This week's cookbook finds!

We live a very spoiled life here in Port Orchard. Every week brand new cookbooks come into our lives. Some are spectacular, some are stupendous, some make me want to race home and fire up the stove to make wonderful and delicious things. But with this plethora of new cookbooks coming at us almost daily, that means that there are countless thousands of titles languishing on our library shelves,and if not here, on shelves of local big box bookstores and second hands alike. I am here to help fill in the gap between the brand spanking new and the books that are calling out to be seen, appreciated and used.

This week, in setting up a bibliography for a cooking resource class we will be holding later on this year, I came across three very nice looking titles. They represent three different types of cooking, are all fairly new, all slightly compact and lacking of gloss. But what they lack in "WOW" they give back in value, quality, incredible recipes and style.

The Produce Bible: essential ingredient information and more than 200 recipes for fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts by Leanne Kitchen, forward by Deborah Kitchen,
Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2007

We can all use a good guide to vegetables around the house, if anything to take us out of that midweek rut that says that we can throw a salad or some steamed brocolli at the troops and everything will be alright. Take a cruise though your local supermarket or your local farmer's market and you might see a few or dozens of mysterious fruits and vegetables that you've never tasted or ever seen. Some may have landed in your crisper but languished and then turned into science experiments only because you didn't know what to do with them!

Leanne Kitchen's Produce Bible will help you out with that problem. This books is filled beautiful photographs, information on use, selection and storage, varieties and preparation of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts. It is very user friendly, a guide that will help you feel good about using rutabaga and kumquats, okra and lemongrass, rhubarb and pomegranates again, or even for the first time. Highly recommended for beginners, but an asset for those cooks who want or need a refresher course in locally grown produce.

Recipes to try right away: Finnish Cream-baked Casserole, Pear Tarte Tatin, Sweet Potato Ravioli, Tsatsiki and Rhubarb and Apple Upside Down Cake.

Bake Until Bubbly: The Ultimate Casserole Cookbook by Clifford A. Wright, Wiley, 2008

There's nothing quite like coming home and opening the door and smelling that smell that only a bubbling hot casserole can produce. It's a combination of the senses..the heat as hits your chilled face, the way that your nose perks up to the scents of hot, bubbling cheese, the withering assault to your work fatiqued brain knowing you will soon engage your other senses..taste, sight and sound, when you spoon out a heaping portion of casserole and spoon it into your mouth and sigh. What a treat that can be.

So let it happen tonight or today or this week in your home. Clifford Wright's Bake Until Bubbly is a utilitarian compilation of recipes. Don't expect colorful photographs or how to illustrations here. This is a phone book sized cookbook chock full of the standards we all love, like Macaroni and Cheese and Stuffed Rigatoni, but also new and exciting recipes for dishes like Sausage, Red Bean and Apple Casserole, or Potato, Bacon and Gruyere Casserole, or that old Cape Cod favorite, Kedgeree. There are recipes here that you won't find elsewhere, such as Karelian Hot Pot or Tuscan inspired Roasted Vegetables of the Full Moon. It's full of ideas for leftovers, innovative in use of things you need to use up and turn into something else. Isn't that what casseroles are all about? Reinventing and recombining foods and turning them into fantastic new dishes?

The Border Cookbook: Authentic Home Cooking of The American Southwest and Northern Mexico by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison, foreword by Mark Miller, Harvard Common Press, 1995

Is there such a thing as too many good Mexican food cookbooks? We are a nation addicted to Tex Mex, to cheesy, saucey and overly prepared foods lacking in spice, originality and freshness. We come away from all too many Mexican eateries without really tasting Mexican cuisine. Not that I'm complaining, but there's a world of flavors to be tried out there. Why not make some of them at home? Well, make them at home providing you have access to some fairly unusual ingredients, that is.

The Border Cookbook by the Jamisons is not only James Beard award winner but it's a mighty fine cookbook as well. The illustrations are sparce, but it is thorough and concise, friendly and nicely laid out. The recipes range from appetizers to desserts, and use all manner of ingredients you'll find in bigger supermarkets, larger cities and in smaller tiendas in the barrios of your communities. Be sure to try out the Green Corn Tamales, Sonoran Menudo Blanco, the classic Chiles en Nogada and a simple, unpretentious pot of Frijoles de Olla. Be sure to follow up those toothsome recipes with some tasty and easy to prepare desserts. Try your hand at fried Bunuelos with syrup, or Sopaipillas with honey butter, the Mexican bread pudding Capirotada or even a simple flan.

So take a look in one of these delightful books or take a peek in some of the many hundreds of other titles we have available in our catalog. The recipes will not confound you, they will console you and will happily send you straight into the kitchen to prepare many delicious things to amaze and delight your friends and family

Cooks talk!