Counter Stories
Do you cook from (all) your cookbooks? Beyond trying the recipes, we enjoy our cookbooks for inspiration. Cookbooks bring an exciting cuisine, culture or lifestyle under our eyes. Others are a joy to read for their stories alone, or to dream about the scenes pictured in photographs. A cookbook collection is a pride and joy. Here are some unique cookbooks to add to your collection—if you don’t have them already!
The Garden Chef:
Recipes and Stories from Plant to Plate
How diverse is the vegetable garden of farm-to-table pioneer chef Alice Waters in Berkeley, California? What does plot-to-plate in minutes mean to a Michelin-star chef like Enrico Crippa in Turin, Italy? This beautifully illustrated garden-green book offers an exquisite peek into the kitchen gardens of famous chefs from all over the world. Each one shares stories about their garden. We learn what it means for a chef to be able to create dishes based on what they grow themselves. While the recipes are quite involved, the book is an inspiration for any kitchen garden grower.
Black Food:
Stories, Art & Recipes from across the African Diaspora
Curated and edited by Bryant Terry, Black Food is a most colorful, insightful and enticing exploration of the culinary histories behind Black food. It results in a stellar collection of essays, poems, photographs, illustrations and recipes that explores not only food and culture, but also important topics like food justice, LGBTQ activism and racial equity. From a recipe for Bajan fish cakes by Sarah Kirnon to okra and shrimp purloo by BJ Dennis, smoked collards by Mashama Baily to Fresh Roberson’s coconut-curry harvest soup, this gem of a book showcases the breadth, wealth and health of African American cuisine. Cover to cover, it leaves us with a deep appreciation for Black food. Ferment for Good: Ancient Foods for the
Modern Gut
If you are looking for a comprehensive and detailed guide to all things fermented, with easy-to-follow instructions, look no further. From kefir to kimchi, shrubs to sauerkraut, author Sharon Flynn writes engagingly about different fermentation techniques and why fermented foods are so good for the gut. To her, the “gurgle of a crock bubbling is a soothing, nurturing and exciting sound.” Flynn moved around the world a lot. She lived in Japan for a decade, where she learned how to make miso and that koji is what boosts that umami. Laced with beautiful photos and illustrations, it’s easy to get absorbed reading about the mothers and SCOBYs, lees and wheys.
The Spice Trekkers
Cook at Home
This is a cookbook to gift if ever there was one: It comes in a box that also contains a colorful selection of fragrant spices, dried herbs and spice blends like Royal Berbere and Mauritian Masalé. The recipes offer a scrumptious tour of the world, each one making use of at least one of the spices in the box. Each recipe also gives options. Don’t have squash to make Trinidadian chokha? Make it with eggplant and use coriander seed rather than mustard and whole cumin. You can vary to your heart’s content. Authors Ethné and Philippe de Vienne are fervent spice trekkers who value flavorful yet healthy, light food. You cannot go wrong with a book that offers such tempting recipes—and includes the spices you need to prepare them!
The Whole Fish Cookbook
Australian chef Josh Niland wrote a comprehensive cookbook that celebrates fish in a sustainable manner. Not just how it was caught and whether the fish is a green choice, but also about using the whole fi sh, head to tail, inside and out. The book emphasizes that “cooking only fish fillets is not only creatively limiting but also neglects the majority of the fish.” Especially if you are or know an angler, you will love this book. Fish varieties used in the recipes can be replaced with any that you can find. It is a gorgeously designed book, and one to display with pride. From the essentials of poaching fish to the flavorful combinations of a great fish curry, this is a book that you eat with your eyes.
