The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder-- and you know what means? It's cookbook season! Whether you're bored staying safer at home or you're looking forward to impressing your family for the holidays, this fall has brought some of the most beautiful (and most scrumptious) cookbooks we've ever seen at BAM. Your stomach might grumble reading this post, but these books will take your home cooking skills to a whole new level.
Read below to check out our Top 5 Books of the Fall!
1. The Mexican Home Kitchen
The long-awaited, bestselling cookbook from Mely Martínez, The Mexican Home Kitchen compiles the traditional home-style dishes enjoyed every day in Mexican households, with influences from states like Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Puebla, Estado de México, and Yucatán.
Illustrated with stunning photography, this book includes recipes for stews, soups, and side dishes, along with famous dishes like mole, enchiladas, picadillo, and milanesa, and is rounded out with delicious salsas, drinks, and desserts.
For Mely Martínez, Mexican cooking has always been about family, community, and tradition. Born and raised in Tampico, Mely started helping in the kitchen at a very young age, since she was the oldest daughter of eight children, and spent summers at her grandmother's farm in the state of Veracruz, where part of the daily activities included helping grind the corn to make masa.
Mely started her popular blog, Mexico in My Kitchen, to share the recipes and memories of her home so that her son can someday recreate and share these dishes with his own family. In the meantime, it has become the go-to source for those looking for authentic home-style Mexican cooking.
2. True Comfort
Kristin Cavallari shares 139 of her favorite recipes for healthy, natural, wholesome comfort food in this essential cookbook.
Over the past few years, Kristin Cavallari has become known for the healthy recipes she cooks at home for her family. In her bestselling cookbook, True Roots, she shared the recipes that keep her motivated and inspired and in turn challenged fans to cook more meals at home and live a healthier lifestyle.
Now, in True Comfort, Kristin turns her attention to some of the most-requested dishes that are hardest to find: healthy comfort food. True Comfort features her favorite recipes for cozy breakfasts (Apple Pecan Dutch Baby, Espresso Overnight Oats, and Sweet Potato Toast), lunches (Roasted Cauliflower Tartine, Nashville Hot Chicken Salad Cups, and Butternut Squash and Leek Chowder) and dinners (Red-Wine Braised Short Ribs, Oat Crust Chicken Pot Pie, and Saffron Seafood Cioppino) plus desserts (Orange Olive Oil Cake and Dark Chocolate Peppermint Silk Pie) and drinks (Cashew Eggnog and Rosemary Charcoal Latte). With tips and tricks to put together a well-stocked pantry, fridge, and freezer, this book goes beyond the traditional cookbook to help readers feel more like Kristin in the kitchen.
3. The Full Plate
Enjoy family-friendly recipes that are ready in no time, when you've got no time, from New York Times bestselling author, online phenomenon, and TV star Ayesha Curry.
Ayesha Curry knows what it's like to have so much on your plate you can barely think about dinner. But she also knows that finding balance between work and family life starts with gathering around the table to enjoy a home-cooked meal.
The Full Plate brings the best of Ayesha's home kitchen straight to you, with 100 recipes that are flexible and flavorful and come together in less than an hour. You'll find sheet pan dinners and crowd-pleaser pastas, hearty salads and healthy updates to takeout favorites, and fresh spins on classic dishes-plus kid-friendly meals, desserts, and sides (and a few beverages just for the adults).
4. The French Laundry
The cookbook mold is about to be broken again with a new book (the first since 2012) from America’s most celebrated chef, Thomas Keller—this time focusing on his legendary American fine dining institutions, the French Laundry and Per Se.
“Every elegant page projects Keller’s high standard of ‘perfect culinary execution’. . . . This superb work is as much philosophical treatise as gorgeous cookbook.”—
Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Bound by a common philosophy, linked by live video, staffed by a cadre of inventive and skilled chefs, the kitchens of Thomas Keller’s celebrated restaurants—The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and per se, in New York City—are in a relationship unique in the world of fine dining. Ideas bounce back and forth in a dance of creativity, knowledge, innovation, and excellence. It’s a relationship that’s the very embodiment of collaboration, and of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. And all of it is captured in The French Laundry, Per Se, with meticulously detailed recipes for 70 beloved dishes, including Smoked Sturgeon Rillettes on an Everything Bagel, “The Whole Bird,” Tomato Consommé, Celery Root Pastrami, Steak and Potatoes, Peaches ’n’ Cream.
Just reading these recipes is a master class in the state of the art of cooking today. We learn to use a dehydrator to intensify the flavor and texture of fruits and vegetables. To make the crunchiest coating with a cornstarch–egg white paste and potato flakes. To limit waste in the kitchen by fermenting vegetable trimmings for sauces with an unexpected depth of flavor. And that essential Keller trait, to take a classic and reinvent it: like the French onion soup, with a mushroom essence stock and garnish of braised beef cheeks and Comté mousse, or a classic crème brûlée reimagined as a rich, creamy ice cream with a crispy sugar tuile to mimic the caramelized coating.
Throughout, there are 40 recipes for the basics to elevate our home cooking. Some are old standbys, like the best versions of beurre manié and béchamel, others more unusual, including a ramen broth (aka the Super Stock) and a Blue-Ribbon Pickle.
And with its notes on technique, stories about farmers and purveyors, and revelatory essays from Thomas Keller—“The Lessons of a Dishwasher,” “Inspiration Versus Influence,” “Patience and Persistence”—The French Laundry, Per Se will change how young chefs, determined home cooks, and dedicated food lovers understand and approach their cooking.
5. The Artisan Kitchen
Reconnect with a more mindful way of cooking and spark your creativity.
Giving a modern twist to age-old techniques, this book shows how to master 25 different cooking and preserving processes, from fermenting to cheese making, hot smoking to sourdough baking.
Discover how to culture the perfect batch of sweet-sour kombucha; make a fresh-tasting chutney; dry cure bresaola; create your own unique sourdough starter; and slow roast over an open wood fire. Be inspired to experiment with more than 150 recipe ideas.
Embark on your next culinary adventure and revolutionize your enjoyment of food. Escape to The Artisian Kitchen.
