The friend who relied on Ottolenghi, a mini-chain of prepared-food shops in London, for dinner parties when she last lived in the U.K. gets chef and Guardian columnist Yotam Ottolenghi's "Plenty."
Organized conveniently by ingredients, it pulls together more than 100 recipes featuring everyday items cooked in unusual ways.
Bell peppers, fava beans, tomatoes, artichokes and olives, for example, shine in an accessible paella. Roasted eggplant, sweet potatoes and zucchini combine with ricotta, feta and eggs for a savory Mediterranean-inspired tart. The book ought to help make her Stateside get-togethers now equally tasty and stylish.
To the sister who wanted to travel to Seoul but couldn't, I will present Marja Vongerichten's "The Kimchi Chronicles: Korean Cooking for an American Kitchen." It is the next best thing, a substitute to temper the wanderlust.
Done in conjunction with the PBS series of the same name, it is part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook. Vongerichten describes early experiences with her adoptive parents in Virginia, and the reunion two decades later in Brooklyn with her Korean birth mother. The women connected over bulgogi and kimchi.
She visits South Korea, and plays with traditional foods and flavors when she returns home, experimenting with celebrity-chef husband Jean-Georges in their kitchen. They make a mean lobster roll, and grill sea bass marinated with Korean rice ale and doenjang, coarse miso paste.
I would surprise the guy who celebrated a milestone birthday at Chez Panisse not long ago with a coffee-table volume celebrating the Berkeley restaurant's own recent milestone anniversary.
Filled with photos, menus and reprinted event posters as well as recollections from former and current staff members, "40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering" captures the history and spirit of the iconic eatery, opened in 1971 by Alice Waters.
It sheds light on the bakers, farmers and winemakers who have collaborated with them, and describes The Edible Schoolyard, which teaches children about good food and healthy eating.
For the friend wowed by images in Rachel Saunders' "The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook," I would offer Romney Steele's "Plum Gorgeous: Recipes and Memories from the Orchard."
Like the former, it, too, features photos by Sara Remington, nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. The shots alone are plum gorgeous.
Steele, who grew up in Big Sur and lived in orchards throughout her life, showcases seasonal fruits in their simplicity. She uses them in everything from lemon curd and cherry salsa to peach gelato and apple butter. Meanwhile, Remington captures the colors, textures and shapes, evoking a romantic nostalgia.
To my fellow Anglophile, who likes the British author as much as I do and gleans as much from his stories as I have, I would give Nigel Slater's "Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch." At more than 600 pages, it is quite the read.
A popular food writer in the U.K. and longtime columnist for The Observer – I call him the thinking man's Jamie Oliver – Slater details time spent in his backyard garden in London's Highbury neighborhood.
He recalls successes and failures. He has always grown things, he says, tomato plants on a window ledge in a student flat, for example, or pots of herbs out on a fire escape. That he would turn a lawn into a vegetable patch was inevitable.
Slater's tone is confident yet wistful, smart yet down-to-earth.
I would give the guy with the grill Lourdes Castro's "Latin Grilling: Recipes to Share, from Patagonian Asado to Yucatecan Barbecue and More." Organized by Latin American region, this book should bring different flavors to his outdoor meals, providing a nice change of pace.
Castro, a New York City chef and cooking instructor, creates menus that highlight popular foods in several countries, concentrating on meats as well as starters, sides, drinks and desserts.
Her Nicaraguan ranch roast, for instance, offers instructions for coffee-rubbed rib-eye steaks as well as grilled ripe plantains and a rum-and-guava cooler. The Chilean seafood cookout includes grilled clams and chorizo as well as bacon-wrapped scallops and a meringue cake.
The brother with a deep-fryer would benefit from Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen." I want to encourage him to prepare more nutritious meals instead, especially when I visit.
A follow-up to "Super Natural Cooking," the collection includes easy recipes for quick breakfasts, brown-bag lunches and weeknight dinners. Swanson relies mostly on whole grains and natural ingredients.
A spinach strata, for example, calls for milk, eggs, spinach, whole wheat bread and feta. It can be assembled the night before and cooked first thing in the morning. A tortellini salad combines ricotta-stuffed tortellini with asparagus, broccoli, sprouts and avocado. Swanson uses alfalfa sprouts. But other sprouts would work, too.
And for me, there is Albert Jack's "What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Curious Stories Behind Our Favorite Foods." Because at the end of the gift-giving day, even Santa needs some love.
Jack looks at the origins behind many of our favorite foods, including eggs Benedict, Salisbury steak, the Cobb salad and dim sum. The chapter on traditional desserts such as apple pie, crepes Suzette and trifle is particularly sweet.
The author examines eating and drinking rituals as well, explaining, for instance, the esoteric connection between the toast we have with jam and the toasts we make at the table with our wine glasses.
His prose is informative, his writing style breezy. Though others might consider a book on culinary inventions trivia, I find it fascinating, and believe it provides a different kind of sustenance.
(A version of this article appears on www.culinate.com.)
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