Perceval - Steak Knives - UBAC - White Krion Handle - Set of 4

Hardcover | Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed | 288 pages

As beautiful as it is practical, this collection of crowd-pleasing recipes from one of the pioneers of New Nordic cuisine shows how to make delicious, seasonal, stress-free food for the people you love.

In his book Nordic Family Kitchen Mikkel Karstad applied his culinary skills to easy family meals. Now he offers the same impeccable flavors, practiced techniques, and laid-back style in a guide to effortless entertaining.

Divided into six occasion-based menus, the book sets the stage for a summer barbecue, a formal Christmas dinner, a relaxed family lunch, a children’s birthday picnic, weeknight supper for friends, and Sunday brunch. Each setting is captured in elegant photographs that reflect an atmosphere of togetherness, friendship, and joyful community.

Karstad’s menus are packed with mouth-watering, vegetable- forward recipes using fresh, seasonal ingredients: grilled zucchini halves with ricotta and tarragon; lettuce wraps with squid, papaya, lime, and chili; vegetable chickpea tagine with coconut milk and mint; buttermilk focaccia with wild herbs and mozzarella; rice pudding with cherry sauce; apricot cake with mascarpone; raspberry lemonade; and a blackberry juice gin and tonic.

In a time when gathering with loved ones is more important than ever, this book helps readers create valuable memories with a minimum amount of fuss and a maximum helping of pleasure.

Hardcover | Prestel Publishing | 240 pages

Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

by David Tanis.
Published by Artisan
Cover: Hardcover
Pages: 294

From the publisher:

Forget about getting back to the land, David Tanis just wants you to get back to the kitchen

For six months a year, David Tanis is the head chef at Chez Panisse, the Berkeley, California, restaurant where he has worked alongside Alice Waters since the 1980s in creating a revolution in sustainable American cuisine. The other six months, Tanis lives in Paris in a seventeenth-century apartment, where he hosts intimate dinners for friends and paying guests, and prepares the food in a small kitchen equipped with nothing more than an old stove, a little counter space, and a handful of wellused pots and pans.

This is the book for anyone who wants to gather and feed friends around a table and nurture their conversation. It’s not about showing off with complicated techniques and obscure ingredients. Worlds away from the showy Food Network personalities, Tanis believes that the most satisfying meals—for both the cook and the guest—are invariably the simplest.

Home cooks can easily re-create any of his 24 seasonal, market-driven menus, from spring’s Supper of the Lamb (Warm Asparagus Vinaigrette; Shoulder of Spring Lamb with Flageolet Beans and Olive Relish; Rum Baba with Cardamom) to winter’s North African Comfort Food (Carrot and Coriander Salad; Chicken Tagine with Pumpkin and Chickpeas). Best of all, Tanis is an engaging guide with a genuine gift for words, whose soulful approach to food will make any kitchen, big or small, a warm and compelling place to spend time.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking meets Dinner: Changing the Game in a beautifully photographed, fresh approach to French cooking and gathering, with 125 simple recipes.

À Table: Recipes for Cooking and Eating the French Way is an alluring, delicious invitation to the French table from Paris-based American food writer and stylist, Rebekah Peppler. It is both a repertoire-building cookbook and a stylish guide that will make readers feel as though they are traveling through France with a close friend.

New York Times contributing writer Rebekah Peppler shares 125 elegant, “new French” recipes that reflect a modern, multicultural French table. With approachable recipes, a conversational tone, and aspirational photography, À Table contains secrets for cooking simple, sophisticated meals and recreating the magic and charm of French life anywhere in the world.

125 ACCESSIBLE RECIPES: Included are classics such as Ratatouille and Crème Brûlée; regional dishes, such as Basque Chicken, Niçoise (for a Crowd), and Alsatian Cheesecake; as well as recipes born of the melding of the cultures and flavors that help define contemporary French eating, from Bigger Bánh Mì and Lamb Tagine to Green Shakshuka.

USEFUL ADVICE: Guidance on shopping, stocking the pantry, and preparing the table, as well as stories on French food culture, make this not just a recipe-driven cookbook but also a chic guide to modern French living.

FOREVER CHIC: French food and the French lifestyle will never go out of style. À Table offers a window into an enviable way of life and is filled with inspiring, useful tips—perfect for Francophiles and anyone who likes to cook and eat good food.

Hardcover | Chronicle | 304 pages

A rendering of food through the memories of family and of home: over ninety plant-based recipes from George Lee, the creator of Chez Jorge, with Laurent Hsia's images of Taiwan.

George Lee grew up with his A-Gong (grandfather) in the quiet refuge of Tamsui, Taiwan. He took part in the myriad Taiwanese food traditions his A-Gong nurtured, until he was seventeen, when his A-Gong passed. In observation of the death, he and his family undertook a set of Buddhist funeral customs and abstained from eating meat. For a hundred days, they ate at the monastery and the nuns there taught him to cook.

Years later, he revisits the lessons and pieces them into the story of his family’s cooking. Some recipes he shares here are directly from childhood: Han-tsî-bê, an everyday breakfast congee floating with fist-sized chunks of golden sweet potatoes, or the quintessential preserve Tshài-póo, crunchy strips of sun-dried daikon radish that salt the air for a few days in January. Others tread the boundaries between old and new: such as Sòo-lóo-pn̄g, a meatless rendition of the hand-cut pork bits his mom braised in soy sauce and ladled over rice.

While writing this book, George wandered all over Taiwan with his friend Laurent Hsia, who took photos along the way. Together, they sought out the foods and places tied to their memories growing up. Like the grandpa who slung a bag of apples along the zebra crossing to exit the morning market, or the old couple on the bus in black and white, sitting side by side and peering forward, the two found themselves . . . always afoot, traveling. A-Gong’s Table follows the rhythm of their footsteps: a pulse that takes you quietly through the book and through Taiwan, from morning to night.

Paperback | Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed | 272 pages

Ad Hoc at Home

Family Style Recipes

by Kathryn Lukas and Shane Peterson.
Published by Artisan.
Cover: Hardcover
Pages: 368

About the Book

Thomas Keller shares family-style recipes that you can make any or every day. In the book every home cook has been waiting for, the revered Thomas Keller turns his imagination to the American comfort foods closest to his heart—flaky biscuits, chicken pot pies, New England clam bakes, and cherry pies so delicious and redolent of childhood that they give Proust's madeleines a run for their money. Keller, whose restaurants The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se in New York have revolutionized American haute cuisine, is equally adept at turning out simpler fare.

In Ad Hoc at Home—a cookbook inspired by the menu of his casual restaurant Ad Hoc in Yountville—he showcases more than 200 recipes for family-style meals. This is Keller at his most playful, serving up such truck-stop classics as Potato Hash with Bacon and Melted Onions and grilled-cheese sandwiches, and heartier fare including beef Stroganoff and roasted spring leg of lamb. In fun, full-color photographs, the great chef gives step-by-step lessons in kitchen basics— here is Keller teaching how to perfectly shape a basic hamburger, truss a chicken, or dress a salad. Best of all, where Keller’s previous best-selling cookbooks were for the ambitious advanced cook, Ad Hoc at Home is filled with quicker and easier recipes that will be embraced by both kitchen novices and more experienced cooks who want the ultimate recipes for American comfort-food classics.