don’t need a recipe; just stir together a quart of full-fat yogurt (regular, not Greek) with a teaspoon (or a little more) of salt, pour it into a cheesecloth-lined sieve set over a bowl, and let it drain overnight. In the morning, you have labneh. Add honey or jam, scoop it up with toasted bread, and you have breakfast. Or wait till noon, drizzle it with olive oil and sumac and call it lunch. More to come on that in a future story, but try it now; it’s delicious — definitely greater than the sum of its simple parts.

But wait — give us some pickles

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this very simple and quick pickle set-up. The brine — just vinegar, curry powder, turmeric, ground fenugreek, salt and water — makes delicious cauliflower and carrot pickles you can enjoy in a couple hours. They get even better as they sit, and you can also throw in cabbage, green beans, turnips or other veg. Keep one or two jars, give another as a gift.

RECIPE: Turmeric and Fenugreek Quick Pickles

A very minor suggestion

I tested a total of 7 recipes from The Arabesque Table. For the most part, they worked great, and tasted great. Out of those there’s only one I’ll probably not make again, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because it more labor-intensive than its result warranted. And only one had a significant problem I had to fix in our adaptation (the tahini sauce for the eggplant dip was liquid when directions were followed closely, rather than spreadable).

But I do have a general note: If you purchase the book (and you should if you love these flavors!), be sure to taste the dishes at key points and adjust the seasoning. That’s an instruction that was left of out all the recipes, as far as I can see, and obviously it’s always super important.

Still Wanna Make

So many things! Fire-Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Mutabal. Spiced Kebabs with Preserved Lemon Dill Yogurt. Seafood Stew with Preserved Lemon, Apricots and Olives. Mustard Greens with Labaneh (now that I know how to make lebaneh!). Sujuk — Spicy Cured Sausage. Makmoora — which is a chicken pot pie spun from a 10th-century recipe. Chicken breasts stuffed with pistachios, radish greens and sumac. Lemon Rosemary Semolina Cake.

Thank you, Ms. Kassis, for what promises to be some delicious future adventures.


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Cookbooks We Love: In 'Treasures of the Mexican Table,’ Pati Jinich shares recipes soaked in local character

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By Leslie Brenner

Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets BY PATI JINICH; PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANGIE MOSIER, 2021, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, $35.

Backgrounder

This is the third book from Pati Jinich (pronounced “HEEN-ich”), host of the long-running, award-winning PBS series ‘Pati’s Mexican Table.” In the show, the Mexico City native travels around the country discovering and bringing to viewers its delicious foodways. (Its 10th season features the state of Jalisco.) Her excellent debut cookbook, Pati’s Mexican Table, published in 2013, focused on the basics of Mexican cooking. Three years later, she published Mexican Today, offering personal favorites aimed at busy cooks with families.

Why we love this one

Like a latter-day Diana Kennedy, Jinich traveled widely and deeply for Treasures of the Mexican Table, turning up outstanding, delicious, sometimes classic and often less well known dishes in people’s homes, in restaurants, in markets and on the street. If you love the anthropological and culinary richness of Kennedy’s classics The Cuisines of Mexico and Mexican Regional Cooking, but wish those volumes included visuals, this is the book for you. The food is enticingly photographed by Angie Mosier, Jinich has a winning personality and her writing is exceedingly relatable, warm and engaging.

Vuelva a la Vida is a coastal dish that’s like a cross between ceviche and a seafood coctél.

The book is indeed filled with treasures; I stuck Post-It notes on no fewer than 25 recipes as must-tries, and loved the ones I cooked.

For Instance, Vuelve a la Vida

If you’ve ever traveled on Mexico’s Pacific or Gulf coasts, you’ve probably bumped into the cool and revivifying seafood dish called Vuelve a la Vida, which means “return to life.” Tangy, bright and lively, it’s like a cross between ceviche — as it includes fish “cooked” in lime juice — and a Mexican-style seafood coctél. If you’re attracted to cocteles but sometimes find them too ketchupy, take Jinich’s Vuelve a la Vida for a spin: It does include a good dose of the red stuff, but it’s balanced with lime juice, smoothed out with olive oil infused with garlic and árbol chile and punched up with oregano.

Different versions of the dish use varying types of seafood. Jinich’s recipe calls for shrimp, lump crabmeat and firm-fleshed white fish (I used red snapper from the Gulf), but her “Cook’s Note” suggests playing around with the fin fish, and subbing cooked squid or octopus, raw oysters, clams or scallops. Thinking about the dish now is making me crave it; I can’t wait to try it again with some squid and maybe oysters in the mix.

Belly-Button Soup

Jinich learned to make Sopa de Ombligo, a pinto-bean and masa dumpling soup, from Maria Elena Machado in the tiny Sinaloa mountain town of Jinetes de Machado. Ombligo means belly-button; the word attaches itself to the soup because its dumplings each have a navel-like dimple pressed into it. It’s warming, rich and wonderful — and those dumplings are a great way to feature masa harina made from heirloom corn.

For the puréed base, you can either start with dried pintos or use canned beans. Both ways yielded great results, so don’t beat yourself up if you want to take the shortcut.

A sumptuous mole called Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos

From the indigenous Purépecha people of Michoacán, Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos has a similar color palette as Sopa de Ombligo, but completely different flavors. Not familiar with atápakua? Larousse Cocina Mexico defines it as a dish with a “very spicy sauce made with masa and guajillos or green chiles, tomato, cilantro or mint and some type of meat or vegetable” (my translation). Jinich includes both cilantro and mint, and uses charred tomatillos — which give the dish a delightful, unexpected brightness. She translates it as “Chicken Mole with Mushrooms,” and provides an excellent side-bar page about what makes a mole a mole — it’s a preparation with a mashed or ground sauce combining a number of ingredients including at least one type of chile, and characterized by “multidimensional layering of flavors.”

For this one, masa harina is stirred in, adding sumptuous body. (Naturally I used the marvelous heirloom masa harina from Masienda.) It’s very saucy, so take Jinich’s suggestion of serving it with warm corn tortillas and rice.

You’ve gotta try this

Jinich’s Pastel de Almendra y Chocolate — a flourless (and gluten-free) chocolate almond cake — may be the easiest chocolate cake in the universe. Mix eggs and condensed sweetened milk, add melted butter and chocolate, dump in dry ingredients, mix again and bake. The resulting dessert is moist, chocolatey, rich and delicious, so good I’m going to be sure to have chocolate and almond meal always on hand so I can whip one up at will.

Jinich’s original recipe calls for combining everything in the jar of blender or in the bowl of a food processor, but neither my blender nor my full-sized Cuisinart were large enough to accommodate the batter. (A large blender jar, such as that of a Vitamix, probably would be.) For that reason, I changed the method; our adaptation uses a hand-mixer instead. Which brings me to . . .

A caveat

Treasures would have benefited from more rigorous recipe testing and editing. Because the recipes are sometimes hinky or not as clear as they might be, the book is probably better suited to more experienced and confident cooks who can adjust on the fly. Eyeballing the Vuelve a la Vida recipe, I could see that three pounds of seafood might be a lot for a dish that’s meant to serve 6 to 8 as an appetizer or 4 to 6 as a light main course. I halved the ingredient amounts to test the recipe, and found the adjustment to be perfect — the recipe as printed yielded twice as much as needed. (Our adapted version uses 1 1/2 pounds of seafood total, which is ample for 6 to 8 appetizer portions. Meanwhile, over-purchasing crabmeat isn’t what anyone wants to be doing these days, as the price has skyrocketed.) The first time I made the Sopa de Ombligo, the dumplings completely dissolved into the soup — it turned out the recipe called for too much water added to the masa harina (our adapted recipe adjusts it).

Still wanna make

Sopa de Esquites con Queso (Corn Soup with Quest Fresco); Cecina (Adobo Pork); Tasajo (grilled air-dried beef); and Mole Verde con Puerco y Frijol Blanco from Oaxaca; Chicken Pozole with Pinto Beans and Carne Asada from Sonora; Sincronizadas con Rajas y Chorizo from Coahuila; Chiles Rellenos de Atún (pickled poblanos stuffed with tuna) and lamb barbacoa from central Mexico; Frijol con Puerco Yucateca and Pámpano en Salsa Verde from the Yucatán; Birria (braised goat or lamb) from Jalisco. And a dessert I won’t be able to resist making for long: Helado de Leche Quemada — Burnt Milk Ice Cream, also from Oaxaca, from the weaving village Teotitlán del Valle.

Editing and testing concerns notwithstanding, this is a book I highly recommend: Bursting with delectable inspiration, it beautifully expresses the incredible richness of a Mexican cooking. It’s one I’m sure I’ll be referring to for years to come.

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Celebrate Chinese New Year with luscious red-braised pork belly (and greens!) from Betty Liu's 'My Shanghai'

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By Leslie Brenner

In her beautiful 2020 book, My Shanghai, Betty Liu has a lovely page about Lunar New Year. In Chinese households on New Year’s Eve, she explains, “guests are welcomed with cups of tea and fresh fruit,” and then there’s a parade of foods that in one way or another symbolize prosperity: whole fish, egg dumplings, tatsoi and sticky rice cakes among them.

Tuesday, February 1 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger, and in Chinese and the other Asian cultures that celebrate the holiday (including Vietnamese, Korean, Tibetan and Mongolian communities), the celebrations last about 15 days — from the new moon to the full moon.

One of my culinary adventurist dreams is to be invited, one day, to celebrate Lunar New Year’s Eve in the home of a Chinese or Chinese-American family. Alas, this year it will be but a dream once again. Given that we’re back to keeping to ourselves at home for dining lately, I think we’ll mark the occasion of Lunar New Year’s Eve by cooking something from Liu’s book — which I’ve only scratched the surface of.

So far, so great. The dish pictured above — Shanghai-style red-braised pork belly — has no specific symbolic connection to the holiday (that I know of!), but it is included in one of the Chinese New Years menus at The Woks of Life, one of my favorite cooking websites. And given that the holiday lasts a couple weeks, the wintry dish, which simmers for at least three hours (filling your kitchen with gorgeous aromas!) should be perfect for one of those dinners.

Watch Makers, Shakers & Mavens: Woks of Life co-founder Sarah Leung talks about Chinese and Chinese-American cooking with Leslie Brenner

In her headnote, Liu calls the dish“perhaps my favorite recipe in this entire book,” mentioning that it’s the dish that best represents Shanghai cuisine, so I had to try it as soon as I got my hands on the book last winter, just after it was published. It’s a winner — rich, tender, deeply flavorful and very soulful. I love that it’s her mom’s recipe.

One you get all the meat browned and braising, the dish simmers for at least three hours, which means if you work at home, you might even be able to manage it on a work day.

What to serve with the red-braised pork?

Certainly the dish could be part of a big feast, but it’s so rich and satisfying that it’s also wonderful with just white rice (its traditional accompaniment), and a simple stir-fried green, such as baby bok choy.

As a student of Chinese cooking, I’m always interested to see how Chinese cookbook authors and other cooks I admire approach a basic Chinese greens stir-fry — a versatile dish I can’t get enough of at home, and one that’s a fixture on Chinese tables.

I love Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe for Baby Bok Choy with Shiitakes, from Every Grain of Rice. But with the red-braised pork belly, I wanted something even more basic, without the umami-richness of shiitakes. Happily, I found it in My Shanghai.

Liu’s recipe for a Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry calls for baby bok choy, but regular bok choy, choy sum or Chinese water spinach take to it well, too. Best of all, there’s a valuable cooking lesson in Liu’s recipe, so this is a great greens recipe to try if, like me, you consider yourself a student of the genre.

Flavor of a thousand tangerines

And finally, here’s a dessert that’s not traditional, but works brilliantly following the braise: tangerine sorbet.

Tangerines are very much associated with the holiday. They’re at peak season now (the ones I’m getting have incredible flavor) and this recipe — adapted from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, captures and somehow amplifies all that gorgeous flavor. It’s an amazing (and easily achieveable!) mood-lifter at a moment that more than a few of us might need one.

RECIPE: Betty Liu’s Mom’s Shanghai Red-Braised Pork Belly

RECIPE: Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry

RECIPE: Tangerine Sorbet

More about Lunar New Year traditions

• There’s a wealth of great info about Chinese New Year traditions at The Woks of Life, including menus.

• Award-winning cookbook author (and friend of Cooks Without Borders) Andrea Nguyen has a delicious post about Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) at her splendid blog, Viet World Kitchen. There you’ll find some cool info about people born in the Year of the Tiger and, of course, a passel of enticing recipes.

More recipes and delicious ways to celebrate

Turnip Cake — a dim-sum favorite, can be even better made at home.

Cooks Without Borders Chinese and Chinese-American recipes page has plenty of other delicious dishes you might explore during the new year festivities. Glorious Lacquered Roast Duck or Chinese Lacquered Roast Chicken would be great centerpieces – both require some advance prep, but the effort involved is shockingly minimal. Lo Bak Go — the daikon cakes you find in dim-sum restaurants (where they often call them turnip cakes), can be even better when made at home; our recipe comes from The Woks of Life. Yangzhou Fried Rice would be awesome, as would Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce. Check that page — I think you’ll find lots you’ll want to try.

And these couple of weeks would be a great opportunity to dive into Chinese culture by cooking through an excellent book. Betty Liu, Fuchsia Dunlop and Eileen Fein-Lo are all great teachers as they write, and books by any of them are great places to start. And there are many more! Liu’s book has the bonus of gorgeous photos of Shanghai, so it feels like a getaway, as well.