I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see that Monisha Bharadwaj’s Indian Spice Kitchen is back in print. It is, quite simply, an indispensable reference work for Westerners who are just beginning to learn how to cook the myriad regional foods of India.

It contains comprehensive listings of all of the major spices, legumes, flours, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts and cooking fats used in the kitchens of India, with a full two-page description, historical overview and information on how and where to buy these ingredients, along with recipes for each ingredient and many photographs, including close-up identification photographs for each ingredient listed.

It is amazing in its wealth of detail and information, especially considering how very thin it is. It is very concisely, yet clearly written, so what could be a huge, unwieldy, encyclopedic tome which would become a dust collector on a hidden bookshelf somewhere, is instead a handy reference guide made to be whipped out at a moment’s notice for a quick perusal whenever needed.

Bharadwaj’s writing style is breezy and conversational without being silly–reading this book is rather like having her take you on a personal tour of her kitchen cabinets where she pulls out spices, and while describing the details of their history and use, having you smell, touch and taste them. She is just that way–a very approachable author whose work is unpretentious while still being utterly essential.

When I taught my classes in beginning Indian food, and especially my introductory classes in Indian spices, I always brought copies of this book along for my students to buy–at a discount, because I could get them at a quantity discount. Everyone loved it, because they said it was like they could carry me home with them, tucked in their briefcase, just in case they didn’t remember every little thing I said about each spice. It really helped my students and I remember that it really helped me a lot when I was a beginner, overwhelmed and scared to death to even try to cook Indian food beyond the one or two recipes I had dared to try in my youth.

Now, even though I am no longer cowed by Indian recipes, I still refer to Bharadwaj’s book, especially when I see a dal or bean at the Indian market I don’t immediately recognize. That way, I can learn the Hindi and English name of them quickly and easily, as well as see a recipe which uses it as a featured ingredient.

It is one of the best supplements to any Indian cookbook you can have in your kitchen.

If you or anyone you know is passionate about Indian food and cookery, this book would make a perfect Generic Winter Holiday gift. I promise.

And, if you were not aware, a free copy of this book goes to the lucky winner of my A Gift of Indian Spices prize for A Menu For Hope, which is still ongoing for the next several days.

What is a bookish cook?

A cook who loves books, of course!

And how do you identify a bookish cook?

When you are in said cook’s home, you will note that not only is there a huge bookshelf in the kitchen absolutely stuffed with cookbooks, but that there are bookcases in nearly every room of the house which are equally well-laden. You may also note that many horizontal surfaces in the bookish cook’s home are littered with stacks of books–especially cookbooks.

Because, for the bookish cook, cookbooks are meant to be read as much as they are meant to be cooked from.

Where normal people have a small stack of novels beside their beds for late night reading, bookish cooks will have a pile of cookbooks, food writing anthologies, cook’s memoirs and the occasional piece of fiction related to cooks, cooking or where food takes a central role.

I bet that everyone reading this blog knows of at least one such person, or is themselves a bookish cook.

So, that is why I put together a little gift guide for the bookish cook. Because, there is nothing worse than trying to figure out what a bookworm wants for theGeneric Winter Holidays. Well, in the abstract, it isn’t hard to guess–they want books, of course, but WHICH ONES? That is the overriding question of course–when you are dealing with someone who has more books than socks, then it falls to you to either take stock of the overwhelming number of titles on the shelves, in as surreptitious manner as possible, or you need to get creative.

Of course, you could always just give them a gift card to their favorite book emporium–but that is the easy way out.

No–I think it is more fun to give the bookish cook a real live book, and see their eyes light up with joy upon unwrapping it. You can just tell that he or she wants to just open the book and dive in nose-first, but they know it is impolite to do so. This means that they have to contain their enthusiasm for a time, and it is fun to watch them squirm. (I say this as a bookworm who has had to squirm more than once or twice in my life to keep from delving deeply into a newly-gifted tome when it would be impolite to do so.)

The way around the conundrum is to seek out promising new titles that your cookbook loving friends and family will enjoy.

Which is where this list comes in–these are the most interesting new titles I have come across for cookbook collectors in the past few months. The list is eclectic, in large part because I have eclectic tastes, but there is enough diversity in the list that you are bound to find at least one title which will appeal to the culinary nerds in your life.

Books for Vegetarians

Veganomicon:The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero is not just on this list because it has the coolest cookbook title ever, although the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired moniker did indeed catch my eye and intrigue me enough to glance at it and then actually purchase it. It is on this list because I frankly think it is the best vegan cookbook I have ever come across in my life which contains a higher percentage of recipes which sound not only appealing, but downright tasty to me. I am still a skeptic regarding vegan baking and the recipes here have not changed my opinion in that regard–I have yet to have more than one or two vegan baked goods which did not either taste like cardboard infused with sugar or rubber masquerading as a food item. But, many of the other recipes, especially for entrees and soups, sound quite flavorful. Eventually, I will try out some of these recipes and do a real review of this book, but until then–know that it is the only non-Chinese vegan cookbook I love enough to have to own.

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman is a great vegetarian cookbook that is on my “I want to get it, but haven’t gotten around to it yet” list, because it is just as comprehensive as his How To Cook Everything which I have gifted to any number of lucky newbie cooks. It is also a great cookbook for non-vegetarians who are either trying to eat more vegetarian meals or who are transitioning to a vegetarian diet. Bittman’s writing is clear, approachable and his recipes are simple, but always turn out tasty results. I don’t think you can go wrong with this book.

Books On Chinese Cooking

The Seventh Daughter: My Culinary Journey from Beijing to San Francisco by restaurateur Cecilia Chiang is a book which I keep meaning to review, but haven’t gotten around to doing yet. The new job kind of got me into researching the cuisines of North Africa, the Middle East and Greece, so I kind of forgot about this book. Not because it is forgettable, mind you, but because I get distracted. This is a lovely Chinese cookbook with beautiful photographs which not only tells Chiang’s life story, but also gives good, solid recipes for favorites from her pioneering restaurant in California. Chiang is very good at explaining technique, and she also is very good at making every dish sound amazingly delicious, thus making you want to rush to the kitchen and make it right away. (Look for a real review of this book sometime in the New Year.)

Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province by Fuchsia Dunlop has been reviewed here. Read the review, and check out these recipes made from it, and then run out and get the book for a friend who likes their Chinese foods full of spice and heat. And, while you are at it, get a copy for yourself, even if you don’t cook much Chinese food–the book is great reading, and you will learn a great deal of interesting stuff about Chinese culture.

Books On Foods of the Middle East

Here are two more books which will get their own, longer reviews along with posts of recipes made from them in the future. I ran across them while researching recipes to use at Salaam.

Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden is a delicious cookbook by a master storyteller, culinary historian and food anthropologist who has turned her thorough attention on the foods, folklore and cultures of the Middle East. A Jewish woman raised in Egypt, Roden has a great eye for detail, whether it involves describing the exact technique needed to accomplish a long, involved recipe, or whether she is evocatively describing the foodways of a vanishing subculture. I have read all of her cookbooks cover to cover, and am starting to cook from them–and they are all well worth it. This newest one gives a novice to the foods of the region a taste of three of the greatest food cultures of the Middle East, with plenty of recipes to entice even the most timid of cooks into the kitchen. Besides–it also has one of the prettiest book covers I have seen in a long time.

Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck is probably one of the most gorgeous cookbooks I own, with beautiful photography and luscious prose. My only criticism is that its large format makes it hard to use in the kitchen and it makes it hard to place on a bookshelf, but it has been happy living on our coffee table for a few months now. I consult it when I want more ideas for dinner specials at Salaam–and its sensual photographs never fail to inspire me.

General Cookbooks

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolutionby Alice Waters is the perfect book for a new cook who wants to learn the techniques of naking simple meals with fresh ingredients. I wrote a review of the book here a while back and while I said that I would never have bought the book for myself, I was glad to have read it, and would probably be buying copies for friends and family for the Winter Holiday season. I think that if there are folks on my list who would appreciate this book, there are folks on your lists who would probably like it and use it, too.

Crust: Bread to Get Your Teeth Into by Richard Bertinet looks like a great book for teaching the methods and techniques of baking the great hearth breads of Europe. And what makes it even better is that it comes with an instructional DVD–something that I think more cookbooks should come with–either a DVD or a CD-ROM, because so many culinary techniques are better shown than described, and while photographs and line drawings are of good help in some cases, in others, they fall short. It isn’t as if there isn’t technology available for DVDs in cookbooks–it is that the marketing departments haven’t caught on with the idea yet. But someday, soon, I suspect they will. I haven’t bought this book yet, but I suspect I probably will, if not for myself, then for one of the perfectionist, detail-oriented breadbakers in my life. (Y’all know who you are!)

That’s my list–somewhat short and sweet, but hopefully with enough ideas to help give you a head start on gift shopping for all of the bibliophiles and culinary nerds in your lives.

Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food is not just a cookbook.

It is also a primer of essential culinary techniques, with basic recipes for the neophyte to memorize and expand upon creatively.

It is also a guide to building up a pantry with basic items which will allow one to cook good, simple food from any fresh, seasonal ingredients available; it also gives a ground-up lesson on the most simple, basic kitchen tools needed to cook well and easily.

It is also Waters’ personal food philosophy and lifestyle manifesto, which boils down to these admonitions emblazoned on the back cover of the book:

Eat locally and sustainably; Eat seasonally; Shop at farmers’ markets; Plant a garden; Conserve, compost and recycle; Cook simply; Cook together; Eat together; and Remember food is precious.

The Art of Simple Food is a literary distillation of the Slow Food Movement, and embodies everything that is beautiful about the worldwide food revolution. Before even opening the book, this aesthetic adherence to the principles of simplicity in food are evident (and not just because the word, “simple” features in the title.) The hardcover book features no shiny dust jacket, nor any flashy food porn photographic illustrations. Instead, the spine is bound in sundried tomato-colored fabric, with the embossed, turmeric-hued boards of the cover finished to a smooth matte embellished only by the title, subtitle and author in a classic, somewhat Victorian font, and an elegant black and grey line drawing of a market basket brimming with bread and produce.

These detailed drawings continue to the end papers and are sprinkled liberally throughout the text, illustrating techniques, ingredients and concepts while also lending an air of old copper engravings and woodcuts of botanical subjects common a century and a half ago.

This artistic harkening back towards a golden age of food, farming and cookery continues throughout the text of the book, where Waters waxes rhapsodic on the superior nature of truly fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs, and the nearly divine provenance of a newly laid chicken egg. Her writing is luminous with poetic word choice which is very turn of the century, but what most stood out to me was her somewhat neo-luddite tendency to eschew the use of any electrical kitchen appliances in her cookery, preferring instead to use whisks, wooden spoons, box graters, and a mortar and pestle to take the place of mixers and food processors.

The Art of Simple Food is a truly wonderful cookbook, and an important one, but the truth is, I probably would never buy it for myself. (I was sent a review copy by the publisher.)

This is because, as I read it, I felt like Waters was preaching to the choir. It was at that moment I realized that I am not the true audience for this cookbook; I am already doing my best to live by her admonitions and I sing the same sorts of tunes Waters does on an every day basis. I don’t need lessons on how to shop at farmers’ markets, how to make a pate sucre, and how to roast a whole chicken or how to make a vinaigrette. I can do these things with my eyes closed, barefoot in the snow with one hand tied behind my back. That is just who I am. And Waters was not writing for me.

But while I would not buy this book for myself, what I plan on doing is buying several copies of it as gifts for my friends and family who are interested in learning to cook simple things that taste good, or who used to cook simply, but have fallen into the rut of using convenience foods and the microwave too often for their health, or for those who have forgotten, or worse, never known what good, fresh food tastes like.

It is for these people Waters is writing, and I think she does a very good of job of gently easing them into a different lifestyle, one where food is not just fuel for our bodies to be wolfed down quickly and without thought between jobs or on the road to another meeting. She takes readers by the hand and helps them slow down, and realize that food is much more than that–it feeds not only our bodies, but our soul, and it has the capacity to lift us up and bring us together. It not only can bring health (or disease) to the body, it can bring wholeness to the mind and heart as well.

As she leads her reader along this winding path towards treating food as a precious gift instead of a worthless commodity, Waters writes in a clear, distinctive voice which reminded me of none other than Julia Child. She has the same clarity in her explanations of technique and a very similar ability to describe the cooking process in a visceral way which not only teaches the neophyte cook to use every sense while they cook, but also makes serious cooking seem unstuffy, easy and yes, even fun.

Consider this passage, a sidebar to her basic instructions on how to make risotto:

Listen to the sounds the risotto makes as it cooks. The crackling sizzle of the rice tells you it’s time to add the wine, which makes a gratifying whoosh; and the bloop-bloop of the bubbles popping signals it’s time to add more broth.

While her onomatopoeic description is certainly droll, it is also a perfect description of what making a risotto sounds like. This sort of earthy, lightly humorous prose really helps loosen up a new cook in the kitchen, giving them something concrete to grab onto as they sail the uncharted seas of a new recipe. It is almost as good as having a seasoned cook standing close by, whispering advice into your ear.

In short, while I would never buy this for myself, The Art of Simple Cooking is an altogether lovely cookbook, worthy of a place in every budding locavore’s and newbie cook’s kitchen shelf where it can easily be referred to again and again. It is also a book worth curling up beside a warm fireplace to read while autumn’s evenings grow longer and cooler, while in the kitchen a soufflee rises in the oven and a tart cools on the counter.

I predict that it will become a favorite cookbook to give and receive in the coming gift-giving holiday season.

There have been a strong handful of cookbooks written on the subject of Chinese and Asian noodles over the years; unfortunately, the best of them are out of print. But, luckily, they are reasonably easily found through Amazon as used books, or, if you have issues with Amazon, you can always try Bookfinder or ebay. (However, check prices on both Amazon and Bookfinder first–most of the time, the book prices on ebay are inflated. Now and again, I was able to find a bargain, but not very often.)

Of course, the best of the lot of these books is certainly the most sought-after title in the bunch and is certain to be the most expensive. However, I would say that it is worth every penny.

Florence Lin’s Complete Book of Chinese Noodles, Dumplings and Breads by the consummate Chinese cooking teacher and cookbook author, Florence Lin, is well worth the thirty-five dollars or more it is getting in the used book market these days. Why? Because not only does Lin devote her entire text to the myriad products of rice or wheat flour doughs in her book, she explains her methods clearly, thoroughly and in a voice that builds a cook’s confidence.

Lin explicates the minutia of cooking all sorts of Chinese noodles, giving all of the little tricks and tips that Chinese cooks have used for centuries to obtain different textural effects with these noodles. She gives historical background on the types of noodles as well as the cooking techniques involved in them, and for intensive recipes like fresh noodles, she gives step-by-step instructions which are written in a no-nonsense, erudite, yet refreshingly simple manner.

The one deficiency in this book is the lack of photographs illustrating the various noodle dishes. I find that when Americans are tackling unfamiliar recipes from other cultures, they are more often enticed into cooking new foods by delicious-looking photographs than they are by delectable descriptive prose.

The deficiency of Lin’s book is corrected by the Wei Chuan publications, Noodles: Classical Chinese Cooking and Noodles: Chinese Home Cooking, both buy Lee-Hwa Lin. Like all of the Wei Chuan bilingual Chinese/English cookbooks, these volumes are highly illustrated with clear, appetizing photographs that show each step of difficult recipes as well as lovely photos of the finished dishes. Of the two of these books, I have found the first, Noodles: Classical Chinese Cooking
, to be the most helpful, with recipes for dishes I have eaten in restaurants across the country.

There are drawbacks, of course, to both books. One, they are both now out of print, though still available in the used market. Two, I find that the recipes are skewed toward Taiwanese tastes (which makes sense, since the books are the publications of a famous cooking school in Taiwan), and so they often require a bit of work on my part to adjust them to make the flavors come out as I tasted them elsewhere. Finally, three–the format in which the recipes are written can be confusing the first few times they are read, at least until the reader gets used to them. They directions are clear, but abbreviated, and that can lead to confusion, which is not helpful to a new cook, especially one who is unfamiliar with Chinese foods.

Wei Chuan has come out with a new volume of Chinese noodle recipes: Chinese Rice and Noodles: With Appetizers, Soups and Sweets, by Su-Huei Huang and Su-Huei Huang. However, unlike the previous books in their series, this volume is not exclusively about noodles, and so the scope of the book is not nearly as interesting to a cook who wants to learn noodle cookery. That is the biggest drawback of the book–as always, it is lavishly illustrated with gorgeous photography, which nearly makes up for the lack of exclusive content on the subject of noodles.

Jacki Passmore’s The Noodle Shop Cookbook is a good companion to Florence Lin’s book. Although Passmore’s book is more of a survey of general Asian noodle recipes, she leans heavily upon Chinese recipes, gleaned from the favored street foods and noodle stall dishes beloved across every region. The recipes here are generally simple, easy to follow and give an excellent authentic flavor, although, like Lin’s book, there is a lack of photographs to entice a cook new to the subject of Chinese noodles.

Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, like Passmore’s book is a generalized look at noodle recipes from all over Asia. However, Simonds’ book is highly illustrated with great photographs of both processes and finished dishes, and her explication of technique, ingredients and history is impeccable as always. There are more than Chinese recipes featured in this book, but China’s noodle traditions are well-represented and the recipes are all vibrant and flavorful.

Finally, there is the large-format Noodle by Terry Durack. An absolutely gorgeous book, filled with artistic photographs by Geoff Lung, Noodle is a visually appealing survey of the myriad forms noodles take across Asia. The recipes are all illustrated with artfully posed photographs, but there are fewer recipes than there could be. Chinese recipes are present, but are overshadowed by the many other recipes from the rest of Asia.

However, the book is visually inspiring, and is well worth looking at if you can find it in a library or a used bookstore.

These are the noodle cookbooks I have in my collection; there are a very few others available. In addition, there are many great noodle recipes to be found in general Chinese and Asian cookbooks by a great many authors. Some of my favorite noodle recipes, in fact, can be found in the books of Fuchsia Dunlop and Grace Young–both excellent cookbook authors whose explications of the culinary arts of China are invaluable to cooks everywhere.

This quote is the text chosen as the opening to Jigyasa Giri and Pratibha Jain’s absolutely gorgeous, award-winning book, Cooking At Home With Pedatha: Vegetarian Recipes From a Traditional Andhra Kitchen, and it sets the tone for the entire work, which is the exploration of the soul of a cuisine through the memories and orally-transmitted recipes of one amazing woman.

Who is Pedatha?

Her name is Subhadra Krishna Rau Parigi, and she is the eighty-five year old eldest child of a former president of India.

She is known fondly among friends and family, however, by the nickname, Pedatha, which loosely translates as “eldest auntie,” and she is a font of culinary wisdom rooted deeply in her home state of Andhra Pradesh in the south of India. She also is a woman who understands innately that cooking is a deeply spiritual act which is intimate and intensely personal, yet which is so often treated as something to be taken for granted as simply impersonal “fuel” for immediate consumption and gratification without any reflection upon the holiness of the acts of cooking and eating. She is an embodiment of the philosophy of “Slow Food;” when asked by the authors how long it would take to cook a certain dish she answered, “As long as it takes for a good dish to be ready.”

While Pedatha gladly gave very precise measurements to the authors as they translated her orally transmitted recipes into book manuscript form, when pressed about timing, she would say, “Do not look at the time, look at the pan.”

A wise cook knows that she is right, of course. How long a certain dish takes to cook will depend on how and where it is cooked. How high is the heat on your stove? If it is higher than Pedatha’s, it will cook faster. If it is cooler than Pedatha’s it will take longer for the same dish to cook properly. A wise cook and reader will recognize that Pedatha’s advice, while seeming to be evasive are nothing more than a simple truth: not every bit of cookery can be measured, quantified and recorded perfectly and accurately. Cooking is not wholly a science and thus is entirely subject to the clock, the thermometer, the scale and the measuring spoon. It is also an art that is dependent upon the senses of the cook: her eyes, her nose, her hands, her ears, her mouth, to tell her when something is cooking properly.

But enough about Pedatha, already! I can hear my readers thinking this–tell us about the recipes!

Ah, but you see–the book is as much about Pedatha as it is about the recipes. The way they are written, and the way the book is put together, with lovely photographs of ingredients and finished dishes, along with evocative portraits of Pedatha’s mobile and ever-changing face–I swear, it seems as if I can hear her voice on every page. It is like having her in the kitchen with me, telling me how to temper spices, or how to tell when curry leaves are cooked enough, or what these pickles will smell like when they are done.

The recipes are detailed, and precise, for all that cooking times are fluid. The cookbook is completely vegetarian, though not vegan in orientation, as ghee and yogurt are used in many dishes. (And I have to admire Pedatha for admonishing the authors and the readers to not skimp on the ghee! She sounds very like my own Gram, who after WWII’s rationing forced her to eat margarine, would only eat butter after that, and a lot of it. And she, like Pedatha, was quite healthy, slender and pretty, well into her eighties.) Many of the dishes are highly spiced, and there is an entire chapter on the making of podi-powders, which are used to season rice and other foods. There is also a chapter on sweets, but I am more excited to try the chutneys and pickles, and the lentil and eggplant dishes. (The recipes chosen for this book reflect Pedatha’s own personal tastes, and I am happy to see that she seems to like eggplant as much as I do.)

I haven’t cooked yet from this book, but as the summer season begins to progress, bringing its delightful bounty of fresh vegetables, I intend to cook many dishes from this book as I explore and experiment with the flavors and traditions of southern India. Have no fear, I will present the recipes as I test them.

I feel as if, with Pedatha guiding me from the bookshelf and Indira of Mahanandi a keystroke away, I cannot go wrong as I take my first baby steps in learning the ways of the South Indian kitchen.

Not with two such wise and generous kitchen angels looking over my shoulder.

So, dear readers, if you are interested in learning how to cook the vegetarian foods of South India, particularly Andhra Pradesh, I urge you to pick up a copy of this book, sit down and enjoy a good, thorough reading of it. Then, go to the kitchen and start cooking. And then after you have cooked a dish or two, check in on Mahananadi for another dose of inspiration and kitchen wisdom.

You cannot go wrong.