July 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.

July brings a focus on Indian recipes with cookbooks from several respected authors. Grain-free cooking and baking remain popular themes, and quick and easy recipes are also featured this month.

USA

Ingredienti: Marcella’s Guide to the Market by Marcella and Victor Hazan: When Marcella Hazan died in 2013, the world mourned the passing of the “Godmother of Italian cooking.” But her legacy lives on, through her cookbooks and recipes, and in the handwritten notebooks filled with her thoughts on how to select the best ingredients-Ingredienti. Her husband and longtime collaborator Victor has translated and transcribed these vignettes on how to buy and what to do with the fresh produce used in Italian cooking, the elements of an essential pantry, and salumi. 

Modern Potluck by Kristin Donnelly: A cookbook for those wanting to break out of the usual potluck routine, Modern Potluck contains dozens of make-ahead recipes perfect for a crowd, including selections that are gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, and vegan (although meat gets its due). The book also includes  practical information such as how to pack foods to travel. Kristin’s tour dates are in the Cookbook Events Calendar.

Cake Magic! by Caroline Wright: Cake Magic! is a formulaic take on the art of cake baking. Choose a batter, flavor with syrup, add a frosting to achieve combinations like Candy Bar Cake: Darkest Chocolate Cake + Caramel Syrup + Malted Milk Chocolate Frosting + crushed candy bars. The layout is heavy on the visuals, featuring photos in the front and recipes tucked in the back. The book includes vegan and gluten-free variations, plus how to tweak the recipes to make sheet cakes, Bundt cakes, and cupcakes, too. Check our Caroline’s classes in the Cookbook Events Calendar.

Pure Food: A Chef’s Handbook for Eating Clean, with Healthy, Delicious Recipes by Kurt Beecher Dammeier: Dammeier, chef, restaurateur, food entrepreneur, retailer, and educator, has spent the past 30 years of his life working to rid his own diet of food additives, and nearly 20 creating and selling pure, unadulterated foods through his Seattle-based family of food businesses (including Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, Pasta & Co, and Bennett’s Restaurant). In Pure Food, Kurt shares his own story, as well as providing a roadmap for readers to forge a diet based on pure, additive-free foods.

Fast and Easy Five-Ingredient Recipes: A Cookbook for Busy People by Philia Kelnhofer: Cooking can sometimes involve mile-long ingredient lists and require more time than one cares to spend in the kitchen after a busy day. With Fast and Easy Five Ingredient Recipes you’ll find over 100 recipes that only require five ingredients (or less) and use simple ingredients in unique ways.

Cook Korean by Robin Ha: Fun to look at and easy to use, this unique combination of cookbook and graphic novel is the ideal introduction to cooking Korean cuisine at home. Robin Ha’s colorful and humorous one- to three-page comics fully illustrate the steps and ingredients needed to bring more than sixty traditional (and some not-so-traditional) dishes to life, including kimchi, bulgogi dupbap and gimbap. Robin has some signings in the next couple of days – details here.

My Halal Kitchen by Yvonne Maffei: Maffei is the founder of the popular cooking blog and Islamic lifestyle website My Halal Kitchen. Her new book celebrates halal cooking and shows readers how easy it can be to prepare halal meals. The recipes include everrything from classic American favorites to takes on international dishes like Coq without the Vin, Shrimp Pad Thai, Chicken Tamales, and more. As Maffei often says to her million-plus social media followers, halal cooking elegantly dovetails with holistic living and using locally sourced, organic ingredients.

The Best Grain-Free Family Meals on the Planet by Laura Fuentes: Geared toward making foods the entire family will enjoy, the book by author and grain-free mama Laura Fuentes contains recipes for delicious, healthy, allergy-free meals from breakfast to dinner and dessert. A sampling of the recipes titles includes Grain-Free Breakfast Cookies, Sweet Potato Morning Scramble, Veggie Falafels, and Honey Chicken Lettuce Cups, and Coconut-Brownie Bites.

No-Bake Treats: Incredible Unbaked Cheesecakes, Icebox Cakes, Pies and More by Julianne Bayer: This new take on easy to prepare no-bake treats takes them to another level with indulgent flavors. The distinctive and contemporary takes on no-bake classics includes items like Peanut Butter and Banana Icebox Cake, Brownie Batter Cheesecake, Coconut Lime Cookie Truffles and Dulce De Leche Pie.

Home Skillet: The Essential Cast Iron Cookbook for Easy One-Pan Meals by Robin Donovan: Food writer Robin Donovan became an instant fan of cast iron cooking because of its ease and versatility – plus, it gets better the more you use it! Home Skillet is the complete cast iron cookbook, making the best use of this multi-functional pan with recipes from cinnamon rolls to skillet pizzas to blackened fish tacos to skillet pies.

Kathryn At Home: A Guide to Simple Entertaining by Kathryn M. Ireland: We know that interior designer, textiles designer, and consummate entertainer Ireland can pul together stunning tabletops. She can also create delicious meals, and here she shares her notes and advice on entertaining, particularly outdoors, in an elegant scrapbook style. The recipes for breakfasts, picnics, andlelight dinners, afternoon tea and more are all interlaced with her signature fabrics.

UK

Super Food Family Classics by Jamie Oliver: This cookbook continues with the popular philosophy behind Jamie’s Everyday Super Food. The recipes have clear and easy-to-understand nutritional information on the page, including the number of veg and fruit portions in each dish, plus there’s a bumper back-section packed with valuable advice on everything from cooking with kids and tackling fussy eaters, to good gut health.

Land of Fish and Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop: The Lower Yangtze region, Jiangnan, has been known since ancient times as a ‘Land of Fish and Rice’. For centuries, local cooks have been using the plentiful produce of its lakes, rivers, fields and mountains, combined with delicious seasonings and flavours such as rice vinegar, rich soy sauce, spring onion and ginger, to create a cuisine that is renowned in China for its delicacy and beauty. Drawing on years of study and exploration, Dunlop explains basic cooking techniques, typical cooking methods and the principal ingredients of the Jiangnan larder. This book will be published in USA in October.

Love Your Lunchbox by James Ramsden: Ramsden, creator of the Secret Larder supper club, co-owner of resturant Pigdin and author of Do-ahead Dinners and Do-ahead Christmas has applied his practical do-ahead ethos and talent for inventive and satisfying flavour combinations with the theory that homemade lunches needn’t be boring or expensive. This a paperback reprint of a 2014 book.

Mr Todiwala’s Spice Box by Cyrus Todiwala: Cyrus Todiwala is known for combining flavors, spices and ingredients in ways no other Indian chef has ever done before. He loves mixing Western dishes with Indian flavorings to create recipes that make innovative and delicious use of spices. Offering an entirely fresh look at spices, Cyrus takes just 10 of his favorites and bases 120 recipes around them. This book is also published in the USA this month.

Fresh India: 130 Quick, Easy and Delicious Recipes for Every Day by Meera Sodha: Following on from her bestselling Made in India, Meera Sodha reveals a whole new side of Indian food that is fresh, delicious and quick to make at home. These vegetable-based recipes are proper feel good food, and full of flavour. There are familiar and classic Indian recipes like dals, curries and pickles, alongside less familiar ones using fresh seasonal British ingredients, like Brussels sprout thoran. Meera will be cooking up a storm at some events in London, details in the Calendar.

Indian Made Easy by Amandip Uppal: Here you will find a fresh approach to Indian cooking, with uncomplicated recipes for tempting vegetarian  and meat-based dishes. Complete your meal with homemade chutneys, pickles and infused rice, then finish off with a decadent dessert or spiced chai. Special features guide you through making paneer, yoghurt and flatbreads, plus there’s a menu planner and information on pantry staples, must-have spices and alternative ingredients. The book is also published in Australia this month and will be published in the US in September as My Indian Kitchen.

Dinner Tonight: 200 Dishes You Can Cook in Minutes by Lindsey Bareham: In this collection of simple, accessible and mouth-watering recipes from the winner of the Guild of Food Writers’ British Food Writer of the Year Award, Lindsey Bareham helps solve the never-ending question of what to make for dinner. The book is filled with ideas from Lindsey’s award-winning weekly column in The Times.

100 Desserts to Die For by Trish Deseine: The glamorous and decadent recipes in this book promise that even those with the strongest willpower won’t be able to say no. Split into chapters of Classics (think Milk chocolate and salted butter caramel mousse), Chocolate (Chocolate, peanut butter and oreo biscuit tart), Soft (Croissant pudding with caramel and bourbon), Fruit (Eton mess with rose, strawberry and roasted rhubarb), and Ice (Banana, mango and date tarte tatin with creme fraiche ice cream), 100 Desserts to Die For has a recipe for every occasion. This book is also published in Australia this month.

Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Food by Gary Allen: Artisanal canned tomatoes and homemade kimchee might be trendy items now, but they come from a culinary need as old as human civilization itself. Exploring the history and science of preservation, Allen examines all the major techniques-from drying to smoking to salting to canning to fermentation-reveling in the cornucopia of different foods they have produced.

Squirrel Pie (and other stories): Adventures in Food Across the Globe by Elisabeth Luard: Award-winning writer and journalist Elisabeth Luard is one of the most knowledgeable foragers on the planet, as well as one of the foodie sphere’s most entertaining voices. Her worldwide travels–from the Andes to the Outer Hebrides, from the deserts of India to the Arctic tundra–have meant she has tasted some of the most extraordinary ingredients the natural world has to offer. In this enchanting food memoir, she shares the knowledge gained from a lifetime’s worth of experience foraging in the wild.

Flavour: Eat What Your Love by Ruby Tandoh: Organised by ingredient, Flavour helps you to follow your cravings, or whatever you have in the fridge, to a recipe. GBBO finalist Tandoh encourages us to look at the best ways to cook each ingredient; when it’s in season, and which flavours pair well with it. Look out for an upcoming promotion with this book.

Twist: Creative Ideas to Reinvent Your Baking by Martha Collison: Collison amazed the judges and viewers alike as the youngest ever contestant in the 2014 series of The Great British Bake Off. In her first book, she offers a brilliant new approach to baking – a way to master baking, while adding ‘twists’ to recipes to make contemporary bakes that everyone will love.

Stirring Slowly: Recipes to Restore & Revive by Georgina Hayden: Whether it is a quick and comforting noodle bowl or a hearty slow-cooked pie, this book celebrates food’s power to restore, revive and rejuvenate. But it isn’t just about the food on your plate: it’s about how it gets there. Stirring Slowly celebrates time spent in the kitchen, because cooking nourishes you inside and out.

Aimee’s Perfect Bakes by Aimee Twigger:, This book features recipes from Aimee Twigger’s kitchens as featured on her popular blog, Twigg Studios. Each treat has easy-to-follow instructions and is paired with stunning photographs shot by Aimee herself. She also gives crafty tips for beautifully wrapping and presenting her delicious bakes to make perfect, edible gifts for any occasion. Aimee runs food styling and photography workshops – check out details in the Calendar.

Made in Spain: Recipes and stories from my country and beyond by Miriam González Durántez: In Spanish families, when you have eaten a really good home-made meal, people stay at the table long after the meal has ended, chatting and putting the world to rights. Made in Spain is full of dishes that will encourage you to do just that. The recipes stick to the key principle of Spanish cooking – respect the ingredient – bringing a taste of Spain to your family’s kitchen. Miriam is the barrister wife of the ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg so there are some interesting political anecdotes in the book.

AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

Delicieux: The Recipes of France by Gabriel Gaté: Delicieux is an accompaniment to Gabriel’s popular Taste Le Tour program on SBS, with more than 200 recipes, including terrines, gratins, crepes, mousses, fricassees, casseroles, brioche, gateaux, souffles and tarts from every region of France.

Sweet Delights by Eleanor Ozich: Her popular New Zealand blog, Petite Kitchen, has had two successful cookbooks and now Eleanor has self-published a little book with a collection of her wholesome sweet recipes.

The Power of Flour: The deliciously versatile world of flour in baking and cooking GLUTEN-FREE by Rowie Dillon: Proving that even if you have to restrict gluten in your diet, you don’t have to miss out on classic dishes that traditionally use wheat-based flours. Using a variety of flours, seeds and grains, Rowie, who suffers from food intolerances herself, has developed a collection of savory and sweet recipes.