Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tuesday Treats!

There are many reasons I love the fall; the changing of leaves, the migration of geese and the chilling of the air are just a few. When the temperature drops I heat up the oven and start making hearty meals that will not only warm the hearth, but heat the stomach and fuel the soul!

I know that in this day and age it is easy enough to turn to a website to find a recipe for anything. But there is something sweet and nostalgic about having a cookbook on your kitchen shelf. Whether it's to remember the exact measurements of a favorite recipe, or to try your hand at something exciting and new, cookbooks for me, make life better.

When I make a recipe from one of my cookbooks I try to catalog it by putting a note in the margin, with the date I made it, who I made it with, or for, and what I think it could have done with/without or less/more of. With that in mind here are a couple of the best cookbooks coming out this fall, that are making their way to my stomach by way of my kitchen shelf!

First off: Mark Bittman, of How to Cook Everything fame, has a new cookbook based on his non fiction best seller Food Matters. The Food Matters Cookbook, published by Simon and Schuster, 35.00, has 500 recipes all based around Bittman's belief that cooking should be as simple, easy and good for you as it is for the planet. The cookbook comes with a variety of recipes that are not only sure to satisfy your palette but make you appreciate your food source as well. Click on the links below to order your copy from the Odyssey, and get a recipe from the book.




Secondly, Gourmet magazine, has a new dessert book, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 18.00, that features one of my favorite fall foods: Cookies! That's right this treat is no longer just for blue-monsters-on-public-television, okay so maybe it never was. But The Gourmet Cookie Book, takes the "single best recipe" from the years 1941 to 2009 and has collected them for you ,the reader's, benefit. It is a wonderful catalog of the American aesthetic in cookie making, from the basic but delicious WWII years, to the more flagrant baked goodies of the Clinton administration. This cookbook is sure to liven up your life whether its just an afternoon or in preparation for a Holiday cookie swap. Click on the links below to order your copy, and check out one of the recipes.




Last but not least, David Tanis, "one of the greatest chefs you've never heard of" has a new cookbook, Heart of the Artichoke, being published by Artisan Press, 35.00. This beautiful cookbook, has many recipes that are not only simple enough to prepare but are also great jumping off points for the intermediate chef in your house. Although as Tanis likes to point out, food doesn't need to be fussy to be satisfying. I hope you are as inspired by the pictures and Tanis' writing as I was to pick up a copy. Click on the link below to order your copy, or check out the publisher's excerpt below!



Excerpt From Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis


Happy cooking!

Paz,

~Nieves

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