We Cooked The Books

Do you know why I hate chef's cookbooks? Because they're usually conceived by some besotted book editor at the wine-soaked end of a long restaurant dinner, with the bravado of "Honey, I can make you a star." Said chef signs the contract, ransacks his kitchen files, flings overcomplicated, undertested recipes onto the page. Then a couple of days of food photography, the requisite jacket shot and presto: Honey's a star. The problems begin once the object of these afflictions, the innocent reader, gets the thing home. After wrestling with an unconscionable number of ingredients--and oh yes, where did that army of prep cooks disappear to?--you turn out a dish so baroque you can't even remember its name in the morning.

So, given the above rant, it surprised me mightily that my top-3 books of the year are actually by chefs. What they share is time spent out of their restaurants, in their home kitchens, refining their wisdom, developing recipes so cookable they quickly become your own.

I would eagerly cross the country--and I have--for dinner at Suzanne Goin's Lucques in Los Angeles. Though her book is only a slice of the restaurant: Sunday Suppers at Lucques goes straight to the home cook's heart, with soulful, satisfying Mediterranean-inspired food that's warm and stylish, with a rigorous eye for purity of ingredients. Her writing is lightened by personality and deepened by memory.

Full disclosure: Richard Wolffe, the man Jose Andres found to help write his cookbook (Andres's English is, how shall I say, ebulliently Spanish), is a colleague, NEWSWEEK's senior White House correspondent. No problem. I'd find it unethical not to report that Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America has quite simply changed the way I cook. The larger-than-life Andres, whose Jaleo and Cafe Atlantico restaurants in Washington, D.C., are among the city's most popular, suavely shakes up your palate with his simple, earthy little dishes, which he's composed with rigorous clarity of ingredients and flavor.

I must confess that once, years ago, I caught myself fire-roasting tomatoes for salsa from Rick Bayless's "Authentic Mexican" cookbook for my son's 4th-birthday party before I realized I was nuts. What I was waiting for, I realize now, is his new book Mexican Everyday, which is not a dumbed-down version of "Authentic," but simpler: the way Rick cooks--and most Mexicans cook--every day. This book is so authoritative, it took Rick 25 years, running his two Chicago restaurants, Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, and a handful of other books before he could write it.

Cookbooks can be living anthropology--hopeful windows into other cultures. We may not reach world peace by reading May Bsisu's The Arab Table, but preparing the saffron and cardamom, cinnamon and cloves for a complex Saudi Arabian Slow-Cooked Lamb is a sensory step toward greater understanding.

You can hear the shush of shoji screens opening onto a discreet culinary sensibility in Washoku, elegantly presented by the American writer Elizabeth Andoh, who has lived in Japan for 40 years. Literally defined as "harmony of food," washoku involves a balance of esthetic and nutritional elements that include color, flavor, cooking method and presentation. We have much to learn from Andoh: above all the Japanese idea of pleasure on a plate. Never fussy or contrived, this is food to cook and enjoy.

So many cookbooks hit you with a barrage of recipes, with nary a thought about how they come together to make a knockout meal. In Simple Soirees Peggy Knickerbocker, writer, cook and great hostess, does the hard work for us in a style we trust (she lives and cooks in San Francisco and Paris). Memorably photographed by Christopher Hirsheimer, her complete menus include Any Excuse for Pork, In Praise of Braising and Someone-Caught-a-Fish-Dinner.

Since Hurricane Katrina brutally shut down one of America's great eating rooms, Galatoire's Cookbook has been the only way to devour its uniquely Creole cooking and atmosphere. Commemorating the centennial of the New Orleans classic, and oozing charm on every page, this family album with recipes is written by Galatoire's CEO, young Melvin Rodrigue (with Jyl Benson), who joyfully declared last week: "The oysters are back!" He plans to reopen Jan. 1. A fresh start for a beloved institution.

Books you prize for their authority are true keepers. The British publisher Kyle Cathie consistently turns out such admirable resources--such as this year's The Game Cookbook, by those passionate BBC advocates of country life, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott. If it has fur or feathers, you'll find the last word on how to prepare it in this quirky, authoritative (and did I mention beautiful?) book. In America, California-based Niman Ranch means the best meat, and when Bill Niman set out to write a cookbook, he could have gotten away with a lot less than this definitive tome. But that's not his style. The Niman Ranch Cookbook roams from sane farming practices to succulent roasts--and everything in between, including those seductive diagrams that show where cuts of beef, pork and lamb come from. Licking pages never raised anyone's cholesterol, so Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best has my vote for best food porn of the year. Breezily written by master cheese man Max McCalman with David Gibbons (photographer, too), it's oh so luscious.

For some of us, cozying up with a great cookbook beats reading a best seller, but lately food memoirs and biographies have become best sellers themselves. Julie Powell's Julie & Julia --chick lit in the kitchen--marks the debut of a true writer's voice. Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, about her years as restaurant critic for The New York Times, is the best volume of her autobiographical trilogy. The Emperor of Wine, by Elin McCoy, examines the terrifying power of America's premier wine critic, Robert M. Parker Jr. In Turning the Tables, Steven A. Shaw, who runs eGullet.com, takes us inside the workings of top restaurants. For me, the most delicious--and controversial--is chef Doug Psaltis's The Seasoning of a Chef . From the wail of outrage the book has provoked, I sense he came close to the truth about working with such masters as Alain Ducasse and Thomas Keller.

When art-book publisher Phaidon Press decided to translate the 50-year-old Italian classic "Il Cucchiaio d'argento" into English for the first time, The Silver Spoon , at 6 pounds, 1,200 pages and 2,000-plus succinctly written recipes, became an object to covet. It's the season's trendiest. Or is it? Spain's Ferran Adria currently holds the Trendiest Chef on the Planet title, and hard-core foodies can't wait to pay $350 for his mammoth slipcased oeuvre elBulli 1998-2002, which just hit the United States this fall. Named after his mecca restaurant near Barcelona, this book is the closest most of us will get to the alchemist in his kitchen.