I don’t believe I’ve ever met a pasta I didn’t like. There are, however, many pasta shapes I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting—yet. In An A–Z of Pasta, Rome-based author Rachel Roddy introduces readers to 50 of them, some of which, like brichetti, are not often found beyond specific Italian regions. (As if I needed another reason to visit Italy someday.)
This is no mere collection of dishes, however; it is a specific window into Italian history and geography, thick with sense of place. Take fregula, little balls similar to couscous. “A tiny shape . . . particularly stout and . . . nutty,” they are native to Sardinia, where women have traditionally been tasked with making them (not a small job, despite the small shape). Roddy is a knowledgeable storyteller and low-key witty. Of fusilli, she writes, “One day I will watch an extruder forming fusilli while smoking a joint and listening to the Incredible String Band. As with any invention that has become commonplace, we take a pasta machine that can extrude perfect spirals for granted.”
Roddy’s lamb ragu with lots of herbs, “a Friday night dish,” sounds amazing, as do numerous other recipes included here. This book is essential for anyone passionate about Italian cooking.
In An A–Z of Pasta, witty and knowledgeable author Rachel Roddy introduces readers to 50 essential pastas and the recipes you might use them in.
Cooking for the Culture is the first book from Toya Boudy, a spirited celebrity chef whose New Orleanian heritage shines through in everything she does. I sheepishly admit that I’d never heard of Boudy before her cookbook landed on my desk—I’m not fluent in TV, see—but her keep-it-real approach and candid family stories sucked me right in, and the voice that (I’m certain) comes through so winningly on screen is front and center here, too. For example: “If you’re going to jump out the gate slanging tartare on the table, you’d better come out swinging.”
Some of Boudy’s food is delightfully simple: shrimp on a bun, fried okra and red beans (served with fried chicken, her favorite meal). But some recipes are marvelously extra, like her praline sweet potatoes with whiskey mallo cream, or her “Expensive Ass Salad” (the best-titled recipe ever) featuring lobster, crab, scallops and a champagne caviar vinaigrette. And you best believe there are all the Cajun and Creole classics you could dream of in these pages.
Chef Toya Boudy’s New Orleanian heritage shines through in everything she does, from red beans and fried okra to praline sweet potatoes with whiskey mallo cream.
Saghar Setareh was 22 when she moved from Iran to Italy. After almost a decade in her new home, she writes, “I found my lantern, my mirror, and my passion in food, lighting up not only my path to understanding Italy but also illuminating the reflection of my own Iranian culinary heritage. Like many immigrants before me, I came to know—and cherish—my homeland, by comparison with the new country.” In a stunning new cookbook, Pomegranates and Artichokes, she invites us on a “culinary road trip” from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, from porridge with rosewater and a saffron omelet, to Turkish eggplant in tomato sauce and creamy eggplant and tahini dip, to aperitivo cocktails and pork roast with pears and chestnuts, and so much in between. This winding road is a food lover’s fantasy.
Saghar Setareh invites us on a “culinary road trip” from the Middle East to the Mediterranean in a food lover’s fantasy.
I began reading Company a few months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Upon return, my impressions hold up: This buzzy cookbook simmers cozily with very fine food writing and a particular Midwestern nonchalance that has my heart. Amy Thielen—a two-time James Beard Award winner and author of a memoir, Give a Girl a Knife—focuses here on comfort-food-forward menus for gatherings of six to 20 people, from “Saturday Night” to “Casual Walkabouts.” Nota bene: I am not, and probably never will be, a person who enjoys throwing dinner parties. But when Thielen says, “I probably shouldn’t say this . . . but when you’re having people over, the food doesn’t really matter,” I’m listening. (I’m still not ready to have even six people over, but I’m listening.) When she details “anti-hero appetizers,” such as warm bean dip or pickles, I’m leaning in. When she gets into “two weeks of Christmas, starting with the sweets,” I’m hungry but wary, until she describes herself as a “cackling enabler,” and I’m fully in again. When, in “a lazy summer’s day lunch,” she includes Black Currant Finger Jell-O and says, “You can just cut off a hunk of the Jell-O with a knife and walk around the house with it as you pick up clutter,” I’m utterly smitten.
Chef and author Amy Thielen’s buzzy cookbook simmers cozily with very fine food writing and a particular Midwestern nonchalance.
Foraging may be hot right now, but let’s be honest: It’s also intimidating, even in one’s own backyard. Ellen Zachos’ How to Forage for Wild Foods Without Dying keeps things simple, focusing on 35 common plants that grow everywhere and won’t send you to the emergency room, pinky swear. Take dandelions—yes, those yellow flowers you’ve known since you were a kid. The leaves, flower buds and roots are all edible. Oxeye daisies? The leaves are your best bet. I had no idea milkweed pods were edible until now (they must be immature, and they must be cooked), and the same goes for magnolia buds and young cattail shoots, which apparently taste like cucumber. Foraging feels like one of those hobbies that could easily take over your whole life and you wouldn’t be mad about it; Zachos’ guide is a wonderful enabler.
In this guide, Ellen Zachos focuses on 35 common plants that grow everywhere and won’t send you to the ER if you eat them, pinky swear!
Though he’s best known as the “Great British Baking Show” judge with an icy blue stare fit to scare any hopeful contestant, Paul Hollywood is also an exceptional baker in his own right. With BAKE, he shares his go-to recipes for all the classics, from cakes and cookies to doughnuts, pastries and pies. There is, of course, an extensive chapter on bread in which Hollywood really shows off his expertise.
Chetna’s Easy Baking
The latest offering from beloved 2014 contestant Chetna Makan includes over 80 recipes for sweet and savory bakes. Chetna has always been known for her flavor combinations, and Chetna’s Easy Baking showcases this skill with mouthwatering offerings like pear, chocolate, star anise and hazelnut tarte Tatin and mini saffron vegan cheesecakes.
Simply Vegan Baking
Freya Cox made a splash in 2021 as the first contestant to create all vegan bakes. Her first book, Simply Vegan Baking, takes 70 recipes for familiar treats—such as carrot cake, cinnamon rolls and jam doughnuts—and shows bakers how to make them without eggs, milk or butter, and without sacrificing that delicious, comforting flavor.
Lottie Bedlow felt underqualified and ill-prepared for her time as a contestant on “The Great British Baking Show” in 2020. With Baking Imperfect, she vows to tell the truth about her baking struggles and imperfections so that others might feel brave enough to give baking a go. Each recipe is rated on a scale of one to five broken eggs so that bakers of every skill level will know where to start.
Showstopping Cakes
Winner of the 2018 season Rahul Mandal defied expectations when he awkwardly, endearingly rose to the top. His first book, Showstopping Cakes, captures the decorative pizazz he is known and loved for by breaking down each element of an eye-popping cake—from ganache to mirror glaze to marzipan—so that bakers can construct their own masterpieces at home.
Cook as You Are
Ruby Tandoh is one of the most published “Great British Baking Show” contestants, and Cook as You Are is her fourth release. This collection focuses on recipes that are easy, affordable and accessible to everyone, no matter what relationship you have to food or to your body. With recipes for whatever-you’ve-got fried rice and goes-with-everything groundnut soup, there’s truly something for every appetite and energy level.
Bake, Make, and Learn to Cook Vegetarian
Winner of the 2019 season David Atherton thinks kids should be able to whip up their own meal, snack or treat when they’re hungry. Bake, Make, and Learn to Cook Vegetarian will teach them how, with adorable illustrations by Alice Bowsher that break down each step of the process for creating vegetarian stir fry, cheesy rabbit crackers, jam tarts and more.
Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes
When Giuseppe Dell’Anno won the 2021 season, fans everywhere shouted “Saluti!” Now he’s packed all his favorite home bakes, inspired by his dad’s recipes and notes, into Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes. From polenta sponge cake to panna cotta and focaccia, every recipe is rustic, delicious and authentically Italian.
The contestants and judges of “The Great British Baking Show” share their signature styles, technical tips and showstopping skills.
An Italian-born friend, who is a very fine cook, once texted me a recipe for Bolognese sauce. The recipe, she explained, was by Marcella Hazan, and the meal we made from it was a gorgeous triumph. You can find that recipe on page 210 of the new edition of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, a classic tome now outfitted in cheerful bright yellow for its 30th anniversary. Hazan, who died in 2013, is often credited as the most significant teacher of northern Italian cooking in the United States, and her guidance on fresh pasta, sauces and vegetables is without match, her objective “not to astonish, but to reassure.” Hazan’s cooking is unfussy, powered by good, fresh ingredients (which she explains in loving detail) and firmly rooted in family memories.
A Dish for All Seasons
A Dish for All Seasons: 125+ Recipe Variations for Delicious Meals All Year Round is a collection of 26 recipe templates and suggestions for how to mix them up for each season—in other words, a brilliantly useful concept. For example, quesadillas: an easy weeknight favorite, but possibly a bit boring? Not so when stuffed with steamed root veggies in winter or grilled corn kernels in summer. Or consider pesto four ways, depending on what’s in season. Kathryn Pauline, a Saveur award-winning writer, provides a meal-making approach suitable for all levels of kitchen wizardry. Beginners can develop fluency through repeating familiar go-tos with simple twists, while those with kitchen skills will jump at the opportunity to improvise within constraints. “Use what you’ve got” is advice that never grows old, and this book puts a clever, adaptable spin on it.
In Vishwesh Bhatt’s cooking, the flavors and foodways of Mississippi and India converge in dishes like okra chaat, saag-style collards and succotash with garam masala. Until now, one had to visit Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi, where Bhatt is executive chef, to experience that fare. Now, I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes From a Southern Chef showcases the inventive cuisine on which the James Beard Award-winning chef has made his name. A dinner might include grown-up stir-fried rice (based on a snack from Bhatt’s childhood in Ahmedabad, India), collard-wrapped catfish and Mom’s rice pudding. Stories of Bhatt’s mother, who kindled his early interest in food, pepper these pages. The book beautifully represents an individual immigrant’s experience through food; at the same time, it is a welcome addition to the canon of elevated Southern cooking.
Chinese-ish
Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu, the two young Asian Australians behind the delightful Chinese-ish: Home Cooking Not Quite Authentic, 100% Delicious, encompass a wealth of identities and influences between them: Kashmiri, Singaporean, Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian and, of course, Chinese. Their collaboration, born during the COVID-19 pandemic, dances merrily through all of that territory with insouciant verve and a dash of humor. There are sections called “Chinese-ish snacks that feel kinda wrong” (including Beijing hot chicken and prawn toast) and “A few desserts we don’t hate” (such as mango pudding and pumpkin cakes). Hu’s watercolor illustrations play so nicely with the vivid photography throughout, and the recipes are remarkably accessible. Get yourself a carbon steel wok (as my husband did recently; he’s loving it), hit up the supermarket’s international aisle or your local Asian market, and you’ll be dishing up variations on fried rice, Sichuan-style noodles and chiffon omelets in no time.
Bread Head
“The bread I’m going to teach you to make is a little rough around the edges, a little louder than is polite, and stupid good.” That’s Greg Wade, head baker at Chicago’s Publican Quality Bread, in Bread Head: Baking for the Road Less Traveled. Wade’s bread is “an eff-you to the factory-farmed, industrially made versions” ubiquitous in supermarkets, as he often forges standard wheat for organic heritage whole grains such as barley, buckwheat and millet. Or how about a sorghum and rosemary ciabatta, or a rye naan? Wade’s creations pull from around the globe; for example, there’s khachapuri, a fermented dough stuffed with cheese and eggs that sounds like the stuff of my wheatiest dreams. Even if you burned out on sourdough during the pandemic, this book will make you want to try again.
Kiss the cook—but maybe buy them a present too. These five gorgeous cookbooks will wow any culinary artist worth their salt.
The onset of cold weather can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to the kitchen and cook, bake and sauté up a variety of delicious, warming meals and treats to be eaten as the early dark creeps in.
Bliss on Toast
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a person wishes to enter into the cozy state of mind, an episode or two of “The Great British Baking Show” will get you there. In Bliss on Toast, Prue Leith, a beloved judge on the show, tackles variations on that masterpiece of culinary perfection: toast. Inspired by the desire to fix something simple but elevated for a Sunday evening curled up by the television, Leith delivers on the promise of toast as an art form. If you’re looking for something creamy and warm, you might decide on a duck egg, rainbow chard and Dijon butter on multigrain toast. Vegetarians and vegans will delight in roasted red pepper hummus, avocado and zhoug (a simple-to-make Yemeni sauce) on rye. Apricots, almonds and Devonshire clotted cream on an English muffin will take you through dessert. With each recipe, there is just enough cooking to make you feel you are making something special, but never enough to complicate the simplicity of warm, crusty toast, eaten with one hand over a salad plate as you sink into a corner of the couch. What could be more comforting than that?
Soup, schnitzel, latkes and shakshuka: No matter your heritage, Jewish fare is always warming, filling and as nourishing to the heart as to the body. This is, after all, the culture that considers chicken soup to be one of its most revered dishes. In Shannon Sarna’s Modern Jewish Comfort Food, she breaks down the notion of Jewish cuisine as a monolith, noting that aspects of traditional dishes vary from region to region, and even from family to family. Sarna’s updates to well-known and well-loved dishes are deeply rooted in history and fully embody the wide variety of cultural influences on Jewish cuisine. As with her previous offering, Modern Jewish Baker, Sarna’s clear instructions and helpful tips for each recipe give you the ability to whip up previously intimidating but oh, so mouthwatering dishes such as sweet potato and sage butter knishes or lamb meatballs. The historical and cultural information she provides along with each recipe gives the food its soul. These dishes satisfy on their own, but the fact that you’re eating something enjoyed all across the world, across time even, lends them an extra-comforting quality.
Baking by Feel
How many times have we been guilty of eating our feelings? Becca Rea-Tucker (better known on social media as The Sweet Feminist for her social justice-themed cakes) would shrug and say, “So?” Feelings, as Rea-Tucker would like you to know, are not bad. And neither is food. A therapy session masquerading as a cookbook, Baking by Feel includes sections of serious mental health advice alongside conversion charts and lists of helpful baking tools to have on hand. Inspired by the now-infamous way the COVID-19 pandemic drove us all to our kitchens, Rea-Tucker has written an “emotionally agnostic” (read: no judgment) cookbook that acknowledges the comfort we get from creating something delicious. The recipes themselves are organized by which feeling might be driving you to bake or eat: A sunny lemon cake with poppyseed cream cheese frosting suggests itself to the cheerful; peach bourbon cake supports the heartbroken; black pepper snowballs conspire with the vengeful. Next to each recipe is a paragraph or two about the specific emotion associated with that food, and Rea-Tucker encourages her bakers to name and sit with their feelings. I have tried the buttermilk pie for stress and can confirm that the sugar and cream comfort and the advice helps parse out what exactly is going on with you.
Snackable Bakes
But sometimes, nothing is going on except that the familiar urge has hit: It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, you need something chocolatey, gooey and sweet, and you need it right now. Sure, you could pop down to the corner store and grab a Snickers, but that just doesn’t comfort you the way something home-baked would. Enter Jessie Sheehan’s Snackable Bakes. Short on time or needing that snack with some urgency? No problem: Sheehan promises that none of the 100 recipes in the book takes more than 20 minutes to assemble. Moreover, there is no creaming of butter or cream cheese and minimal need of tools (oven included), and use of the microwave is absolutely allowed. The baking might be effortless, but the end result is anything but halfhearted. Goodies such as blackberry lemon yogurt loaf cake and strawberry basil crumb bars taste like they were made during a lackadaisical Sunday afternoon, not whipped up in a spare 15 minutes. We all need to take a little time for ourselves, after all.
These recipes are perfect to eat while you’re snug as a dormouse, watching the leaves turn.
In her expansive look at ancestral and herbal healing and wellness, Atava Garcia Swiecicki introduces us to curanderismo, a multifaceted approach to healing that draws from the folk medicine traditions of the Latinx diaspora. In The Curanderx Toolkit, readers will learn about the teyolia, or heart center, akin to the soul. Teyolia is one of our four energetic bodies; when it is harmed or imbalanced, we may experience depression or sadness. As founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine and an expert in herbal medicine, Garcia Swiecicki provides an overview of herbalism and brujeria, or witchcraft, in Mexico and profiles the healers she has studied or practiced in community with for decades, most of whom are based in California. As Garcia Swiecicki observes, the effects of white supremacist patriarchy are all but impossible to ignore, and as a result, space is being claimed during this cultural moment for traditions and ways previously sidelined, silenced and dismissed. This book is part of that important work.
The Future Is Fungi
A few years ago I watched the documentary Fantastic Fungi and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Meanwhile, Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind is currently on my TBR pile. Which is to say: Count me curious about the mysteries, magic and medicine of mushrooms. There’s so much to learn—and so much yet to be unearthed by science. If this is the kind of thing you like to geek out about, too, you’ll be captivated by Michael Lim and Yun Shu’s The Future Is Fungi, with its 360-degree view of shrooms, spores and such. As if mirroring the depth and range of a mycelial network, the book covers mushrooms’ culinary and medicinal uses, psilocybin and even mycorestoration and mycoremediation (fungi deployed to fight pollutants and break down plastics). While this is a text-rich book, not scrimping on research and detail, the visuals are equally stunning.
Mission Vegan
Mission Vegan, the inventive new cookbook from Danny Bowien, co-founder of Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco and New York City and subject of the sixth season of “The Mind of a Chef,” makes my mouth water for dishes I could have never imagined, like smashed cucumbers with tingly granola and microwave mochi with sesame ganache. A Korean adoptee with white parents who raised him in Oklahoma, Bowien made his way to Korean cuisine peripatetically via kitchens on both coasts, and along the way he laid off the beef. While his new book doesn’t limit itself to straight-up Korean food—there’s a pomodoro recipe tucked within, in fact—it does draw fond inspiration from Korea’s traditions and ingredients, including many takes on kimchi and other banchan. With Mission Vegan, Bowien is, in his own words, “embarking on a new journey rather than documenting one I’ve already been on.”
You’ll find healing wisdom from Mexico, plant-based flavor from Korea and more in this month’s roundup of lifestyles books that are glossy, colorful and beautiful to behold.
In a world unspeakably darkened by crisis, it might seem trifling to even think about appreciating, cultivating or devoting our attention to beauty. Focusing on beauty might even read as an act of oblivious privilege. But perhaps a fuller contemplation of what beauty is, can be and has been, and what it can mean in our everyday lives, is in fact one step toward repairing massive-scale damage. Writer and illustrator Ella Frances Sanders believes it is. In Everything, Beautiful, she envisions learning to see beauty as a curative, even redemptive process, “like putting a delicate, very broken vase back together.” No matter how broken our world, it is nevertheless full of “tiny, beautiful things,” she writes. “Some are so invisible or silent that you may never see or understand them, but they are there.” Through text, illustration and guided prompts, Sanders upends and expands our notions of beauty and urges us to notice the ingredients for beauty that are all around us, such as “light, slowness, and the kind of air temperatures that feel like honey.”
Lost Places
I live in a boomtown where every old structure seems to either meet the wrecking ball or get a second life via adaptive reuse. Paging through the images in Lost Places, I’m swept into another world, one where the vestiges of America’s past are left, silent and uninhabited, to be transformed by weather and time. Heribert Niehues’ photographs of abandoned cars, houses, gas stations and other structures tell a story about our country’s past. They are also suffused with mystery: What lives did these places once contain? Who last passed through these doors? Scenes of decaying diner interiors are among the spookiest, with guests’ checks, condiment containers and fry baskets left behind. Car buffs will enjoy Niehues’ many images of rusted-out, early- to mid-20th-century models. Many of the abandoned edifices captured here fell victim to the interstate system when it rerouted travel in the 1950s and ’60; one wonders what of our present might be left behind a century from now, as climate change remaps the landscape.
Forever Beirut
Forever Beirut, a cookbook with accompanying essays and stunning photographs, was conceptualized by Barbara Abdeni Massaad as a way to help her beloved home country in the aftermath of a terrible 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. In response to disaster and economic collapse, the book passionately preserves the treasures of Beirut’s culinary heritage, with recipes for favorites such as kibbeh, a dish of ground lamb, beef or vegetables kneaded together with bulgur; man’oushe, a traditional flatbread; mezze, small dishes served together such as chickpeas and yogurt; and semolina cake. This is the stuff of my culinary dreams: food that is aromatically spiced, uncomplicated and yet bursting with flavor, served to the reader within a deep, loving sociocultural context.
Look a little closer, and you’ll find beauty lurking in unexpected places. The three books in this month’s lifestyles column will help you spot it.
Kitty and Al Tait may not be the first to write of the redemption and delight that can come from watching yeast and heat transform mere water, flour and salt into beautiful, delicious creations. But their memoir-cum-cookbook, Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives, is the most charming version of that story I’ve yet come across. In it, the father-daughter team tells their origin story in alternating points of view before sharing over 50 recipes, both savory and sweet. As a young teen, Kitty began experiencing terrible depression and anxiety. Nothing seemed to help, until Al baked a no-knead loaf, sparking Kitty’s curiosity. In no time at all, the duo had opened what has become a tremendously successful family bakery in their tiny village in Oxfordshire, England. Their story is as heartwarming as it gets, accentuated by Kitty’s lively voice and infectious grin splashed across the pages along with her dad’s adorable illustrations. There’s a recipe for a caramel-covered Happy Bread here, which says a lot about this joyful book. Definitely follow Kitty, who’s now 17, on Instagram @kittytaitbaker for dopamine hits, too.
Things to Look Forward To
When my daughter was young, we enjoyed many books featuring Sophie Blackall’s cozy illustrations; the Ivy & Bean series was a particularly big hit. How fun to come across Things to Look Forward To, Blackall’s new picture book for all ages (that best and rarest of all genres). Not surprisingly, this project grew out of bleak days during the COVID-19 pandemic and was nudged along by community input via social media. Some of the assembled things to look forward to are as common as the sun coming up; in fact, that is literally one of them. Who can argue with coffee, finding something you thought you’d lost or seeing the sea? Other experiences here are a bit more nuanced (doing your taxes, looking at maps) or whimsical (drawing on eggs, flowers that look like brains!). What’s certain is that you can’t page through this book without feeling a renewed sense of appreciation for the everyday, and that’s something all of us can use, every day.
Nectar of the Gods
For a decidedly elevated sort of toga party, be sure to consult Nectar of the Gods. The work of mythology podcaster Liv Albert and beverage consultant Thea Engst, and brought to colorful life by illustrator Sara Richard, this book pairs inventive cocktail recipes with soupçons of Greek and Roman myth. Take, for example, Pandora’s Jar (yes, in fact, it was originally a jar, not a box!): a gin, blueberry and creme de violette concoction. Calypso’s Island Iced Tea, designed to bring out the sexy nymph in each of us, seems like the perfect poolside sipper: hibiscus iced tea, vodka, lemon juice and simple syrup. For a more complex and decadent drink, try the Phaedra Phizz, and pour one out for its ill-fated namesake.
A warm loaf of bread, a mythologically charged tipple: These and other delights give readers something to look forward to in this month’s lifestyles column.
A while back I let my social network know I was interested in learning more about magic, herbalism, astrology and the like. It felt naive to group these things together, but I’ve since discovered there’s more than a little overlap. In Wild Witchcraft, North Carolina-based forager-witch Rebecca Beyer provides a well-researched history of European witchcraft and American folk healing practices, followed by a solid introduction to growing and foraging healing herbs. Readers learn how to use herbs in rituals and remedies and in harmony with the Wheel of the Year, a series of seasonal observances including the fall and spring equinoxes. Beyer covers much ground efficiently and makes a strong case for why these practices are especially necessary now. Amid rapid and cataclysmic climate change, “inspiring people to see value in plants and ecosystems can help to preserve them,” she writes, and “combat the total divorce of humans from their fellow animal, vegetable, and mineral kin.”
Booze & Vinyl 2
During the COVID-19 pandemic, vinyl record sales outnumbered those of CDs for the first time since the 1980s. This vinyl renaissance presents a timely backdrop for Booze & Vinyl 2, which builds on the genius of sister-and-brother duo André and Tenaya Darlington’s 2018 volume of album and craft cocktail pairings, Booze & Vinyl. How about a glow-in-the-dark vodka tonic paired with Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine or a moonshine-based sipper with Van Morrison’s Moondance? Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstong get a “Silver Fizz” to match Ella’s “silvery voice,” and citrus meets prosecco and brandy for two drinks inspired by Beyoncé’s Lemonade. There are even a few themed appetizers, such as “Deeez Nuuuts” for munching while spinning Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. The design freak in me loves how the book’s aesthetic shifts with each album, each turn of the page setting a vibe. Dim the lights, drop the needle and sip to the sounds.
My America
In My America: Recipes From a Young Black Chef, a follow-up to his 2019 memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, James Beard Award winner Kwame Onwuachi filters the cuisine of the African diaspora through the lens of his family, his travels and peripatetic childhood, and the journeys of his ancestors. As Onwuachi notes, a close look at the cuisines of the American South, the Caribbean and Nigeria reveals many common threads and flavor echoes—from the jambalaya of Louisiana to the jollof of Nigeria. Black food tells a story—from groundnut stew and callaloo to crawfish pie and baby back ribs—and the recipes collected here tell it powerfully.
Reconnect to food, music and nature with this month’s best new lifestyles titles.
One of my favorite finds of 2021 was a newsletter called Oldster, which features interviews with people from all walks of life musing on the aging process and what age means and feels like to them. A new work from portrait and travel photographer Ellen Warner, The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fifty, beautifully mines similar territory. Warner crisscrossed the globe photographing and interviewing women over the age of 50, gathering reflections on change, pleasure, legacy, hope and more. She then edited these encounters into a trove of fascinating, brief narratives of life lived in a woman’s body. One woman buys a pub in her 60s; another meets her new life partner, a woman, after a 35-year marriage to a man. “Everything is a bit blurred when one is young, and then comes the second half—the time when you have to make clarity out of the blur,” one reflects. As these women and others divulge their most difficult and joyous moments, the result is a book bristling with energy and wisdom.
The Complete Cookbook for Teen Chefs
In terms of trusted authorities on cooking technique, you can’t get much more legit or consistently helpful than America’s Test Kitchen. (Lately, I’ve been saving nearly all of their Instagram posts.) So a new title from ATK, The Complete Cookbook for Teen Chefs, feels like cause for celebration. It remains to be seen whether a book designed for my 13-year-old will inspire her to prep dinner more often, but its format, with close attention paid to mise en place and the correct tools, should help her dodge frustration while widening both her comfort zone and palate. The recipes, labeled beginner, intermediate and advanced, range from the familiar (waffles, BLTs) to foodie faves like blistered shishito peppers, shiitake beef ramen and a fruit galette. My hunch, which I shall soon put to the test, is that parents, too, will absorb several valuable tips from this text as they play sous-chef to their kids.
52 Ways to Walk
I’m not sure there’s a person on Earth who doesn’t know that walking is good for them. But how many of us know just how good, or in just how many ways? Annabel Streets presents loads of convincing evidence in 52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time, a book equally geared toward dedicated perambulators and anyone who wishes to build a new healthy habit. She gives us research-backed ways of thinking about our daily (or occasional) stroll while presenting a fun challenge: From just how many angles might we go about the act of taking a walk this year? I can walk with attunement to what I hear in the world around me, or I can walk with a focus on posture and gait. I can think about ley lines, ions or fractals as I walk; I can walk alone or with a friend or a dog or by water or at night. Apparently I can even hop up from the couch, take a brisk 12-minute walk and wring a surprising level of health benefits from it—and so, my friend, can you.
The mundane stuff of life—such as cooking, walking and even aging—gets an exciting refresh in this month’s lifestyles column.
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
