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Like every food show fan, I’ve seen Gail Simmons on tv for years. But, I somehow never knew her career history until reading her first cookbook Bringing It Home: Favorite Recipes from a Life of Adventurous Eating of which I received a review copy. I was fascinated to learn that she was once Jeffrey Steingarten’s assistant, and her description of the research and ingredient gathering she did in that capacity sounds like a lot of fun. She also worked on Daniel Boulud’s PR team and then on Food and Wine magazine’s marketing team before becoming a judge on Top Chef . Her new book is about what she cooks at home and how her work experience, travels, and family have influenced her cooking. The dishes include breakfast, salads, soups, noodles, seafood, meat, party food, drinks, and sweets. I’ve marked the page for Chocolate Ginger Scones, made with coconut milk and coconut oil, that she makes for her dad who is now vegan. Also, the Beet Cured Salmon is something I’d love to try for the pret...

I’m always on the lookout for vegetarian recipe inspiration, and Middle Eastern food is an excellent source. The latest book from Greg and Lucy Malouf is New Feast: Modern Middle Eastern Vegetarian , and I received a review copy. In the introduction, it’s explained that the climate and terrain of the Middle East is suited to growing a variety of vegetables and less so to raising animals for meat at a large scale. So, we easily find many vegetable, grain, and legume dishes with plenty of herbs and spices. As the authors set out to create this vegetarian cookbook, they wanted to excite people who are trying to eat more plant-based foods and offer some new ideas to those already on that path. The chapters include Breakfast, Breads, Butters and Preserves, Dips and Spreads, Pickles and Relishes, Soups, Stuffed Vegetables, Fritters, Savory Pastries, Raw Vegetable Salads, Cooked Vegetable Salads, Hot Vegetable Dishes, Grains, Rice, Legumes, Pasta and Couscous, Ices, Desserts, Sweet Pastries, ...

I love talking about good food. The details, minutia, and subtleties of what makes particular ingredients so good is the talk I enjoy. As we all know, when you start with the best ingredients, you’ll end up with the best meals. This is exactly the path taken in the recipes in David Tanis Market Cooking: Recipes and Revelations, Ingredient by Ingredient , and I received a review copy. Whether he’s writing about heirloom beans, the fleeting season for perfect tomatoes, or the “vast and remarkable difference between the taste of conventional factory chicken eggs and that of those purchased at a farmers’ market,” it’s the details about the ingredients that matter here. Once you’ve gathered the best you can find, the rest is easy. The recipes aren’t difficult, but they are all devoted to made-from-scratch cooking with instructions for homemade mayonnaise and yogurt to name two. In the recipe for Cucumbers in Yogurt, he explains that commercial Greek yogurt available today is too creamy and ...

When I receive acorn squash from my CSA, it takes me a few days to decide how to use them. My first inclination is always to roast and stuff the halves. But, a recipe in the September issue of Food and Wine gave me a delicious new idea that will work great for all types of winter squash. Baked squash falafel uses mashed, roasted squash in place of chickpeas, but chickpea flour is used to bind the mixture. The star ingredient here was the winter squash, and I get excited to use what’s fresh and in season from our local farms. But, for a recipe like this, it couldn’t have come together without a trip to the grocery store as well. Do you have strong feelings about grocery stores? I’m lucky to have great options for grocery shopping in Austin, and I’ve seen lots of changes to the grocery shopping scene here over the last couple of decades. What got me thinking about that is the new book Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman of which I received a review co...