With spring comes new inspiration and new ideas. Renew your enthusiasm in the kitchen with some of the most anticipated cookbooks out this season, from Jeremy Chan to JP McMahon and some cookbook staples, we’ve got you covered with this round-up.
With a new address at 180 The Strand, London, two Michelin stars and a vote of confidence as The World’s 50 Best Restaurants One to Watch 2021, Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale’s West African-inspired innovative restaurant Ikoyi is riding high. It’s an opportune moment for philosopher chef Chan to publish his first cookbook with Phaidon – Ikoyi: A Journey through Bold Heat with Recipes.
Featuring 82 micro-seasonal recipes, with photography by Maureen Evans, Chan guides us through his eclectic cuisine with a thoughtful introduction about his background and influences. Recipes include dishes like varieties of summer squash; cull yaw cured in burned seaweed and asun relish; and brown butter apples, cinnamon berries, custard and rhubarb.
“Although we must respect the growing, sourcing and innate properties of ingredients, it is how we employ them that communicates who we are,”writes Chan, in a book that offers unparalleled insight into the mind of one of the world’s most exciting chef talents.
BAO
With over a hundred recipes all drawn from the BAO restaurant group universe, co-founders Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung invite us into a 240-page collection of BAO's identity, intentions and aspirations through the evolution of their restaurants.
The book pays tribute to the founders’ own personal stories, sharing memories and inspiration from their family histories with photos from family albums. The original bao recipe features along with subsequent creative iterations of the tradition like the classic pork bao filled with sticky pork belly and finished with a dusting of peanut powder; the nostalgic breakfast sausage bao, with a sausage patty and potato rosti; and the shortrib bao, with braised shortrib, gherkin and a dollop of egg emulsion. Sweet treats, such as the ‘Sad Face’ bao with salted egg yolk custard, and the fried Horlicks ice cream bao.
Each BAO restaurant gets its own chapter, all with recipes and their Taiwanese inspiration explained in detail.
An Alphabet of Aniar: Notes for a New Irish Cuisine – JP McMahon
You have to wonder where Irish Michelin star chef JP McMahon gets the time between running one of Ireland’s best restaurants, his academia, writing, activism and of course running the Food on the Edge symposium, but the polymathic chef publishes another cookbook this spring with An Alphabet of Aniar: Notes for a New Irish Cuisine, a collection of recipes and explanations of the cuisine that helped put Ireland and Galway on the gastronomic map at Aniar.
A fascinating insight into McMahon’s experiences and learnings over the last 12 years running Aniar, the book brims with stories and insights on the range of interests and hobbies that take up the chef’s time. The book is intended as a reflective companion piece to his larger and more comprehensive book, The Irish Cookbook, published in 2020.
A Cook’s Book – Nigel Slater
Nigel Slater churns out cookbooks and recipes at an astonishing rate, and yet somehow his approach is always considered and surprising. This book features 150 recipes and all carry the Slater hallmark of being eminently doable for cooks of all levels. His focus on good, comforting, delicious food, without pretention means Slater’s books are written to be kept within arms-reach in the kitchen and can be thumbed through for inspiration for any meal or occasion. Full of tips and advice, Slater always entertains with his opinions on every aspect of food and the food system. Quantity does not take from quality in this recipe book as Slater’s writing seems to only get better, and the chef’s philosophy comes through in every sentence.
Eternal City – Maria Pasquale
Pasquale’s third cookbook opens the door to the traditions and the pasta the fuels the city of Rome. Focusing more on the stalwart trattorias that maintain the ancient culinary pasta traditions of the Eternal City, this is a companion guide to eating like the Romans. With the success of Stanley Tucci’s television series exploring Italian traditions, this book is well timed by Pasquale. It offers a comprehensive guide to Roman cuisine including the city’s four famous pastas – carbonara, gricia, cacio e pepe and amatriciana, and a whole lot more besides.
Lune – Katie Reid
The tagline for this book is ‘Croissants All Day, All Night’, and it is a guide for the ambitious home baker on how to approach one of the world’s most difficult to make, but best loved baked goods, the croissant. Reid shares all her knowledge after 10 years dedicated to the croissant and over 250 pages she takes it off the breakfast plate and fearlessly adds it to any occasion and meal. You’ll never think about the croissant in the same way again.
