Last year, I had the pleasure of penning a little cookbook for Bergdorf Goodman. I was approached in my capacity as a freelance writer, but the offer had a special symmetry, given that I was the copy director in the store's advertising department more than 20 years ago. It was a wonderful immersion into the world of high fashion, the very epicenter of all that was chic at that time. (Some people even referred to the store as "church.") Perhaps my favorite achievement was creating a tagline that appeared for several years on all of BG's communications: The only city in the world. The only store in the city. It really seemed to sum it all up. Which is why I was surprised and delighted to discover, when I received my advance copy, that a version of this appears on the cookbook's back cover: One City. One Store. One Restaurant. Plus ça change, and all that...

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Cathy Barrow is a "can do" sort of person. I first crossed paths with her online in the early days of Food52, where she has lately been featured sharing recipes from her recently published cookbook, Mrs. Wheelbarrow's Practical Pantry: Recipes and Techniques for Year-Round Preserving. She's been a landscape designer, a retailer, a marketing consultant and the founder of Charcutepalooza—and I'm positive she's brought to each role the enthusiasm, creativity and competence that characterizes her every move. But I think she's going to be wearing this current hat—should I say toque?—from here on out, because if ever anyone had a calling for the kitchen, it's Cathy. We're all really lucky that she decided to create this preserving bible, because it's loaded with ancient ways and modern techniques for putting food up, plus wonderful ideas for using what's in your stocked pantry. Her recipes don't shy away from plenty of salt, fat and sugar, but she'll also teach you to can your own stock, make pickles of all kinds and even get started making cheese at home. Speaking of salt, fat and sugar, I made her bacon jam. Yes, I said "bacon jam."
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I cook a lot and I own a vast number of cookbooks but, paradoxically, I don't cook from them very often. Mostly, they serve as inspiration for new ingredients, new techniques, new flavor combinations. There are exceptions, of course. Anything to do with baking and I need a recipe. Everything I know about Southeast Asian cuisine, I learned from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, and I have cooked my way through Suzanne Goin's entirely wonderful Sunday Suppers at Lucques. Come fall, Braise by Daniel Boulud is always at hand, as is Tadashi Ono's invaluable Japanese Hot Pots. Nourishing Traditions is a touchstone. These favorites are now dog-eared and annotated, their pages stained with drips and spatters. But it's not so often that a new cookbook becomes part of my weekly repertoire, much less captures my heart. And yet, less than a month after it arrived in the mail, Amy Chaplin's At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen: Celebrating the Art of Eating Well has managed to do both. Read on for the juicy details and a chance to win your very own copy.

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I don't know what to say about the school shootings. We all spent the weekend besieged by those images. I am haunted by the spectre of Adam Lanza—the skeletal face punctuated by wide, alarmed eyes, that strange sculptural cap of hair. Our president says that these tragedies must end, but that is a passive statement. We must end them. Through action. If you have not yet signed this petition, I urge you to do so, and make a contribution to the Brady Campaign as well, if you can.

Period. New paragraph. I haven't yet given you a list of my favorites from this year's crop of new cookbooks, and there were many. I did tell you about Naomi Duguid's wonderful Burma: Rivers of Flavor (my review is here). Andrea Nguyen's Asian Tofu is another excellent one. I look forward to delving into spicemaster Lior Lev Sercarz's newly published The Art of Blending. And I plan to attempt many more experiments under the tutelage of Sandor Katz's essential The Art of Fermentation. But for the sheer temptation of bold, bright flavors packed into relatively quick and easy recipes, I will be turning time and again to Yotam Ottolenghi's new book, Jerusalem, written with his business partner Sami Tamimi.
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More than a decade ago, I was given a cookbook that taught me how to use ingredients in my own kitchen that I had previously enjoyed only in restaurants found deep in ethnic neighborhoods. Fish sauce. Kaffir lime leaves. Sticky rice. This was “Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia,” for which authors Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford—with their two young sons in tow—followed the Mekong River south through southern China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Along the way, they ate from stalls in village streets and learned to cook in the humblest of private homes, absorbing traditional techniques and discovering the kind of authentic food that is a true reflection of people, places and cultures. And they shot roll upon roll of film—intimate portraits, sweeping vistas, the quiet poetry of everyday life.

The result was a gorgeous and enthralling book that served as inspiration for my own travels to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and taught me always to begin with a visit to the local outdoor food market. Naomi and Jeffrey wrote five more books while pursuing the road less traveled—“Seductions of Rice” (2003); “Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World” (2003); “Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent” (2005); “Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China” (2008); and “Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas” (2008)—each one showered with well-deserved praise and awards. The couple divorced in 2009, and Naomi’s first solo endeavor, “Burma: Rivers of Flavor,” is being released by Artisan this week. It’s proof that two heads are not always better than one. I was lucky enough to interview the author by phone late last year when she was finishing work on the book, and have read it in an online galley form thanks to the kind people at Artisan. 

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Much has been said already about Heidi Swanson, a talented writer, photographer and designer with a popular blog, 101 Cookbooks, and cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. With its gorgeous visuals and original approach to healthy eating, her blog really inspired me to create my own. It helped me realize that there is an audience out there of people eager to forgo fast foods and trendy diets in favor of sophisticated cooking with whole foods. Heidi’s got a great aesthetic, an earthy NoCal sensibility and a soulful approach to living. She’s vegetarian but not in a preachy way, and many of her recipes are easily adapted to include meat (or chicken or fish). She likes bright flavors, seasonal produce and ethnic cuisines. In short, a girl after my own heart. So it was with great pleasure that I received a review copy of her new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day: Well-Loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen, already highly acclaimed in the blogosphere and climbing the ranks at Amazon and on The New York Times' bestseller list. It's a beautifully photographed compendium of her favorite everyday preparations, most of them pretty quick and easy. 
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After avidly perusing London-based Yotam Ottolenghi's contributions to The New Vegetarian on The Guardian's website, and reading various reviews of his cookbook (including this one) as it swept the latest Piglet cookbook contest on Food52, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my own copy of Plenty. It looks like there's an American edition coming out in March, but it's not such a big deal to convert to metric if you have a handy kitchen scale like this one. (I use mine constantly, it takes up no space at all, and is so worth the $35.) Ottolenghi, who owns four eponymous restaurants in the UK, is not a vegetarian himself, but the book contains 120 vegetarian recipes that reflect his Mediterranean background, his original and exciting use of fresh ingredients, and his passionate approach to vegetables. I can't wait to get my hands on my copy. In the meantime, I made one of his recipes published in The Guardian and it came out great. This crisp, fresh salad of celeriac, apple, quinoa and poppy seeds is lightly dressed with a tangy sweet-sour dressing.
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Seven years ago, I made a Christmas picnic on top of the bed where my then-husband lay dying of cancer. He was home for the holidays, having just been released from the hospital after undergoing major surgery to remove a part of his spinal column that was infested with tumor. He was grateful just to be able to lie in his own bed and wolf down some foie gras on toast. (He was quite possibly the original glutton for life.) My gift from him that year was a watch, and I remember being painfully aware of the irony. On its face, I would measure the last moments of his life. I could not have imagined then what my own life would become. That I would discover a new fulfillment and joy, that I would marry again, seemed impossible at the time. But we must find a way to forge ahead, to believe in possibility and renewal.
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