Holiday gift guide: Cookbooks
For all you foodies, our friends at The Sun's Taste section have picked the season's best cookbooks -- those that offer the most tips, variety and recipes. The chocolate velvet poundcake pictured here, from The Art & Soul of Baking, is just one of the recipes you can try. The top five:
The Bon Appetit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook by Barbara Fairchild (Wiley / 2008 / $34.95). Perfect for: The very busy cook who likes to stay on trend. There are more than 1,000 recipes here, and they’re short and tasty. Produce guides encourage no-fuss seasonal eating. And a subscription to Bon Appetit magazine comes with the book.
The Art & Soul of Baking by Sur La Table and Cindy Mushet Andrews (McMeel Publishing / 2008 / $40). Perfect for: The passionate baker. Veteran pastry chef Mushet serves up a "pro" tip with almost every creation. The precision of her 275 recipes, with weights as well as measures, leads to good results. There’s lots of guidance for beginners as well as veteran bakers, and beautiful photography.
Best of the Best, Vol. 1 by the editors of Food & Wine (Food & Wine Books / 2008 / $29.95). Perfect for: The cookbook addict who wants 25 great new cookbooks — but has space for only one. This annual compilation of recipes from the year’s best cookbooks offers a stellar roundup for 2008, from authentic Asian recipes to the latest from Alice Waters. Many of the authors share a bonus recipe not in their original cookbooks.
A Day at elBulli by Ferran Adria (Phaidon / 2008 / $49.95). Perfect for: The armchair-traveling fan of molecular gastronomy. We’re not big on complicated chef books, but this one makes you feel as if you’ve booked a table at the famous restaurant in Spain — and had a behind-the-scenes schooling in how pulp extraction, freeze-drying and using liquid nitrogen can create fine food.
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Comments
Another good one is Kenny Shopsin's *Eat Me*. It's part memoir, part cook book, with a lot of sarcasm and dry humor thrown in.
The photos are great (plastic vampire teeth taking a bite of a tasty tree), and the cover has a pull flap (similar to the *Swing* book you mentioned in the children's book list above)
Posted by: Dawn - She Is Too Fond Of Books | December 12, 2008 5:51 PM