California Home Cooking

Regional recipes include appetizers, salsas, soups, breads, egg dishes, meat, seafood, desserts, and beverages.

A comprehensive and authoritative cookbook covering California cooking and California cuisine, one that unites several different cuisines: Spanish, Mexican, Asian, and Italian, and that makes use of California's year-round harvest of produce. To pull together four hundred recipes, the author combed through old and current newspapers, cooking magazines, and restaurant menus, and talked with home cooks.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • Celebrated food blogger and best-selling cookbook author Deb Perelman knows just the thing for a Tuesday night, or your most special occasion—from salads and slaws that make perfect side dishes (or a full meal) to savory tarts and galettes; from Mushroom Bourguignon to Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe. “Innovative, creative, and effortlessly funny." —Cooking Light Deb Perelman loves to cook. She isn’t a chef or a restaurant owner—she’s never even waitressed. Cooking in her tiny Manhattan kitchen was, at least at first, for special occasions—and, too often, an unnecessarily daunting venture. Deb found herself overwhelmed by the number of recipes available to her. Have you ever searched for the perfect birthday cake on Google? You’ll get more than three million results. Where do you start? What if you pick a recipe that’s downright bad? With the same warmth, candor, and can-do spirit her award-winning blog, Smitten Kitchen, is known for, here Deb presents more than 100 recipes—almost entirely new, plus a few favorites from the site—that guarantee delicious results every time. Gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of her beautiful color photographs, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is all about approachable, uncompromised home cooking. Here you’ll find better uses for your favorite vegetables: asparagus blanketing a pizza; ratatouille dressing up a sandwich; cauliflower masquerading as pesto. These are recipes you’ll bookmark and use so often they become your own, recipes you’ll slip to a friend who wants to impress her new in-laws, and recipes with simple ingredients that yield amazing results in a minimum amount of time. Deb tells you her favorite summer cocktail; how to lose your fear of cooking for a crowd; and the essential items you need for your own kitchen. From salads and slaws that make perfect side dishes (or a full meal) to savory tarts and galettes; from Mushroom Bourguignon to Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake, Deb knows just the thing for a Tuesday night, or your most special occasion. Look for Deb Perelman’s latest cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers!

“A beautifully photographed . . . introduction to Japanese cuisine.” —New York Times “A treasure trove for . . . Japanese recipes.” —Epicurious “Heartfelt, poetic.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Expand a home chef’s borders” with this “essential guide to Japanese home cooking” featuring 100+ recipes—for seasoned cooks and beginners who crave authentic Japanese food (Martha Stewart Living). Using high-quality, seasonal ingredients in simple preparations, Sonoko Sakai offers recipes with a gentle voice and a passion for authentic Japanese cooking. Beginning with the pantry, the flavors of this cuisine are explored alongside fundamental recipes, such as dashi and pickles, and traditional techniques, like making noodles and properly cooking rice. Use these building blocks to cook an abundance of everyday recipes with dishes like Grilled Onigiri (rice balls) and Japanese Chicken Curry. From there, the book expands into an exploration of dishes organized by breakfast; vegetables and grains; meat; fish; noodles, dumplings, and savory pancakes; and sweets and beverages. With classic dishes like Kenchin-jiru (Hearty Vegetable Soup with Sobagaki Buckwheat Dumplings), Temaki Zushi (Sushi Hand Rolls), and Oden (Vegetable, Seafood, and Meat Hot Pot) to more inventive dishes like Mochi Waffles with Tatsuta (Fried Chicken) and Maple Yuzu Kosho, First Garden Soba Salad with Lemon-White Miso Vinaigrette, and Amazake (Fermented Rice Drink) Ice Pops with Pickled Cherry Blossoms this is a rich guide to Japanese home cooking. Featuring stunning photographs by Rick Poon, the book also includes stories of food purveyors in California and Japan. This is a generous and authoritative book that will appeal to home cooks of all levels.

Recipes and photos from the beloved restaurant: “Perhaps America’s foremost experts on regional food.” —San Diego Magazine Southern California Cooking from The Cottage captures the romance, the relaxation, and the good life of one of Southern California’s most beloved restaurants. Included are the recipes that have made The Cottage a favorite for decades with breakfast items such as muffins, coffee cakes, Greek, Italian, and seafood omelets, Belgian waffles, and oatmeal pancakes. From the lunch and dinner menu there are light Southern California seafood and pasta dishes, signature soups, and salads, as well as traditional American classics. With color photos included, you can recreate this delicious dining experience on your own patio on a sunny summer day—or wherever and whenever you feel like it. Southern California Cooking from the Cottage is part of Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood cookbook series, which celebrates the finest regional restaurants in the United States.

A study of what American cookbooks from the 1790s to the 1960s can show us about gender roles, food, and culture of their time. From the first edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook to the latest works by today’s celebrity chefs, cookbooks reflect more than just passing culinary fads. As historical artifacts, they offer a unique perspective on the cultures that produced them. In Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking, Jessamyn Neuhaus offers a perceptive and piquant analysis of the tone and content of American cookbooks published between the 1790s and the 1960s, adroitly uncovering the cultural assumptions and anxieties—particularly about women and domesticity—they contain. Neuhaus’s in-depth survey of these cookbooks questions the supposedly straightforward lessons about food preparation they imparted. While she finds that cookbooks aimed to make readers—mainly white, middle-class women—into effective, modern-age homemakers who saw joy, not drudgery, in their domestic tasks, she notes that the phenomenal popularity of Peg Bracken’s 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cook Book, attests to the limitations of this kind of indoctrination. At the same time, she explores the proliferation of bachelor cookbooks aimed at “the man in the kitchen” and the biases they display about male and female abilities, tastes, and responsibilities. Neuhaus also addresses the impact of World War II rationing on homefront cuisine; the introduction of new culinary technologies, gourmet sensibilities, and ethnic foods into American kitchens; and developments in the cookbook industry since the 1960s. More than a history of the cookbook, Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking provides an absorbing and enlightening account of gender and food in modern America. “An engaging analysis . . . Neuhaus provides a rich and well-researched cultural history of American gender roles through her clever use of cookbooks.” —Sarah Eppler Janda, History: Reviews of New Books “With sound scholarship and a focus on prescriptive food literature, Manly Meals makes an original and useful contribution to our understanding of how gender roles are institutionalized and perpetuated.” —Warren Belasco, senior editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink “An excellent addition to the history of women’s roles in America, as well as to the history of cookbooks.” —Choice

Winner of a 2023 IACP Cookbook Award and the Golden Poppy Book Award in the Glenn Goldman Cooking category Six California Kitchens is the quintessential California cookbook, with farm-to-table recipes and stories from Sally Schmitt, the pioneering female chef and original founder of the French Laundry. "Schmitt, the founder of California’s famed French Laundry restaurant, reflects on the food that defined her life, in this sumptuous collection of recipes and tales from the kitchens that inspired them. [...] Fans of Alice Waters won’t want to miss this delectable page-turner."—Publishers Weekly Sally Schmitt opened The French Laundry in Yountville in 1978 and designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients—a novel concept at the time. In this soon-to-be-classic cookbook, Sally Schmitt takes us through the six kitchens where she learned to cook, honed her skills, and spent her working life. Six California Kitchens weaves her remarkable story with 115 recipes that distill the ethos of Northern California cooking into simple, delicious dishes, plus evocative imagery, historic ephemera, and cooking wisdom. With gorgeous food and sense-of-place photography, this is a masterful, story-rich cookbook for home and aspiring chefs who cook locally and seasonally, food historians, fans of wine country, and anyone who wants to bring the spirit of Northern California home with them. CALIFORNIA CONNECTION: This is a California cookbook from a native Californian chef, who founded one of the most well-known and revered restaurants in California (and in the world). The book was written, photographed, and designed by members of Sally's family. PERSON OF NOTE: Sally Schmitt is the great unsung hero of California cuisine, a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement, and original founder of the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. This book celebrates a respected, reputable chef and shares a collection of her best recipes from a lifetime of cooking. COMPELLING PACKAGE: This book is full of evocative images of Napa Valley, rustic kitchens, and the rugged California coastline. With lifestyle photography that offers a peek into the history of Northern California and its food revolution, this book will appeal to readers with its lovely design and package—but they'll stay for the inspiring story and approachable recipes. Perfect for: • Home cooks who cook locally and seasonally, who live in California, or who enjoy California cuisine • Foodies who collect regional cookbooks rich with history and visuals • People who bought Twelve Recipes, Zuni, and Gjelina • Fans of the French Laundry and Alice Waters

More than 100 fresh, market-driven, healthy, and flavorful recipes from the award-winning chef of popular LA restaurant Sqirl. Jessica Koslow and her restaurant, Sqirl, are at the forefront of the California cooking renaissance. In Everything I Want to Eat, Koslow shares 100 of her favorite recipes for health-conscious, delicious dishes, all of which always use real foods—no fake meat or fake sugar here—that are also suitable for vegetarians, vegans, or whomever you’re sharing your meal with. Each chapter features a collection of recipes centered on a key ingredient or theme. Expect to find recipes for dishes Sqirl has become known for, as well as brand-new seasonal flavor combinations, including: Raspberry and cardamom jam Sorrel-pesto rice bowl Burnt brioche toast with house ricotta and seasonal jam Lamb merguez, cranberry beans, roasted tomato, and yogurt cheese Valrhona chocolate fleur de sel cookies Almond hazelnut milk Everything I Want to Eat captures the excitement of new California cuisine while also offering accessible techniques that allow home cooks to play with the recipes, shaping meals to be nothing short of everything you want to eat. “Jessica Koslow’s cooking is always in tune with the seasons and I admire her approach to food that is pure and beautiful.” ?Alice Waters, award-winning chef and founder of Chez Panisse and Edible Schoolyard “Everything is genius and every ingredient has a purpose.” —David Chang, award-winning chef and founder of Momofuku restaurant group “Koslow seems to embody nearly everything wonderful about Los Angeles cuisine.” ?Jonathan Gold, food critic for the LA Times