Copperfield's Books and The News and Talk of Sonoma County 1350 KSRO present 10 Cookbooks Cooks Will Love!

 

Not sure what to buy for the foodie on your list? Need something for the college grad just learning her way around the kitchen? Want the perfect cookbook for your baker buddy? Copperfield's Books has just what you're looking for!

 

Listen to The Drive with Steve Jaxon and The Good Food Hour with Chef John Ash to find out more about these great titles, plus get a chance to WIN your very own copy!

 

For more great gift ideas, head to copperfieldsbooks.com and support your local bookseller. Click here to see a list of 34 Reasons Books Will Never Die.

 

The craft of baking is based on good technique. Learn the fundamentals well, and you can bake perfect cakes, cookies, tarts, breads, and pastries each and every time.

That's the premise of Baking, revered cooking teacher James Peterson's master course in baking fundamentals. In more than 350 recipes and auxiliary techniques--most accompanied by illuminating step-by-step photographs--Peterson lays the foundation for lifelong baking success.

This book teaches you how to build finished baked goods from their essential components, providing both maximum guidance for less experienced bakers and great creative freedom for more confident bakers. The Cakes chapter, for example, presents basic cake recipes (Moist Sponge Cake, Devil' s Food Cake) followed by frostings, fillings, and glazes (Professional-Style Buttercream, White Chocolate Ganache), allowing you to mix and match endlessly. Or, if you're looking for knockout assembled cakes, go to the end of the chapter and discover complete illustrated instructions for, say, a decadent Chocolate Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Filling and Hazelnut Buttercream, or an elegant Peach Crème Mousseline Cake.

 

Listen to The Drive with Steve Jaxon on Wednesday, December 16th for an interview with Jim Peterson, author of Baking.

 

Coco is an exciting, unprecedented guide to the most exceptional talent in the international restaurant world. Following in the footsteps of Phaidon's successful 10x10 series featuring emerging young artists in different fields, such as contemporary art (cream, Fresh Cream, Cream 3, and Ice Cream), architecture (10x10 and 10x10_2), photography (BLINK), and graphic design (Area, and Area 2), Coco presents 100 of the best emerging chefs from around the world selected by 10 superstar chefs: Ferran Adrià (Spain), Mario Batali (USA), Shannon Bennett (Australia), Alain Ducasse (France), Fergus Henderson (UK), Yoshihiro Murata (Japan), Gordon Ramsay (UK), René Redzepi (Denmark), Alice Waters (USA), and Jacky Yu (Hong Kong). The selected 100 chefs are creating the most innovative cuisine today. From Singapore to New York, Stockholm to Surrey, Hong Kong to Paris, these chefs are pushing their craft to new heights and are beginning to receive international attention for their cooking.

Arranged alphabetically by chef, the book will present each chef over two spreads with a sample menu and signature recipes, original color photographs of the recipes and of the restaurant, the chef at work, and the chef's environment, including farmers' markets and favorite ingredients. The chef-curators present each of their selected chefs in the form of short insightful essays, and also discuss one specific dish that has had a particular significance throughout their life or career, accompanied by a recipe and photograph of the dish.

Part cookbook, part guide to the world's best new restaurants, and part who's who of the international food scene, Coco showcases the cooking of today's best new chefs, as chosen by 10 international culinary stars.

 

Listen to Steve Jaxon interview Chris Cosentino, Incanto Restaurant, a featured chef in the book COCO.

 

 

 

The legendary vegetarian food served at California's Tassajara Zen Mountain Center is easy to create for your family and friends by using the recipes and guidelines provided here by Tassajara's renowned Zen priest-chef, Edward Espe Brown. This book is a compilation of three of Brown's most popular books: Tassajara Cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, re-edited and updated throughout, with new recipes and beautiful line art.

The book is a collection of spectacular recipes (from Cardamom-Lemon Soda Bread to Tassajara Smoked Cheese and Spinach Pie), but it's more than that. It's a Zen philosophy of cooking. Edward Brown shows that the care you give any ingredient affects not only the dish, but also those who prepare it and eat it. Brown's cooking style focuses on fresh, seasonal ingredients and whole foods. From soups to desserts, he presents over three hundred easy-to-prepare recipes, along with teachings that urge the reader to have fun cooking, to experiment, and even to delight in the fact that not all dishes come out perfectly. His Zen insights offer keys for living a life that celebrates the preparation and enjoyment of simple food.

 

Do you want to eat really well–not just once in a while, but all the time–but you don't know where to begin?

Are you tired of pizza–much as you like it–and broke from buying takeout?

Do you love good food–the straightforward homemade kind–but feel challenged to set up a kitchen, shop for decent equipment and groceries, and tap into a few basic skills that can put a simple roast chicken or vegetarian entrée on your dinner table?

If your answers to these questions are "yes," then get cooking is for you.

get cooking is the first book from bestselling cookbook author Mollie Katzen designed specifically for beginners, whether you are just starting to cook for yourself or trying to kick the restaurant habit. Unlike most cookbooks, the goal in get cooking is to get you in the kitchen, no matter what your experience level might be. Illustrated throughout with color photographs of each dish, Mollie gives you clear, step-by-step instructions for making everything from classic mashed potatoes to Broccoli-Cheddar Cheese Calzones to Hot Fudge Sundaes (with homemade hot fudge!). With this book, anyone–(you included)–can make delicious, fresh food, with a lot less expense (and a lot more satisfaction) than ordering in.

 

In no other period of our country's history has the food scene changed so rapidly. Exciting new ingredients are available everywhere, expanding our culinary horizons. Even casual meals have globe-trotting flavors. We want memorable dishes, and we want them to be healthy for our families and our planet. And with our busy schedules, we want them on the table faster than ever.

 

A new culinary world calls for a new cookbook. Gourmet Today responds to our changing foodscape with more vegetarian recipes, more recipes for popular dishes from every corner of the world, more recipes for stunning meals ready in 30 minutes or less, more simple ways to prepare all the vegetables in the farmers' market, advice on choosing sustainable fish, chicken, and beef, tips on throwing an easy cocktail party, more recipes for flavorful techniques like grilling, and more recipes for the new ingredients flooding our market.

Each of the over 1,000 recipes was selected by editor in chief Ruth Reichl, a best-selling author in her own right, who wrote the introductions to each chapter. Every recipe has been tested and cross-tested in the Gourmet test kitchen so every cook, whether a first-timer or a veteran, gets impeccable results.

 

With menus for holidays and other seasonal occasions, an authoritative glossary of ingredients (plus mail-order sources), and hundreds of sidebars on ingredients and handy techniques from the test kitchen, Gourmet Today is the indispensable book for today's cook.

 

Mark Bittman's award-winning How to Cook Everything has helped countless home cooks discover the rewards of simple cooking. Now the ultimate cookbook has been revised and expanded (almost half the material is new), making it absolutely indispensable for anyone who cooks-or wants to. With Bittman's straightforward instructions and advice, you'll make crowd-pleasing food using fresh, natural ingredients; simple techniques; and basic equipment. Even better, you'll discover how to relax and enjoy yourself in the kitchen as you prepare delicious meals for every occasion.

 

Mark Bittman, one of the country's best-known and widely admired food writers and television personalities, is known for his candor, straightforward, no-nonsense style, and simple recipes. He is the creator of the beloved New York Times cooking column "The Minimalist" (now in its eleventh year), accompanying web videos, and daily blog; he's the author of several blockbuster cookbooks; and he appears regularly on both commercial and public television, where he has his own series.

 

The bible of French home cooking, Je Sais Cuisiner, has sold over 6 million copies since it was first published in 1932. It is a household must-have, and a well-thumbed copy can be found in kitchens throughout France. Its author, Ginette Mathiot, published more than 30 recipe books in her lifetime, and this is her magnum opus. It's now available for the first time in English as I Know How to Cook. With more than 1,400 easy-to-follow recipes for every occasion, it is an authoritative compendium of every classic French dish, from croque monsieur to cassoulet.

Clear, practical and comprehensive, it is an essential guide to the best home cooking in the world: no cuisine is better than French at bringing the very best out of ingredients to create simple, comforting and delicious dishes. The recipes have been carefully updated by a team of editors led by Parisian food writer Clotilde Dusoulier, to suit modern readers and their kitchens, while preserving the integrity of the original book. The great reputation of I Know How to Cook has been built over three generations by the fact that it is a genuine cookbook: each recipe has been cooked many times, and because it is used by domestic cooks rather than chefs. And with its breadth of recipes and knowledge of techniques, I Know How to Cook doesn't just teach you how to cook French, it teaches you how to cook, period.

 

Listen to The Drive with Steve Jaxon on Wednesday, December 9th for an interview with Clotilde Dusoulier, editor of I Know How to Cook.

 

With organic and seasonal cooking principles becoming ingrained in today’s kitchens, and new buzzwords including locavore and CSA steadily gaining traction, how do we integrate food politics into daily life in ways that are convenient, affordable, and delicious? Lucid Food offers more than eighty-five healthy, eco-oriented recipes based on conscientious yet practical environmental ideals. Sustainable chef and caterer Louisa Shafia demystifies contemporary food issues for the home cook and presents simple, seasonal dishes that follow nature’s cycles, such as Baby Artichokes with Fresh Chervil, Apricot Shortcake with Lavender Whipped Cream, and Roasted Tomato and Goat Cheese Soup. Her empowering advice includes how to source animal products ethically and responsibly, support local food growers, and reduce one’s carbon footprint through urban gardening, preserving, composting, and more. This cookbook celebrates the pleasures of savoring home-prepared meals that are healthful, honest, pure, additive-free, and transparently made, from the source to the table.

 

Listen to Steve Jaxon's interview with Louisa Shafia, author of Lucid Food:

 

 

Maître fromager Max McCalman, author of The Cheese Plate and Cheese, is steeped in the world of artisanal cheeses like no one else. In Mastering Cheese, he shares the wealth of his expertise to help cheese lovers on their path to connoisseurship.

After years of teaching courses for amateurs at the Artisanal Premium Cheese Center, where he is Dean of Curriculum, McCalman has developed a compelling set of classes for understanding and ex-periencing cheese. A full master's course in a book, Mastering Cheese covers the world of cheese in twenty-two distinct lessons, featuring tasting plates that deliciously demonstrate key topics. For example, a chapter titled "Stunning Stinkers" explains why some of the strongest-smelling cheeses can be among the best tasting and then recommends several stars of this category. Learn about the issues facing real raw-milk cheeses and then go out and taste the differences between these cheeses and those made with pasteurized milk.

For the first time in any of his books, McCalman includes extensive information on the modern artisanal cheese revolution in the United States and prominently features these artisans and their products alongside the famous cheeses of Italy, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Complete with helpful charts and an invaluable index of more than 300 cheeses, Mastering Cheese is the definitive course that you can use in your own home to pursue your passion for cheese.

 

Never before has there been a phenomenon like Momofuku. A once-unrecognizable word, it's now synonymous with the award-winning restaurants of the same name in New York City: Momofuku Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar, Ko, and Milk Bar. Chef David Chang has single-handedly revolutionized cooking in America with his use of bold Asian flavors and impeccable ingredients, his mastery of the humble ramen noodle, and his thorough devotion to pork.

Momofuku is both the story and the recipes behind the cuisine that has changed the modern-day culinary landscape. Chang relays with candor the tale of his unwitting rise to superstardom, which, though wracked with mishaps, happened at light speed. And the dishes shared in this book are coveted by all who've dined—or yearned to—at any Momofuku location (yes, the pork buns are here). This is a must-read for anyone who truly enjoys food.