As spring creeps in, so do new crops of delicious things like peas, ramps—and new cookbooks. These eight stunning tomes, which all debut this spring, are filled with mouth-watering recipes. And, oh yeah—they're kinda healthy, too.
Is it that Scandi light or is Sarah Britton’s food really this beautiful? The first cookbook from the woman behind the titular blog is the opiate for the raw-honey/coconut-oil/hemp-seed-loving masses. To her, it’s not soup: “It’s peace, love, and harmony in a bowl.”
This produce-heavy cookbook from April Bloomfield is every bit as appealing as her wonderful meat-heavy debut. In it, she does vegetables the only way she knows how: without an ounce of preciousness or preaching. There’s not a dish in here that we don’t want to eat at this very moment, from broccoli rabe morning buns to za’atar-spiced vegetable chips to roasted onions with sage pesto. Tucked amid all her imaginative recipes, Bloomfield’s “Simple Things” essays are flat-out good reads, as well as reminders that sometimes the most basic way of cooking something can be the most enjoyable.
Add the food-science nerdery of Harold McGee to a stoner’s diet of bread, cakes, pies, and pasta. Then subtract gluten. The result is this new undertaking from Ideas in Food geniuses Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot, who apply custom GF-flour blends to such dietetic horrors as upside-down bacon cornbread.
If you think grains are something you tack on as a side, you need Maria Speck in your life. As in her first book on the topic, Speck comes up with inspired ways to incorporate amaranth and its friends into every meal of the day, from red rice and beet cakes to lemony millet pudding. And she does it with a contagious passion.
Not only do Anna Jones’s meat-free recipes speak to us (especially beet bourguignon and deep-dish leek and greens pie), her relaxed tone and spirited encouragement make it feel as though the Brit food stylist really is speaking to us. Jones’s helpful and instructive charts don’t just tell you what to cook but also teach you how.
A case of the title pretty much saying it all. Dunja Gulin’s book is for that friend with a case of the Bar Tartines (ah, yes, a recipe for rejuvelac!). But recipes like chanterelle salad with yogurt cream cheese are so appealing, even a tepid fermenter might be intrigued.
We, too, rolled our eyes at the title—until we saw the author: Boston baker extraordinaire Joanne Chang, who makes it all seem easy by skipping the health-food alt-sweetener aisle in favor of household sugar-slashers like chocolate, honey, and plain old-fashioned fruit.
Somehow the eat-your-greens medicine just goes down easier when the charming Aussie chef Matt Wilkinson is administering it. His leafy arrangements look satisfying, compelling, and fun.
