December 2015 cookbook roundup

Every month Jane and Fiona wade through hundreds of cookbooks, selecting and reviewing all the best new releases of U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand cookbooks. The only thing left for you to do is to add them to your Bookshelf.

Trends in this slow month include vegan eating and soup/broth. While few well-known chefs have new cookbooks in December, there are several follow-up books to successful first efforts by popular bloggers.

USA

Brodo: A Bone Broth Cookbook by Marco Canora: No one has been more responsible for the recent explosion of interest in bone than New York City chef Marco Canora. Bone broths are now being touted for alleged health benefits. In this book Chef Canora shares his wildly popular broths and shows how to serve them year round as well as use them into recipes.

Bon Appétit Food Lover’s Cleanse by Sara Dickerman: This book embodies the magazine’s popular online plan and expands it for the whole year with four two-week seasonal plans. Meal plans are high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains-with no refined flours, very limited dairy and saturated fats, little to no alcohol or coffee (and a small serving of dark chocolate!). Watch for a promotion on this book early in January.

The Everyday Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge: From former pastry chef and award-winning baking expert Abby Dodge. The Everyday Baker serves as a roadmap through a baker’s sweet and savory kitchen and includes over 176 recipes, each featuring must-know tips and techniques,

DIY Vegan by Nicole Axworthy and Lisa Pitman: Finding vegan pantry staples can be difficult, so authors Axworthy and Pitman show readers how to make them at home. Using easy to find whole food ingredients, they’ve created over one hundred recipes for vegan milks, ice creams and butters made from a variety of nuts and seeds, home-ground flours, sauces and spreads, snack foods, and an array of artisanal vegan cheeses.

Five Ingredients or Less Slow Cooker Cookbook by Stephanie O’Dea: Making slow cooking even easier, this book features recipes for every occasion, including surprises like Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi, Artichoke Angel Hair Pasta, Flan, and Cheesecake, all with five or fewer ingredients. There is also a whole chapter for vegetarian meals, as well as gluten-free options for every recipe in the book. 

The Magic of Spice Blends by Aliza Green: Today, more than ever, we have access to almost every spice and herb imaginable. But it’s the careful blending of herbs and spices that is the true art of the spice handler. The Magic of Spice Blends reveals the secrets of creating and cooking with the world’s classic spice blends from seven regions: Africa, the Far East, Europe, India, the Middle East, North America and the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America. In addition to the spice blends, the book offers recipes for using each blend.

The Taco Cleanse by Wes Allison, Stephanie Bogdanich, Molly R. Frisinger and Jessica Morris: Tired of the same old cleanse? Instead of feeling rejuvenated are you feeling depleted, anxious, and cranky? (Not to mention . . . hungry?) A group of vegan taco scientists in Austin, Texas, know just how you feel, so they developed a new type of cleanse. While the typical cleanse works by depriving you of your favorite foods, the plant-based Taco Cleanse rewards your body with what it naturally craves: tortillas, refried beans, and guacamole.

The Great Vegan Grains Book by Celine Steen and Tamasin Noyes: Another vegan offering this month aims to rectify the situation faced by whole grain-loving vegans, where grains are often paired with non-vegan ingredients, making many recipes off-limits. This book contains over 100 recipes for whole grains that are easily found in most grocery stores. 

Homemade Sausage by James Peisker and Chris Carter: Decidedly not vegan is this book by the force behind Nashville’s Porter Road Butcher. The duo guide you through every step of sausage making: sourcing your meat, providing techniques and trade secrets for grinding, a listing of the best tools for the job, and how to season your sausage. 

UK

Biota: Gather, Grow, Cook by James Viles: A UK release of an Australian book published last month, Biota brings together ingredients, textures, flavours that work together and complement each other and including the notion of biota (the philosophy of local, use what is at hand) and how it relates to the Southern Highlands restaurant of the same name. 

I Quit Sugar: Simplicious by Sarah Wilson: Another UK release of a previously published Australian book, I Quit Sugar: Simplicious is the follow-up to the hugely popular book by blogger Sarah Wilson. In this book, she strips back to the essentials, explaining how to shop, cook and eat without sugar and other processed foods, as well as how to buy in bulk, freeze and preserve, with ease and without waste.

Cook. Nourish. Glow by Amelia Freer: Following the phenomenal success of her best-selling first book, Eat. Nourish. Glow, Amelia Freer returns with her much-awaited cookbook. Here she promotes a gluten, refined sugar and dairy-free lifestyle featuring step-by-step visuals designed for the novice chef; how to use and prepare staple pantry ingredients; a ‘naughty’ chapter – because living healthily is about consistency, not perfection; and a chapter full of dishes designed to combat gut-related issues.

Fuel for Life by Bear Grylls: The reality television star introduces his revolutionary approach to nutrition and teaches you what to eat to ensure your body is performing at its best. Grylls’ book dispels many common nutritional myths and includes recipes free from wheat, gluten, dairy and refined sugar.

First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson: First Bite draws on current research from both neuroscience and psychology, and the author’s experience parenting three children and visiting numerous school canteens, as well as talking to dieticians, biologists and consumer researchers, to look at where our food habits come from; and what it would really take to change them for the better.

No Bake! Cakes & Sweets Cookbook by Hannah Miles: There’s nothing like home baking but sometimes we yearn for the simplicity of a dessert or a party treat without the need to heat the oven. The recipes in this book do not require an oven and are made simply by heating a few ingredients in a pan or perhaps in the microwave – and some of them, such as the ice-cream cakes, do not require any cooking at all.

South-East Asian Soups by Terry Tan: Throughout south-east Asia, soups and broths are designed to cleanse the mouth and refresh the palate. This book features an appetizing range of recipes from Thailand and China, through Japan and Korea, down to the south-east Asian islands of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Kosher Cooking by Marlena Spieler: Veteran cookbook author Spieler returns with an in-depth look at kosher cooking. With an introduction chronicling the dispersal of different Jewish communities and the effect this has had on their styles of cooking, this is not just a recipe book, but a history lesson. It is also a practical guide to preparing kosher food for the Jewish table.

Australia & New Zealand

Tokyo Cult Recipes by Maori Murota: In a mission to demystify Japanese food, author Maori Murota presents 100 dishes from Tokyo, the gastronomic megacity. With simple recipes for miso, sushi, soba noodles, bentos, sushi, fried rice, Japanese tapas, desserts, cakes and sweets; plus features on the key essential cooking techniques and key ingredients.

Supernormal by Andrew McConnell: Based on the restaurant of the same name – Andrew, owner and head chef, takes home cooks into the kitchen of his hugely popular pan-Asian eatery. He offers a behind-the-scenes take on the restaurant and its characters, as well as scenes from Tokyo, a long-time source of inspiration for McConnell and his Flinders Lane eating house. 

Food Safari Fire by Maeve O’Meara: The new Food Safari TV series airs in January 2016, and this book is in time for Christmas for anyone wanting a gift for the BBQ lover. The series travels the globe to find inventive ways people from all over the world cook with fire- meeting cooks from Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, who are all passionate advocates of cooking with fire. 

Special Delivery by Annabel Crabb and Wendy Sharpe: As the presenter of the popular TV series, Kitchen Cabinet, Annabel Crabb has dined with Australia’s most influential leaders and served her magnificent desserts in kitchens around the country. This book is a collection of Annabel’s favourite recipes from Kitchen Cabinet – over 90 recipes for salads, savouries, biscuits, cakes, tarts and delicious desserts. With step-by-step instructions to prepare and transport these mouth-watering creations, Special Delivery will help you to create fabulous food that travels.