Cookbooks to Delight and Inspire

The parties and festivities are in full swing. If you are looking for a good cookbook to give to a friend who loves to cook, try any of these. Not all are specifically kosher per se, but all contain scores of recipes that can enhance a kosher repertoire.

Baking for All Occasions
Flo Braker
Chronicle Books, 2008
This gets my vote for best baking book of the year. Braker is an inspiration. In Part One: The Baking Primer, she explains fundamental baking techniques in a warm but down-to-earth manner that will appeal to both long-time and novice bakers. There are more than 200 delectable recipes and interesting “tricks of the trade.”

1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes
Carol Fenster
Wiley Publishers, 2008
Because a careful diet is the only treatment for celiac disease, preparing food at home is the best way to know what’s really on your plate. Grilled Teriyaki Tuna, Crispy Baked Smashed Potatoes and Cranberry Shortbread Bars can be served to the whole family with rave reviews.

2500 Recipes: Everyday to Extraordinary
Andrew Schloss with Ken Bookman
Robert Rose Publishers, 2007
True to their passion and expertise, the authors have created a recipe compendium sparked by the success of their parent book, “Fifty Ways to Cook Most Everything.” In Basic Techniques for Cooking Anything — From Blanching to Zesting, they clear up every culinary mystery. Baking Techniques explains how to assemble a potpie, and Cooking Basics teaches how to make baffling items like a roux or a slurry. All of the recipes are brief but clearly written. In each of the 50 chapters, there are 50 recipes, all easy to follow. This cookbook will be a constant reference guide.

Upper Crusts – Fabulous Ways to Use Bread
Sheilah Kaufman
Capital Books, 2007
This is not a book about how to bake breads. “Upper Crusts” is a tantalizing collection of recipes using bread as the basic ingredient. These are recipes for using stale, leftover breads; sourdough, rolls or croissants — whatever you may have in your pantry. There are dozens of useful cooking tips, plus fun tidbits on the history of the world’s “staff of life.”

Single Malt Scotch
Bill Milne and Roddy Martine
Michael Friedman Publishing, Inc., 1997
For anyone who has a taste for single malt Scotch (not the blended variety), this book is a glorious celebration of the amber water of life’s history, culture and place in society. Single malt Scotch whisky has been celebrated, maligned, taxed and smuggled. The author and photographer have combined their talents to produce a magnificent volume in which romance, tradition, mystery and warmth surrounding Scotch whisky are vividly brought to life. There is a detailed history of distilling, a step-by-step account of the actual process of making whisky as it is practiced in the traditional Scottish distilleries, and a brief description of the many distilleries that cover the ancient landscape. Included are instructions for a traditional Burns Supper which each January celebrates the birth of Robert Burns, the famous Scottish bard.

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