12 Days of Cookbooks (!!!) — Chatting About The Season’s New Books with Margaret Roach
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♬♬♬ It’s the most wonderful time of the year… ♬♬♬
I hum this to myself a lot: When my first CSA arrives in June. When the first good tomatoes all but fall of the vine in early September. When snowflakes the size of golf balls drop from the sky. AND, most of all, when it’s time to talk about cookbooks with my friend Margaret Roach, the master gardener behind A Way to Garden
Last year, we talked about all-time favorites, the first books we ever owned, and the ones with the most besmirched pages. This year, we’ve kept our chat to the latest crop: the fall and winter 2018 cookbooks, and we hope our chat might give you some ideas for gift giving this season. Rest assured, there is something for everyone — the bakers, the boozers, the pie lovers, the pizza lovers, the Ina fans, the Dorie fans, the gadget collectors, and more.
Read the transcript or listen here.
I have not had a chance to cook from all of the books we discussed, and there are many others I haven’t even had a chance to page through yet, namely Emily: The Cookbook, which is #1 on my Christmas wishlist—Santa, hope you’re reading. That said, I have cooked from a number of the season’s new books, and I’ve included some notes below.
ALSO, Margaret and I are each giving away 12 cookbooks (!!!). To enter, leave a comment below: tell me what your favorite cookbook is for gifting (or just your favorite) and a little bit about why. Now, go double your chances to win by copying your comment into the comment box over at Margaret’s website.
Starting Monday Dec. 3, 2018, we’ll each draw one random winner a day through Dec. 14th. Here’s the order of the 12 Days of giveaways. The list will be updated daily to reflect the winner.
- Season: UPDATE: Winner is Cara Priddy
- Everyday Dorie UPDATE: Winner is Frank Wilk
- Israeli Soul: UPDATE: Winner is KARA P.
- Cooking with Scraps: UPDATE: Winner is Katherine Hubbard
- Sister Pie: UPDATE: Winner is Renee D
- Cook Like a Pro: UPDATE: Winner is Jo Kurdzeil
- Genius Desserts: UPDATE: Winner is Susan Rode
- Skinny Taste One and Done: UPDATE: Winner is Amy Olmsted
- All About Cake: UPDATE: Winner is Marie Guiles
- Milk Street Tuesday Nights: UPDATE: Winner is Sarah Bach
- Comfort in an Instant: UPDATE: WINNER is Michelle Swift
- Now and Again: UPDATE: WINNER is Paulina Muratore
One entry per person. Entries end at midnight Thursday, Dec. 13, before the final drawing. U.S. only. Good luck to all.
Category #1: Weeknight-ish/Everyday Cooking
Cook90: On January 1st 2016, David Tamarkin of Epicurious resolved to cook more — to cook 3 meals a day for an entire month — an experiment he called “Cook90”. In the end, he emerged a better, faster, and healthier cook, and he has since inspired hundreds of thousands of others to take the challenge. His cookbook, Cook90, outlines exactly how to do it: recipes, strategies, meal plans, and more.
Category #2: Global Flavors
Category #3: Baking
Category #4: Nose-to-Tail
Waste Not: Learned about this one through Margaret and her podcast with Top Chef star Tiffany Derry. Waste Not is a new cookbook from the James Beard Foundation and a campaign of anti-food waste advocacy spearheaded by that organization.
Now and Again: The latest from Julia Turshen, who believes a complete meal doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, that leftovers can lead to inventive/fun cooking, and that gathering people around the table for a meal is a good thing. Organize both by season and menu — a brunch or an easy Thanksgiving. Helpful tips about what can be made ahead of time. Each menu is followed by a section called “It’s Me Again,” which offers a few recipes for using the leftovers.
And last but not least:
Rebekah Peppler’s Apéritif: For Francophiles and beyond, Apèritif offers recipes for both classic and modern French cocktails, along with French-inspired bites and hors d’oeuvres.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
740 Comments on “12 Days of Cookbooks (!!!) — Chatting About The Season’s New Books with Margaret Roach”
I love Dessert for Two by Christina Lane because I don’t have to cook an entire sheet pan full of brownies for just the two of us. It’s lovely!
I love sharing any of Ina Garten’s books or Half Baked Harvest. They have great hearty and fun meals for a great gathering to share with your loved ones.
I love smitten kitchen…easy recipes
My favorite cookbook for gifting is Ottolenghi’s Plenty because it has such amazing and gorgeous pictures that are bound to please just about anyone. Plus, we all need more creative ways to cook vegetables and this is the perfect book to inspire both novice and experiences cooks to do just that. 🙂
Ottolenghi Simple. I think will be my favorite. While im not vegan, I am working towards it. This looks like just the thing I need.
Ottolenghi’s books make great gifts and have great recipes. I am looking forward to “Simple”. My new favorite cookbook is “Eat Feel Fresh” by Sahara Rose Ketabi. I am new to Ayurvedic cooking and this book is fun.
I really love the Sweet Laurel Cookbook – really great for baking and the recipes are DELISH!!! Runner up – Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for ‘Everyone – my all time fave!!
Right now, my favorite cookbook is Salt, Fat, Heat, and Acid by Samin Nosrat. I’ve been reading this one on and off again for months; looking forward to making the focaccia recipe this month. I always seem to go back to cookbooks by Julia, Martha and Ina.
Currently my favorite cookbook is The Plant Paradox Cookbook by Steven Gundry. It’s healthy made simple. I have a rare cancer called Multiple Myeloma and I am trying to heal from the inside out.
Umm…Bread Toast Crumbs is one of my favorites to gift because it makes baking bread really accessible and provides numbers variations on a standard recipe/method. I also like to give cookbooks from local restaurants because it allows me to share what’s happening in Portland while supporting local chefs, I just recently gifted the Toro Bravo cookbook which was fun.
Favorite to give is Joy of Cooking from the 70s. Fab for new cooks and precious to our family. Not easy to find old copy for our daughter as she headed out on her own. Have slew of other favorites, but that is one most gifted. 🙂 Thanks for opportunity and this great list of your favorites!
Melissa Clark’s Dinner is a book that really changed my cooking – and is one that I’ve given to many friends and family. This year I’ve fallen in love with Six Seasons and plan to do the same.
My current favorite cookbook is Cooking for Jeffrey by Ina Garten. She provides recipes for every situation and level of complexity while making you feel welcome in her kitchen. She helps to make cooking for those we love a pleasure.
Ottolenghi‘s Jerusalem, forever and always. I discovered it while living in Jerusalem and cook from it since then. It might be one of the most flavorful and exciting cookbooks I own.
All of these look great—have some…looking at others…the gift of BREAD, TOAST, CRUMBS for a baker would be divine. Come to think of it…I may gift it to myself!
Hands down the Joy of Cooking. Handed down from my Mom, she was a great cook and had all my fav’s marked in it. I have given this book as a gift many times, and insist on them telling me what recipe they made first.
I try to gift cookbooks by the occasion. New homes often get Baking in 5 Minutes a Day, but Newlyweds get quick dinner cookbooks. If it’s a baby shower, I might do a cookie or small bites cookbook. I gave a retiree a meat-sm9king guide at his send-off party because of his free time and his passion for hunting. LOL People don’t really gift me cookbooks, but I wish they would.
I love to sit and read cookbooks so I am usually drawn to books with a story to tell. Right now I am enjoying Deb Perelman’s cookbook “Every Day” mostly because we just downsized from a big house in the burbs to a 1400 sq. ft condo in the middle of Atlanta and I can appreciate her small kitchen creations so much more!
My new favorite to give is Salt Fat Acid Heat. She makes how to cook easy.I have been wanting Bread Toast Crumbs for myself. Truth is I LOVE cookbooks! Read them like novels.
I have to say Ottolenghi’s JERUSALEM is my favorite book. Every recipe in that book, and actually in any of his other books, is perfection! BIg fan of his work here!!!
America’s Test Kitchen
I love to give the first Barefoot Contessa Cookbook as a gift. All of her recipes are accessible and delicious!
Smitten Kitchen’s books because her recipes are streamlined and well written with humor.
Mine is Andrew Schloss’s “Art of the Slow Cooker.” It elevates the humble Crockpot to a master of delicious surprises! And when you have a one year old and a delicious surprise ready at the end of the day when you walk in the door with her, life is really, really good. 🙂
So many choices! Soups for Syria, great fundraiser and great soups. Silver Palate, all time favorite pesto recipes and first step into more fun cooking. And of course Bread Toast Crumbs cuz I love your ideas and how creative you are and also carry them over to additional dishes or meals.
My favorite cookbooks to give:
New Parents: Dinner A Love Story (the original)
New cooks: Mark Bittmann’s How to Cook Everything
My favorite is The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. There are times I’m cooking and I start pulling things out of the fridge and cupboards to see what’s available. Rather than trying to find a recipe to follow I just look up what flavors go together using what I have and build from there.
I recently gifted Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat because it’s a wonderful tool for truly learning how to cook, the illustrations are whimsical and fun, and the recipes are simple foods prepared perfectly.
I absolutely love the science of cooking so the Cooks Illustrated “The Science of Cooking” is fascinating and for those trying to perfect their technique will learn a lot from these books – definitely for the series cooks in my life!
I love giving cookbooks from different countries to friends where they recently traveled, i.e. Peru: The Cookbook; or if they’ve been really into a cook, go back to their most classic cookbook; or go to the Bibles like the Silver Spoon or the Joy of Cooking or Julia Child’s books because I truly believe every cook should have those!
I get a cookbook for my best friend if she hosts us for a weekend at the beach or for Christmas and she is the most gratifying person to buy a cookbook for – she will immediately cook something from the book! Love it.
I love the entire Ina Garten collection – there is one of those appropriate for almost any cook to I’d be giving a gift! Whether its my newly married friend (who is getting Cooking for Jeffrey) or the friend who makes constant asides that she could do better than a tv show chef (you guessed it, Cook Like a Pro).