The season of new beginnings is the perfect time to shake up your cooking routine. Whether you’re a baker, cocktail lover, looking to explore another culture’s cuisine, or just want a few new ideas for Sunday dinner, these eight books, chosen from the slew of new spring titles, will get you out of your kitchen rut. From vintage dessert recipes to explorations of Cuban, Gujarati, and classic French specialties, read on for our favorite new food and drink books of the season.
Courtesy Chronicle Books
The Vintage Baker
This charming collection of throwback recipes by Jessie Sheehan, inspired by a longtime obsession with vintage recipe booklets from the early 1900s through the 70s, contains more than 50 recipes for classic desserts, tweaked for today’s palates. Behold molasses doughnuts updated with a chocolate-ginger glaze; almond flour used to heighten the flavor of butter cookies; lime juice drizzled to add zest to a traditional blackberry pie; and ladyfingers garnished with an herbal note, care of a bit of fresh thyme. It’s a delight for any baker.
Chef Will Goldfarb’s debut, named after his boundary-pushing restaurant Room for Dessert, looks back on the culinary master’s 20-plus-year career. The celebrated pastry chef, a former James Beard Award nominee, Starchef “Rising Star,” and soon-to-be guest on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, takes readers through his time at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and early years cooking his way through Europe. The book also touches on his short-lived Manhattan restaurant Room 4 Dessert; a battle with cancer; and his ultimate relocation to Bali, where he now runs the second incarnation of Room 4 Dessert. The recipes are complicated, but this isn’t necessarily a collection of desserts to serve at your next dinner party; it’s a retrospective of a master's work.
The latest in Phaidon’s excellent series highlighting country-specific cuisine, Cuba is a detailed look at the island’s culinary identity, also examining the history and evolution of its food over successive waves of immigration and colonization. From the ingredients and techniques of the native population to the influence of the Spanish colonists, the French immigrants responsible for Cuba's many coffee and cocoa plantations, and later the Chinese immigrants who made rice a staple, nothing is left out. This comprehensive book of recipes runs from stuffed arepas to a classic frita (Cuban hamburger), with a full glossary of Cuban ingredients and cooking techniques.
This thorough guide to drinking, from the foremost expert on the subject Jeffrey Morgenthaler (writer, bartender, and Clyde Common bar manager) covers about every aspect of imbibing; from etiquette to a thorough breakdown of cocktail families and how to assemble the perfect traveling bar kit. The book is truly a collection of everything Morgenthaler learned over his twenty-plus years as a cocktail expert and an essential handbook for every kind of drink enthusiast.
London’s River Café has long been one of the city’s most celebrated Italian restaurants. Influencing a generation of cooks, restaurateurs, and diners, it also launched the careers of some of the world’s most well-known chefs—April Bloomfield, Jamie Oliver, and Theo Randall (to name a few). This beautifully designed book takes an informative peek into the beloved restaurant’s history and most popular recipes, from pasta and soups to the slow-cooked tomato sauces that make up its simple, elegant Italian menu.
Lisbon has become the travel world’s darling in recent years thanks to its stunning architecture, cutting-edge art, homegrown fado music, and most of all—its incredible food. Lisbon-native Nuno Mendes, who spent most of his career at the helm of several widely acclaimed London restaurants, examines those traditions in this loving ode to his home city. Within its glossy pages, he breaks down common ingredients, cooking techniques, and offers up his favorite Portuguese classics, from custard and cinnamon tarts (nata) to caldeirada (fish stew) and bifana (pork sandwiches with chourico butter).
Meera Sodha tackles the vegetable-heavy cuisine of her family’s native Gujarat region in the follow-up book to her popular volume Made in India. The collections 130 recipes are broken into chapters focused on individual vegetables, salads, legumes, rice, eggs & cheese, bread, pickles & chutneys, and sweets, showcasing a full range of the area’s vibrant food. (Think recipes like spinach, tomato, and chickpea curry; paneer, mango, and tamarind salad; and lemon rice with peanuts and curry leaves.) The book is the perfect choice for vegetarians, those seeking to cut down on their meat consumption, or cooks merely looking to immerse themselves in Gujarati cuisine.
Available May 15 from Macmillan; $35; macmillan.com.
Courtesy Abrams
The Cook’s Atelier
Since 2008, mother and daughter duo Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini have taught legions of would-be chefs to cook at their school in Beaune, Burgundy. In this, their first cookbook, they’ve brought their collective teaching experience to the page, guiding the reader through classic French recipes like plum tarte tatin, watermelon and vineyard peach salad, and baby leek galettes with goat cheese and wild garlic.
