The Fall Cookbooks We've Been Waiting All Summer For
High on our list of Good Fall Things (like apples, apple pie, apple cake) that make the impending doom of the end of summer more tolerable? A new batch of fall cookbooks.
The timing couldn't be better: It's cool enough (like, under 90°) to turn on the oven again and we've got stacks of highly-anticipated books in the wings, just begging to be cracked open and cooked from. But with so many titles, where you should you begin? Whether you're a hardcore pasta person or an armchair traveler, our team has a recommendation that will make your reentry into fall (and the kitchen) a lot more delicious.
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Photo by Chelsie Craig1/12If you can pick out pappardelle from paccheri...
After tasting the ricotta-stuffed tortelli with peas and ramps at LA's Trattoria Felix, I understood the hype: Evan Funke is a pasta genius. In American Sfoglino, he dives deep into the art of hand-rolled pasta, sharing his knowledge as a trained sfoglino (the Italian word for “maker of fresh pasta sheets”). He starts with four foundational doughs, then moves through 14 shapes, from tagliatelle to caramelle to gnocchi, and the sauces that suit them best (think pappardelle with wild boar ragù and triangoli with honey and aged pecorino). If you’re looking for a fall cooking project, stop here. —Molly Baz, senior associate food editor
Photo by Chelsie Craig2/12If you know the difference between soul food and soooouuul food...
I’ve watched my mother and grandmothers make deeply satisfying southern food my entire life, but I never acquired the sharp instincts that made their cooking so nourishing: the sense for when golden-brown Johnny cakes need flipping or when okra’s shed its gooeyness for creaminess. But encountering Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee felt like finding the missing variables to some cooking formula that the rest of my family always knew the answer to. Equal parts historical highlight reel and cookbook, Jubilee captures centuries’ worth of joy, pain, and effort from Black chefs across the diaspora and distills them into recipes that carefully guide and educate. Her writing is a precise companion to my mother and grandmothers' trial-by-fire teaching methods—each recipe comes with descriptors of its origins and the many names it may take depending on your cultural and geographic place. When I have a midnight longing for herby, spiced shrimp and biscuits, I can turn to this book for stove-side support (and let my mom sleep). —Jesse Sparks, editorial assistant
Photo by Chelsie Craig3/12If you almost bought a ticket to Japan five times...
As a restaurateur who has run kitchens in Tokyo and New York, Ivan Orkin (of Ivan Ramen) has been studying and cooking Japanese food for more than 30 years. It’s his perspective as a gaijin, or foreigner (Orkin grew up on Long Island and fell in love with Japanese food while working as a restaurant dishwasher), that makes The Gaijin Cookbook so distinct: Instead of trying to write a treatise on Japanese cuisine, he created a highly personal book about what a Jewish guy from New York has soaked up over the years. It’s a good example of how to approach the food of a culture that’s not your own with respect and deference—and oh yeah, it’ll make you want to hop on a plane to Tokyo, stat (or run into the kitchen to make his recipe for soy-marinated tuna). —Andy Baraghani, senior food editor
Buy It: The Gajin Cookbook by Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying, $27 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig4/12If H-Mart is your happy place...
When I moved from L.A. to New York, I lost something essential: access to my Korean friends’ moms, who had introduced me to homemade kimchi and cold naengmyeon. Thankfully, when I was at my most homesick, I found Maangchi, a.k.a. Emily Kim, who showed me how to tenderize galbi and make a superfast kimchi jjigae through her blog and YouTube channel. Reading Maangchi’s Big Book of Korean Cooking is like being on a WhatsApp chain with my friends’ moms. There are photos of ingredients to buy (Sempio soy sauce, tubes of soft tofu) and recipes that go beyond KBBQ (chicken ginseng soup, Korean temple–style vegetables), all in the same tone that makes Maangchi feel like everyone’s auntie. —Elyse Inamine, digital restaurant editor
Buy It: Maangchi's Big Book of Korean Cooking, $25 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig5/12If you have a favorite stand at the farmers market...
There’s no shortage of vegetarian cookbooks out there, but it’s rare that I find one that inspires me page after page as much as Amy Chaplin’s Whole Food Cooking Every Day. It’s the follow-up to the vegetarian chef’s terrific first book, At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen, which I often open when I’m trying to figure out what’s for dinner. Each chapter—like “Baked Marinated Tempeh” or “Genius Whole-Grain Porridges”—provides at least one master recipe (say, Millet Porridge), plus a handful of variations (Savory Millet-Sesame Porridge with Miso). You’ll learn how to tweak a flexible base recipe with what’s in season and what you have in your pantry. And since most of the recipes in the book are designed to keep for five days or longer, you can mix and match a few recipes to make a week’s worth of healthy meals, even on a busy schedule. This weekend, I’m planning to make the zucchini soup with cilantro and jalapeño, sweet corn dressing, and chia bircher breakfast bowls. —Christina Chaey, associate editor
Buy It: Whole Food Cooking Every Day by Amy Chaplin, $28 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig6/12If you keep a lightly-floured surface at the ready...
Never have I felt more tempted to quit my job, move to Boston, and beg Joanne Chang to hire me to work in the pastry kitchen at one of her Flour bakeries than when I had finished dog-earing every page of Pastry Love. Full of detailed instructions and step-by-step process photos for trickier techniques, like shaping spelt croissants or spiraling black-and-white sesame shortbread, it’s my kind of textbook. While there are plenty of recipes I’d be able to make in an afternoon—seedy breakfast cookies, candied almond meringues, ricotta pie with berries—it’s the ambitious undertakings, like choux donuts with mascarpone cream and sticky bun kouign-amann, that have me dreaming of flour-dusted countertops and industrial-size stand mixers. —Sarah Jampel, Basically editor
Photo by Chelsie Craig7/12If you know what we mean when we say "the cookie"...
Even if Alison Roman weren't a BA contributing editor and one of my favorite people in real life, I would still be counting down the days until the release of her second cookbook, Nothing Fancy. The follow-up to Dining In answers the perennial question of what to serve when people are coming over as only Alison can: with legit fun ideas—Pizza Night! Baked Potato Bar!—and unfussy recipes (I've already bookmarked "A Very Good Lasagna" and "Casual Apple Tart."). —Julia Kramer, deputy editor
Photo by Chelsie Craig8/12If you reach for labneh on the reg...
I’m rabid for the halvah in Tel Aviv–based food writer Adeena Sussman’s demure first book, Tahini. So as soon as I opened Sababa, her guide to everyday Israeli food, I beelined for the sweets in the back. But I kept getting sidelined along the way. I flagged the long-cooked Romano beans, the tahini-glazed carrots, and so many other recipes that were both simple and surprising. I never did find a halvah recipe, but I did find a halvah-stuffed coffee cake. And that will surely do. —David Tamarkin, digital director, Epicurious
Photo by Chelsie Craig9/12If mapo tofu is your love language...
I’ve been cooking and studying recipes for 20 years, but I could spend the next 10 with Fuchsia Dunlop’s The Food of Sichuan—an updated version of her seminal 2003 book, Land of Plenty—and I’d learn something new every single day. Dunlop’s scholarly expertise is tempered by the clarity of her writing, and she’s actually got me thinking I can make numbing-and-hot dried beef, fish-fragrant cold chicken, and traditional dan dan noodles. There’s an encyclopedic amount of information in here about the Sichuan larder, equipment, and cooking methods, but somehow even that made my mouth water. This book reminded me of how little I know and made me thankful that experts still exist. —Carla Lalli Music, food director
Buy it: The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop, $38 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig10/12If you're gluten-free but enjoy a flaky pastry (or if you simply enjoy a flaky pastry)...
I’ve been gluten-free for over a decade and following Aran Goyoaga for almost as long. Her blog and first book helped me bake sweets I thought I’d never be able to enjoy after my celiac diagnosis. But still, I’d accepted that I’d likely have to live without loaves of sourdough and flaky pastries. Aran’s latest book, Canelle et Vanille, is changing that: I’m feeding a gluten-free sourdough starter, laminating puff pastry, and kneading pizza dough thanks to her meticulous recipes. The book is a dreamscape of meals for feeding a family or entertaining, like ricotta gnudi with slow-roasted tomatoes and slow-roasted salmon with fennel, citrus, and harissa, that will appeal to everyone. But for me, it’s the baking recipes that I’ll keep coming back for. —Anna Stockwell, senior food editor
Buy It: Cannelle et Vanille by Aran Goyoaga, $23 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig11/12If you don't need an occasion to carbo load...
I recently spent my honeymoon in Italy (wanna see some pictures?) and returned home with an urgent need to eat bread every hour on the hour. And then, as if by magic, a friend gifted me a sourdough starter. I have absolutely no idea what to do with it, but that’s why I’m psyched about Bread on the Table from Austin-based baker David Norman. It goes chapter by chapter through Europe and North America’s various breads, from pain de campagne to ciabatta to tortillas. Norman’s passion for the tactile, time-consuming pleasure of bread-making is infectious and his step-by-step instructions are nice and clear, even for a newbie like me. So watch out, 2020. There’s a new bread bro on these streets. —Hilary Cadigan, associate editor
Buy It: Bread on the Table by David Norman, $35 on amazon.com
Photo by Chelsie Craig12/12If you’re wondering what came before the Noma Guide to Fermentation...
Open-hearth cooking. Zero-waste preservation. Nose-to-tail butchery. There are any number of new guides to these hot topics from pedigreed, of-the-moment chefs—but before you buy those, you should read this year’s beautiful reissue of the 1982 cult classic The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cooking. Put together by a small-but-mighty non-profit dedicated to preserving traditional Appalachian foodways, its recipes, essays, and black-and-white photos serve as a humbling reminder that before certain techniques were buzzwords, they were a means of survival for resourceful people in rural America—and, indeed, all over the world. —Amiel Stanek, editor at large
Buy It: The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery, $38 on amazon.com