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The year’s cookbooks are passionate, homestyle volumes

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 21, 2011|By T. Susan Chang

(ECCO via ap )

There are certain cookbooks — you know them when you see them — that bear a deeply personal imprint. The stories and headnotes tell of passionate experiences, a kind of history of life through a single sense. Even recipes that feed a crowd have a small-scale quality, a presence and a character you can perceive in even just one bite. This year’s cookbooks are by authors who are willing to follow their bliss; to pursue what they themselves loved best, regardless of what the market may have deemed prudent. And that dedication shows in the books that have taken flight.

If you don’t fall in love at first glance with “Plenty,’’ by Yotam Ottolenghi (Chronicle, $35), you have a stronger constitution than I. The photography is like a vegetable edition of Vogue, saturated with color and so palpably textured it’s almost three-dimensional. The palette is a flexible Mediterranean one, drawn from London’s fashionable Ottolenghi shops, bright from pomegranate and herbs, dark from olives and capers. There’s such variety you don’t realize the book contains not a trace of meat.

While “Plenty’’ stars dressed-up, dazzling vegetables, Nigel Slater’s “Tender’’ (10 Speed, $40) features the comforting dishes of a gently decadent pensioner - good cream and butter have frequent cameos, and soft textures (mashed and simmered) get wider play than usual. Slater also delves widely into Asian cuisines. It’s the perfect book for gardeners who cook, with frugal recipes for vegetables at every edible stage - from carrot thinnings to the mature and stuffable squash (“marrow,’’ if you are English).

There may not be another cookbook this year as resourceful as “Food52 Cookbook’’ (Morrow, $35), with recipes using leftover ingredients, in-a-hurry recipes, child-friendly recipes, need-a-pick-me-up recipes. It’s a big, cheerful jumble of the kind of food all of us cook when we don’t need to show off, (which is to say, most of the time, if we’re honest). Collected by co-editors Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs from their Food52 blog, these recipes are the work of nonprofessional good cooks from everywhere, and they come with homey vignettes and family backstories.

Of late, celebrity chef Mario Batali’s books have been friendly affairs, filled with pasta and vegetables and the occasional not-too-challenging braise or roast. What’s surprising about “Molto Batali’’ (Ecco, $29.99) is that while the flavors and ingredients may be recognizably Italian, they come together in ways not all that familiar - spaghetti with green olive sauce, say. This allows you to buy yet another Italian cookbook without the usual hefty twinge of conscience.