Weekend Cooking: Cookbook Gift Ideas #weekendcooking @BethFishReads

Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted by Beth Fish Reads linking up food-related posts. Click here to check out Weekend Cooking posts from Beth Fish Reads and other blogs.

It’s not too early to start thinking about holiday gifts, especially when it comes to fall cookbook releases.  So excited to find out while “researching” this post that my favorite baking supply outlet has come through with a new edition of The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion that includes a chapter of gluten-free recipes!
All descriptions are from the publishers.

Seven New Cookbooks for Home Cooks

Indian Cooking Unfolded by Raghavan Iyer
Workman, 2013
Love Indian food but feel it’s too daunting to recreate at home? Those complex authentic flavors! Those dozens of spice blends! The long prep time! Fear not. Award-winning cooking teacher Raghavan Iyer puts the breeze and ease into Indian cooking. Taking a heavily illustrated, step-by-step approach, he introduces cooks to one of the world’s most popular cuisines. With his natural charm and enthusiasm, Raghavan begins each chapter by explaining the recipe choices, what techniques are included, and a suggested order in which to approach the recipes. The book’s 100 authentic recipes use only ingredients readily available at the local supermarket. Taking into account time restraints, each dish can be quickly assembled and will give home cooks the confidence to create knockout Tandoori Chicken, Coconut Squash with Chiles, Turmeric Hash Browns, Saffron-Pistachio Ice Cream Bars, and Mango Bread Pudding with Chai Spices. From basic breads to chutneys and savory pickles, from tasty dal to fragrant basmati rice pilafs, from crispy starters to enjoy with a Slumdog Martini, Indian Cooking Unfolded is a 21st-century approach to one of the most ancient—and popular—cuisines.

The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion – 10th Anniversary Edition (Countryman, 2013)
Cookies, cookies, and more cookies–brownies and bars, too–are the recipe stars of this blockbuster. Comprehensive sections on tools, ingredients, and techniques, plus hundreds of helpful how-to illustrations, guarantee you cookie success. Get a whole new chapter: Gluten-Free Cookies! From bars to biscotti, drop cookies to shortcake, gluten-free versions for the classics are included in this new anniversary edition.

The Low-FODMAP Diet by Sue Shepherd, Ph.D. and Peter Gibson, M.D. (The Experiment, 2013)
“What can I do to feel better?” For years, millions of adults who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) have asked this question, often to be met with scientifically unfounded or inadequate advice. The low-FODMAP diet is the long-awaited answer. In clinical trials, over 75% of people with chronic digestive symptoms gain significant relief by reducing their intake of FODMAPs—difficult-to-digest carbs found in foods such as wheat, milk, beans, soy, and certain fruits, vegetables, nuts, and sweeteners.
Includes dietary guidelines and 80 recipes.
(OK, this one isn’t exactly a cookbook, but try it and if the diet works for you, you can get The Low-FODMAP Diet Cookbook in April 2014.)

Moosewood Restaurant Favorites by the Moosewood Collective (St. Martin’s, 2013) Moosewood Restaurant, founded in 1973, revolutionized vegetarian cooking by introducing delicious soups, satisfying sandwiches, warming casseroles, zesty entrees, spiffy salads, and divine desserts. Moosewood Restaurant Favorites contains 250 of their most requested recipes completely updated and revised to reflect the way they’re cooked now—increasingly vegan and gluten-free, benefitting from fresh herbs, new varieties of vegetables, and the wholesome goodness of newly-rediscovered grains.

Soup Night: Recipes for Creating Community Around a Pot of Soup by Maggie Stuckey (Storey, 2013)
Soup nights are popping up everywhere as a stress-free way to bring neighbors together. The host provides two or three pots of soup, and the guests bring their own dishes and silverware, and perhaps a salad or some bread. Neighbors get to know each other by name, people of all ages connect and socialize, and the neighborhood becomes friendlier and safer. In Soup Night, Maggie Stuckey offers a practical guide to starting your own soup night group, along with 99 delicious soup recipes and 40 recipes for accompaniments.

The Heart of the Plate by Mollie Katzen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) With The Moosewood Cookbook, Mollie Katzen changed the way a generation cooked and brought vegetarian cuisine into the mainstream. In The Heart of the Plate, she completely reinvents the vegetarian repertoire, unveiling a collection of beautiful, healthful, and unfussy dishes — her “absolutely most loved.” Her new cuisine is  light, sharp, simple, and modular; her inimitable voice is as personal, helpful, clear, and funny as ever. Whether it’s a salad of kale and angel hair pasta with orange chili oil or a seasonal autumn lasagna, these dishes are celebrations of vegetables. They feature layered dishes that juxtapose colors and textures: orange rice with black beans, or tiny buttermilk corn cakes on a Peruvian potato stew. Suppers from the oven, like vegetable pizza and mushroom popover pie, are comforting but never stodgy. Burgers and savory pancakes — from eggplant Parmesan burgers to zucchini ricotta cloud cakes — make weeknight dinners fresh and exciting. “Optional Enhancements” allow cooks to customize every recipe. The Heart of the Plate is vibrantly illustrated with photographs and original watercolors by the author herself.

The Snacking Dead: A Parody in a Cookbook by D.B. Walker (Crown, 2013)
For fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead, Max Brooks, and all things zombies, the clever creators of Fifty Shades of Chicken hack a new parody cookbook filled with snacks for every occasion, tips for cooking under duress, and a love story that will send ripples down your spine–all accompanied by food photography that will ignite your palate.
At the heart of this cookbook is Pam Beaumont, who must fight the dead and feed the living. The apocalypse is no picnic, but she survives on quick bites—and on her love for Daryl, a backwoods badass with a crossbow who reminds her that she has more than one appetite. From brain food to finger food, and from sticky sweets to killer cocktails, the 50 recipes in this cookbook parody are guaranteed to grab you.
The zombies have their snack plan—do you have yours?

Happy Weekend Cooking!

Disclosure: I don’t own any of these cookbooks (yet!) but a close relative works for The Experiment, the publisher of The Low-FODMAP Diet and other nonfiction books.

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