The Cookshelf: Spring 2018

Cultured Food in a Jar
By Donna Schwenk
$19.99
978-1-4019-5126-9
Hay House

Cultured Food in a Jar is the perfect antidote to the over-indulgences of the holiday season. When your gut is out of balance, so is your life. Schwenk’s book helps you make healthy, transportable, delicious cultured food recipes to get your gut back into alignment. With step-by-step instructions on how to make basic kefir, kombucha, and cultured vegetables, these well-tested, probiotic rich recipes are sure to energize the adventurous home chef. For ease of sticking with the program, recipes are designed for portability. Grab a Raspberry Three-Seed Kefir for breakfast, enjoy a snack of Earl Grey Tea Pickles, and finish your gut-healthy day off with Cultured Cinnamon Apples.

Dinner in An Instant
By Melissa Clark
$22.00
978-1-5247-6296-4
Potter

The Instant Pot was one of the most gifted items of the 2017 holiday season, and for good reason! Technology has come a long way since your mother’s vaguely terrifying (and certainly intimidating) hissing, rollicking stove top monster. Even with user-friendly technology updates, it can still be a little nerve-racking to get started. The seventy-five convenient, weeknight-friendly recipes in Dinner in An Instant focus on foods that are better made in the pressure cooker, as well as variations on some recipes that can be adapted for the slow cooker. The Instant Pot can help create delicious dinners, including Homemade Ricotta, Classic Boeuf Bourguignon, Hummus, and Steamed Lemon Pudding.

Essential Slow Cooker Recipes
By Addie Gundry
$19.99
978-1-250-12338-1
St. Martin’s Griffin

With very little effort, a slow cooker makes work intensive recipes manageable for the home cook who is pressed for time. This book is easy enough for the novice cook, containing new twists on classics like Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches and Corned Beef and Cabbage, as well as interesting enough for more seasoned home chefs, including recipes you would never think of preparing in a crock pot—Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, Sweet-and-Savory Party Mix and Monkey Bread. Full page, color photography rounds out this wonderful companion to creating fuss-free, comforting foods.

Spiralize & Thrive
By Dalila Tarhuni
$19.99
978-1-5107-0899-0
Skyhorse Publishing

Spiralizers are amazing little gadgets! Not only are they fun to use, they are incredibly useful for sneaking vegetables into all sorts of recipes. With very little effort, beautiful ribbons of vegetables can be combined to create delicious, nutritious meals. Every recipe in Spiralize & Thrive is easy to prepare, contains nutrition facts per serving, and has indicators for suitability for specialized diets, including gluten-free and low-carb. Wake up with Butternut Squash, Hemp Seed and Quinoa Muffins, enjoy a light lunch of Pear and Persimmon Salad with Orange-Tarragon Dressing, and end your day deliciously with Parsnip Spaghetti with Lemon, Mascarpone Cheese and Walnuts.

Foolproof Preserving
By America’s Test Kitchen
$26.95
978-1-940352-51-0
America’s Test Kitchen Publishing

America’s Test Kitchen is a real 25,00 square foot kitchen located outside Boston. Their cookbooks are the gold standard for meticulously researched and tested recipes and every recipe includes detailed explanations about why each recipe works and how they settled on the very best version of each dish. Canning can seem complicated and overwhelming; this book is perfect for the beginner, and includes chapters on the science of canning, troubleshooting common problems, and a comprehensive list of equipment you need to have on hand to make the process most efficient. With chapters on savory fare, including Pickled Curried Cauliflower and Bloody Mary Pickled Asparagus, and covering more traditional preserved goodies like Spiced Pears in Syrup, Concord Grape Jelly and Classic Fruit Cocktail.

The Airfryer Cookbook
By Williams-Sonoma Test Kitchen
$14.95
978-1-68188-016-7
Weldon Owen Publishing

A great little introduction on how to use the airfryer that showed up under your Christmas tree! This handy book is a perfect primer for the airfrying novice, including such valuable tidbits as basic functions, accessories, and cooking and cleaning tips. Airfrying requires almost no oil and produces the same crispy exterior found in deep-fried fare. More than twenty fast, easy and healthy recipes include diverse offerings such as Banana-Walnut Bread, Zucchini Fries, Thai Red Curry Fish Fillets and Triple-Chocolate Brownies.