From Harlem to China, from traditional to modern, this is our guide to the season’s best new cookbooks.
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“EveryDayCook: This Time It’s Personal” by Alton Brown
Alton Brown’s eighth cookbook is the first in which he offers at least a small peek at the ways he cooks and eats at home. Peeks don’t come easy for Mr. Brown, who has always been more of a controlled showman than a freewheeling chef.
Recipes: Breakfast Carbonara | Char Burgers
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“Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors” by Diana Henry
What distinguishes Diana Henry’s work isn’t just the quantity of recipes she produces, but their quality and originality, particularly in the creativity of her ingredient combinations. Seasoned with Kashmiri chiles, saffron, grape must and tamarind; garnished with pomegranate seeds, fresh mint, dill and parsley; and drizzled with prodigious amounts of sour yogurt, her flavor pairings are intelligently conceived without being pretentious.
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“A New Way to Dinner: A Playbook of Recipes and Strategies for the Week Ahead” by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs
“A Modern Way to Cook: 150+ Vegetarian Recipes for Quick, Flavor-Packed Meals” by Anna Jones
“Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share” by Kristin Donnelly
“Small Victories: Recipes, Advice & Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs” by Julia TurshenEach of these books has its own clear, complete vision for what modern home cooking should look like: comforting, practical, often vegetable-focused and with a global point of view.
Recipes: One-Pot Spaghetti | Swiss Chard Slab Pie
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“Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes From the Culinary Heart of China” by Fuchsia Dunlop
“All Under Heaven: Recipes From the 35 Cuisines of China” by Carolyn PhillipsFor her latest, Fuchsia Dunlop, a British cook and food writer who has been studying Chinese cooking since the mid-1990s, dives deep into the balanced flavors of Jiangnan, the region in eastern China that includes the nation’s largest city, Shanghai. The illustrator Carolyn Phillips takes a broader approach with her book, offering practical advice for cooks in the United States.
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“Everything I Want to Eat: Sqirl and the New California Cooking” by Jessica Koslow
The Venn diagram of Sqirl is the intersection of health food and diner food and Michelin-starred kitchens: sprouted grains, eggs for dinner, a few flashes of dazzling technique. The flavors are from all over the globe, and they feel true without being beholden to particular regions. If it sounds like too much, in the chef Jessica Koslow’s hands it all makes sense.
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“Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Kurdistan” by Naomi Duguid
The author Naomi Duguid’s latest cookbook is a search for Persian cuisine, which includes stops in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Kurdistan.
Recipe: Baku Fish Kebabs
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“Taste & Technique: Recipes to Elevate Your Home Cooking” by Naomi Pomeroy with Jamie Feldmar
In the spirit of Judy Rogers’s “Zuni Café Cookbook” or Paul Bertolli’s “Cooking by Hand,” the chef Naomi Pomeroy, of the restaurant Beast in Portland, Ore., doesn’t want to show off. She wants to hold your hand and take you there — “there” being a land where demi-glace and soufflés are actually cool, and where teaching is preferable to telling.
Recipe: Fennel Gratin
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“My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India Into a Southern Kitchen” by Asha Gomez with Martha Hall Foose
The Atlanta-based chef Asha Gomez’s lack of a classical cooking education is, in part, what makes this cookbook delightful. She intuits the needs and desires of the home cook; a chicken and rice dish is fancy in both name and flavor, but it dirties just one pot.
Recipe: Weeknight Fancy Chicken and Rice
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“Mozza at Home: More Than 150 Crowd-Pleasing Recipes for Relaxed, Family-Style Entertaining” by Nancy Silverton with Carolynn Carreño
“Eat in My Kitchen: To Cook, to Bake, to Eat and to Treat” by Meike PetersBoth “Mozza at Home” from the Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton with Carolynn Carreño and “Eat in My Kitchen” from Meike Peters offer skills for entertaining.
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“Poole’s: Recipes and Stories From a Modern Diner” by Ashley Christensen
In this first book from the chef Ashley Christensen, the North Carolina native collects recipes from Poole’s Diner, her flagship restaurant, in Raleigh, that range broadly from down-home to sophisticated, and from easy to labor-intensive.
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“The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem” by Marcus Samuelsson
The chef Marcus Samuelsson’s latest cookbook maintains that Harlem contains cultural multitudes and bears out the notion with recipes like ham hocks with mustard greens, and arepas, all mixed in with exuberant portraits of neighborhood people.
Recipe: Obama’s Short Ribs
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The Best of the Rest
Ina Garten’s latest cookbook, “Cooking for Jeffrey,” is an ode to her husband, with whom fans have long been on a first-name basis. “Appetites,” Anthony Bourdain’s first cookbook in more than a decade, collects everyday recipes from the chef turned TV personality. The North Carolina chef Vivian Howard, of the PBS show “A Chef’s Life,” has written her first book, “Deep Run Roots,” with her modern Southern cooking.
The baking doyenne Dorie Greenspan is back with “Dorie’s Cookies,” a book devoted to her beloved treats (Google “World Peace cookies”). In the Israeli cookbook “Breaking Breads,” Uri Scheft, of Breads Bakery in Manhattan and Lehamim Bakery in Tel Aviv, offers sweet and savory recipes, as does “Soframiz,” by the chefs Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick, of the Middle Eastern bakery Sofra, in Cambridge, Mass. Genevieve Ko’s “Better Baking” explores how more healthful ingredients (whole grain flours, natural sweeteners) enliven desserts. And Charlotte Druckman goes deep on cast-iron baking with “Stir, Sizzle, Bake.”
“Power Vegetables!” by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach magazine, is a vegetable cookbook like no other, in a good way. “Dinner at the Long Table,” from the restaurateur Andrew Tarlow and Anna Dunn, the editor of the magazine Diner Journal, gathers recipes from the chefs of Mr. Tarlow’s restaurants, which have defined the Brooklyn aesthetic for more than 15 years.
The blogger Molly Yeh’s first cookbook, “Molly on the Range,” collects recipes and notes from her life on a farm on the Minnesota-North Dakota border. And Jenny Rosenstrach, of “Dinner: A Love Story,” returns with “How to Celebrate Everything,” a book with an irresistible premise: that whenever possible, you should bring together loved ones for home-cooked food. Amen.