Eat Your Way Around the World with 13 New Spring Cookbooks
The world is your pantry. Photo by Ramiro Mendes / Unsplash.
It’s a rare holiday that I don’t come home a little heavier and a little happier from all the flaky arlette cookies in Paris, the buttery risi e bisi in Venice, the creamy pasteis de nata in Portugal. But when eating exquisite foreign carbs isn't on the table, the next best thing is a journey from the pantry. These 13 new spring cookbooks are a world tour for plate and palate, with personal stories and beautiful images to match the recipes. All but two are written or co-authored by women, just to add to our year-long celebration of #FathomWomen in travel.
A Table in Venice: Recipes from My Home
By Skye McAlpine
From her little pink house on the Venetian backwater, London expat and food blogger Skye McAlpine recounts tales of food and family. Set to the gentle rhythm of the Grand Canal, her book reads like a love letter to culinary Venice. Exotic flavors of honey, fig, and saffron and traditional Italian methods result in a collection of recipes whose cuisine can be considered, like the author herself, as charmingly Venetian by adoption. ($35)
Tasting Paris: 100 Recipes to Eat Like a Local
By Clotilde Dusoulier
What’s a rendezvous in Paris without a petit plat du jour? Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate & Zucchini was the award-winning foreign food blog that inspired countless imitators. Her latest book, a tableau of the contemporary Parisian eating scene, may best be perused with a wedge of fromage and a glass of your favorite Bordeaux. It should come with a warning label that it will inspire you to plan a Parisian summer getaway, an impulse we applaud. ($30)
My Lisbon: A Cookbook from Portugal’s City of Light
By Nuno Mendes
With its cobblestone streets, ornate tiles, and yellow-walled buildings, Lisbon’s rich history sits on the city’s surface. Through recipes and essays, chef Nuno Mendes, who has been tearing up the London food scene for the last decade, guides a path through the maze-like labyrinth of Western Europe’s oldest city and its centuries-old culinary traditions. ($35)
River Cafe London: Thirty Years of Recipes and the Story of a Much-Loved Restaurant
By Ruth Rogers
On the site of an old oil depository in the Thames Wharf in London lives The River Cafe, a legendary hub for good Italian food and great friendship. The latest literary offering from beloved co-founder Ruth Rogers is a legacy to her late friend and partner, Rose Gray, and a testament to cooking with love. The classic Italian recipes include updated versions from the pair’s first cookbook as well as new favorites — sure to warm hearth and heart. ($40)
Tuscany: Simple Meals & Fabulous Feasts from Italy
By Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi
Low and slow is the name of the game in Tuscany, whether it’s waiting for the home-grown tomatoes to ripen in the orto or giving a pasta sauce time to reduce. Transatlantic restaurateur couple Katie and Giancarlo know the importance of creating at a Tuscan pace and will show you how to develop true flavor in some of Italy’s most iconic dishes. ($40)
From the North: A Simple and Modern Approach to Authentic Nordic Cooking
By Katrin Bjork
The forage-crazy cuisine that has taken the world by storm is made easy in a collection of dishes from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Traditional ingredients — seafood fresh from the Nordic sea, root vegetables like beetroot and parsnip, meats that have been smoked and cured — are treated with modern techniques, which is the essence of new Nordic cooking. Useful when you're looking to bring a little hygge to the table. ($22)
Room for Dessert
By Will Goldfarb
While Indonesia and acclaimed pastries are not usually phrases you’d hear together, el Bulli-trained pastry chef WIll Goldfarb’s unique flavor insights bring the two together. The visually striking mishmash of cuisines and ingredients reflect the chef’s journey from Long Island to Paris to Australia to Bali, with stops in between. Witty dish names and the hyperbolic essays that accompany each recipe lend provoking insight and make this the rare breed of cookbook that one could sit down and read for pleasure. ($60)
The Cook’s Atelier: Recipes, Techniques, and Stories from Our French Cooking School
By Majorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini
Arizona-born and -raised mother-daughter expat duo Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini found a way to make their Francophile dreams come true by opening a cooking school in an apartment in Burgundy. The Cook’s Atelier shares the classic techniques they teach: It's French cooking made easy, interspersed with a glimpse into life in regional France. ($45)
First We Eat: Good Food for Simple Gatherings from My Pacific Northwest Kitchen
By Eva Kosmas Flores
Food blogger Eva Kosmas Flores shares a year in the kitchen and in the garden, with seasonally inspired recipes that channel Greek flavors by way of Portland, Orgeon, along with gardening tips for any time of the year. Sure to get you fired up in the kitchen, this book is worth the buy for the stunning photography alone. ($35)
Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel
By Alon Shaya
Equal parts recipe book and memoir, Alon Shaya tells a heartbreaking tale of a lonely migrant childhood and a connection found in food. The recipes, organized around poignant stories in the chef’s life, incorporate his signature Southern Israeli-meets-Italian flavors, with lush ingredients like cardamom, sumac, apricots, orange blossom, and homemade labneh. ($35)
The Foreign Cinema Cookbook: Recipes and Stories Under the Stars
By Gayle Pirie & John Clark
The chef-owners of the San Francisco film-and-food concept Foreign Cinema bring the Mission District to your dining table, with simple flavors done right and an excellent brunch chapter that includes Baguette French Toast with Orange Maple Butter and Fruit Pop Tarts. Pour their signature Foreign Cinema cocktail, string up some twinkling lights, and get out the projector for a classier take on Netflix and chill. ($40)
Where Chefs Eat: A Guide to Chef's Favorite Restaurants
By Joe Warwick, Joshua David Stein, Natascha Mirosch, Evelyn Chen
This tome of a book is a definitive guide on where to eat anywhere in the world from the people who know best. From greasy spoon breakfasts to fine dining sushi, there’s no rhyme or reason to any of these listings except that they come from industry insiders. And it's exhaustive: 650 of the world’s best chefs provide over 4,500 recommendations in some 570 cities. Too heavy for the suitcase, but an excellent before-the-journey reference. ($35)
Japan: The Cookbook
By Nancy Singleton Hachisu
Salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and umami, Japanese cooking is a delicate blend of precise traditions and flavors. Although many of these traditions have been replaced by faster and more convenient methods, Nancy Singleton Hachisu gets back to the root of Japanese cooking, treating ancient ingredients with the respect they deserve. ($50)
The Austin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from Deep in the Heart of Texas
By Paula Forbes
This tasty jumble of Tex-Mex, Southern-style comfort food with fine dining twists is Austin’s uniquely multifaceted cuisine on a page. Local flavor in the form of spice and heat are abundant, as are BBQ meats and tacos. Recipes from the region’s most prevalent chefs will give you a dose of a Southern summer without leaving home. ($30)
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