Santa’s cooking Keep your home chef on simmer with Free Press's Christmas cookbook ideas By: Wendy King  Posted: 3:00 AM CST Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018

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This article was published 12/12/2018 (2795 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Time to tuck some trinkets and other goodies under the tree for the well-behaved among us. And for the record, everyone who cooks at home is automatically on the “nice list.” For those of you on the naughty list who are anticipating a stocking full of coal, I suggest you consolidate your haul and offer it to the home cook, who might use it as fuel to whip up something good for you.

You coal-monkeys know which side your bread is buttered on and just who butters it, so here is your chance to wrap up something special that shows how much you love the cook in your life and how much you would like them to continue cooking.

Here is the Winnipeg Free Press’s annual round-up of cookbook suggestions to help you along.

Master a Skill

New cooks can always use some pointers and seasoned cooks enjoy seeing how old methods have been updated. Roast Revolution: Contemporary Recipes for Revamped Roast Dinners from Kathy Kordalis, (Ryland Peters & Small, $26.95) will grab their attention.

Roasting has had a bit of a well-deserved revival. It’s fairly straightforward, requires no fancy tools and gives good results. The traditionals are all here: beef, chicken, pork and lamb — but so are the newer kids on the rack — cauliflower, eggplant, cabbages, squash and a variety of fish. Finish it off with desserts and cocktails. There are key pointers on using heat properly, getting the cut right, and bringing vegetables to the centre of the serving plate.

Every new cook should learn how to make a good soup and every good soup maker is always on the lookout for something new in the pot to stir. Souped Up: Deliciously Nutritious Recipes for Satisfying Homemade Soup (Ryland Peters & Small, $19.95) is a collection that will bowl them over.

This is an international collection with recipes for foods that are available seasonally and year round. It starts off with basic stock-making and even includes a de-tox soup.

Soup isn’t the only thing that comes in bowls.

Build-A-Bowl: Whole Grain + Vegetable + Protein + Sauce = Meal by Nicki Sizemore (Storey Publishing,$28.95) shows how to create custom meals that take the pressure off home cooks trying to accommodate different tastes.

There are 77 combinations from fish to fowl to vegan.

The French know the value of a good sauce and mastering the skill as a meal enhancer can add new life to the weekly menu, a lesson that is front and centre in (the not-French) Make-Ahead Sauce Solution: Elevate Your Everyday Meals with 61 Freezer-Friendly Sauces by Elisabeth Bailey (Storey Publishing, $24.95).

This offering has 61 sauces including sausage ragu, Thai peanut, Gorgonzola chive butter, barbecue, coconut lemon, Parmesan leek, cheesy cashew garlic, and Meyer lemon spinach.

Quick reference charts show how to best use them and add some interest to that boring weekday menu that every home cook sighs over.

 

A New Tool for the Kit

One Christmas, when I was a kid, we got a slow cooker, which changed our family menu choices forever. My brother remembers it as the year all his friends got a microwave.

The latest tool in the contemporary kitchen toolkit is the Instant Pot, and to make the best use of all the bells and whistles, the home cook could use some books.

The Modern Multi-Cooker Cookbook: 101 Recipes for Your Instant Pot by Jenny Tschiesche (Peters & Small, $26.95) will guide the cook to use all of the pot’s functions (which means a whole slew of new techniques).

With 101 recipes, it will take them longer to read the book than to cook a meal with it.

The Fix-It and Forget-It Instant Pot Cookbook by Hope Comerford (Skyhorse Publishing Inc., $29.99), from the series affectionately referred to as “Fi-Fi” brings you 100 more recipes that come from other home cooks who want to share their “family-tested” recipes.

This book covers every course from appetizers to desserts.

 

Rainbows and Unicorns

The culinary idealist wants everything to be lovely and Unicorn Food: Beautiful Plant-Based Recipes to Nurture Your Inner Magical Beast by Kat Odell (Workman Publishing Co., $29.95) gives them food from plants in pretty packages.

Seventy-five recipes make good use of everything grown from the ground including superfoods such as flax, coconut oil, spirulina, chia and bee pollen with flavours and colours that not only vegans will enjoy.

Known for their online blog, the Food Gays, Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett bring you this winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Innovative Book from Canada, Cooking in Colour: Vibrant, Delicious, and Beautiful Food (HarperCollins, $39.99).

Global flavours, bright vegetables and more than 90 recipes for “plant-forward” ideas like Roasted Five-Spice Cauliflower; Blackberry, Brie and Arugula Crostini with Honey and Lavender; and Blistered Tomato Soup, and a host of comfort foods will brighten your cook’s day.

 

Pass up the Passport

The armchair food traveller has four tomes to choose from to keep them curled up and reading and cooking until spring.

Copenhagen Food: Stories, Traditions, and Recipes by Trine Hahneman (Quadrille Publishing c/o Chronicle Books, $50) lets you travel through Denmark’s capital city with someone who’s been eating there for 40 years.

Hahneman is your guide through her hometown, sharing photos and stories about the sights and sharing 70 recipes that will give you a taste of the culture.

From there, you can send your home cook to Basque Country: A Culinary Journey Through a Food Lover’s Paradise by Marti Buckley (Artisan, $50).

Let your cook walk through one of Europe’s most distinct cultures, which has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other region in the world.

Buckley, an American transplant to this unique place in northern Spain, shows cooks how to achieve the Basque culinary combination of simplicity and refinement.

You may have noticed an uptick in Filipin- style bakeries and restaurants here in Winnipeg. I Am A Filipino and This is How We Cook by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad (Artisan, $50) will give your cook insight into this latest welcome culinary import to the North American mainstream.

Simple techniques (including braising, broiling and grilling) and a guide to essential ingredients will let your cook transform their kitchen into a “kusina” while enjoying photos and details about this regionally diverse country.

No kitchen is complete without at least one cookbook dedicated to “la cuisine” and Let’s Eat France! by Francois-Regis Gaudry and Friends (Artisan, $75) will dominate the kitchen bookshelf at a hefty 2.7 kilograms.

It’s the cheeky child that follows behind Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking. Encyclopedic in its range, it covers everything there is to know about French cuisine, the chefs, the ingredients, even the food writers and literary icons.

There are tons of recipes that often feature both the traditional version and updated twists. Filled with detailed photos, diagrams and graphics that break up the huge pages into bite-sized morsels, your cook won’t have a picture of French cuisine — they’ll have a full-colour contour map.

Even if they don’t cook a single one of the 375 recipes from it, reading it is just plain fun.

Twitter: @WendyKinginWpg