Here are 84 books that AMA fans have personally recommended if you like
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Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.
Longing for the food from home yet finding her quest unobtainable to fulfil, Lisa Fain, a 7th generation Texan, took matters into her own hands and began exploring ways to recreate Tex-Mex dishes in her NYC apartment. From this process a cookbook was born. The Homesick Texan is for every armchair traveler who wants to recreate a little bit of Texas, not matter where they may be at the moment.
When Lisa Fain, a seventh-generation Texan, moved to New York City, she missed the big sky, the bluebonnets in spring, Friday night football, and her family's farm. But most of all, she missed the foods she'd grown up with.
After a fruitless search for tastes of Texas in New York City, Fain took matters into her own hands. She headed into the kitchen to cook for her friends the Tex-Mex, the chili, and the country comfort dishes that reminded her of home. From cheese enchiladas drowning in chili gravy to chicken-fried steak served with cream gravy on the side, from…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Flores family for hiring me on as a busier/bartender shortly after I moved to Tucson from Ohio in 1993. Carne Seca, albondigas and topopo were all new words to me that have since become embedded in my daily experience.
Carlotta Flores published a cookbook of recipes from the restaurant in 1998 and I reference it often in my own cookbook, Taste of Tucson. It’s a must-have book for anyone interested in learning more about Sonoran style Mexican food.
Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.
The Border Cookbook will teach you just about everything you need to know about the many different styles of Southwestern cuisine from the southern border regions. Trailing from northern Mexico to southern California, across Arizona and up through northern New Mexico, the book is organized by recipe instead of region so you can see how ingredients are uniquely utilized. Headers explain the history and regional significance of each dish.
Now more than ever, Southwestern food is a hugely popular trend. As ingredients are becoming more readily available to at-home cooks, there is a great demand for simple, delicious, and authentic recipes that bring Mexican and Southwestern food to our own tables. In their James Beard Book Award-winning cookbook, authors Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison combine the best of Mexican and Southwest cooking, bringing together this large region's Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo culinary roots into one big, exuberant book-The Border Cookbook. In over 300 recipes they explore the common elements and regional differences of border cooking. They…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
Jackie Alpers is an award-winning professional food photographer and author. She is a longtime contributing recipe developer & photographer for The Food Network, Refinery29, TheKitchn, TodayFood, Real Simple, National Geographic, and Edible Baja Arizona Magazine among others. She has been featured in articles for Reader’s Digest, CNN, Good Morning America, The New York Times & NPR. She writes, cooks, and styles recipes from her sun-lit studio in Tucson, Arizona.
Can a cookbook change the course of your life? Perhaps. I attended art school in the late 1980’s. A favorite Sunday morning diversion was wandering through the aisles of the nearby Book Loft in Columbus, Ohio. One day I came across the Coyote Cafe Cookbook and my life was subtly changed forever. It put the seed of what would grow into a passion for Southwestern cuisine into my being, and it may have been part of the catalyst for me moving to this region. The recipes are intriguing and a little fancy. Cooking from this book is a treat.
Now in paperback!When Mark Miller opened the doors of Santa Fe'¬?s Coyote Cafe in 1987, the face of American cuisine changed forever. Blending centuries-old culinary traditions with modern techniques, Miller pioneered the emerging Southwestern cuisine, earning accolades and thrilling diners at the Coyote with his robust, inspired cooking. Originally published in 1989, COYOTE CAFE was Miller'¬?s first cookbook, and it has since sold over 200,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling full-color cookbooks ever. Nearly 15 years later, with Southwestern influences entrenched in kitchens across the country, we'¬?re excited to make this landmark book available to a new generation…
The passion I have for food was born during my childhood in France when I learned how to cook and bake with my mother, and it never faded away. I still continue to explore, and I have the chance to participate in more than sixty tastings a year. When traveling, I always prepare my trips by searching the web for unique restaurants, coffee roasters, breweries, and local bakeries. When I interview culinary leaders, I am curious about their innovation and their creative process. Chef Elizabeth Falkner wrote in my book foreword, “Emmanuel genuinely seems like he is trying to solve a puzzle, which is why his book is an important piece of writing.”
I worked my whole career in the flavor industry, so when Sarah Lohman published her book in 2016, I grabbed it from the shelves of the Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore in NYC. The book focuses on eight flavors, black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and sriracha, and traces back to when they first appeared in American cuisine. Lohman introduces the readers to a series of characters like explorers, merchants, botanists, farmers, writers, and chefs. For instance, in the first two chapters, we meet John Crowninshield, a merchant from New England who visited Sumatra in the 1790s to look for black pepper. And Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave who lived on an island off the coast of Madagascar, was the one who randomly discovered the pollination method of the vanilla orchid flower that is still employed today on the island that produces eighty percent of…
“Very cool…a breezy American culinary history that you didn’t know you wanted” (Bon Appetit) reveals a fascinating look at our past and uses long-forgotten recipes to explain how eight flavors changed how we eat.
The United States boasts a culturally and ethnically diverse population that makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But a young historical gastronomist named Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. In “a unique and surprising view of American history…richly researched, intriguing, and elegantly written” (The Atlantic), Lohman sets…
I’m a writer and history buff who loves to make fiction out of facts. For me, the best stories are imagined out of truths we have all lived, real places that are mapped in our memories, real people whose names conjure events, past times that are prelude to our own. I like to read books built on plots and puzzles, so I write mysteries. I love books about real people, so I write biographical novels bent around the secret selves of people we only thought we knew: Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe.
Food history—why and how and what we eat—is one of my favorite topics. The first edition of Irma Rambauer’s The Joy of Cooking inspired 1930s American cooks to make an eight layer cake, a celery aspic, a chicken bisque, cinnamon toast, shrimp wiggle, and green peppers filled with macaroni. Recently widowed, Rombauer self-published the book to support her family—and thereby became a heroine for 1930s homemakers. Her Cheese Custard Pie, so far as I know, is the first recipe for quiche in an American cookbook. It is introduced with these memorable words: “In Switzerland we had a vile tempered cook named Marguerite” whose quiche varied with “her moods and her supply of cheese.” (I love recipes that tell us something about the cook.)
In 1931, Irma Rombauer announced that she intended to turn her personal collection of recipes and cooking techniques into a cookbook. Cooking could no longer remain a private passion for Irma. She had recently been widowed and needed to find a way to support her family. Irma was a celebrated St. Louis hostess who sensed that she was not alone in her need for a no-nonsense, practical resource in the kitchen. So, mustering what assets she had, she self-published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat. Out of these unlikely circumstances was born…
Resonant Blue and Other Stories
by
Mary Vensel White,
The first collection of award-winning short fiction from the author of Bellflower and Things to See in Arizona, whose writing reflects “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”
Miko and Jenne are librarians who love to eat. Their love of classic children’s literature led them to start their 36 Eggs blog, where they recreate foods and experiences from their favorite books. In 2019, they published the Little Women Cookbook, which required extensive research into the food of the Victorian era.
If you strive to be a Victorian-era food snob, this is the guidebook. It’s a comprehensive overview of food and cooking customs from the second half of the 19th century, packed with illustrations and tons of fun trivia. (For example: celery was considered a high-status food by the middle class because of its connection to Homer’s Odyssey. If you were looking for a trendy centerpiece, you could put it in specially appointed silver or glass vases like a bouquet of flowers. Haha!) You’ll also find an explanation of mealtimes, and how expectations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, and supper were different from today’s. There’s a whole chapter on Victorian table etiquette! By the way, Victorians advise that if you’re hosting a dinner party, make sure to wear an outfit that’s “rich in material, but subdued in tone” so you don’t show up any of your guests.
Savory Suppers and Fashionable Feasts offers a delightfully flavorful tour of dining in America during the second half of the 19th century. Susan Williams investigates the manners and morals of that era by looking at its eating customs and cooking methods. As she reveals, genteel dining became an increasingly important means of achieving social stability during a period when Americans were facing significant changes on a variety of fronts - social, cultural, intellectual, technological, and demographic.
Focusing on the rapidly expanding middle class, Williams not only examines mealtime rituals, but she looks at the material culture of Victorian dining: the…
By Chase Reynolds Ewald and Heather Sandy HebertAuthor
Why are we passionate about this?
At Home in the Wine Country coauthorsHeather and Chase love the open, nature-focused attitude toward living that California does so well. Heather worked in the field of architecture for 25 years and is the author of The New Architecture of Wine. Chase has been a western lifestyle writer for 30 years and is the author of 14 books, including Modern Americana, American Rustic, Cabin Style, and Bison. As writers and consultants they work with publishers, magazines, and design, hospitality and wine clients to craft and convey their stories. Heather and Chase live in spectacularly scenic Marin County, halfway between San Francisco and California's iconic wine country.
One of our all-time favorite books. Nathan Turner loves California, and we love how he translates that love to us, transporting even those of us who have lived here all of our lives to a new level of appreciation for our beautiful state. A combination of food, family, design, and adventure, it is an ode to our state — a love letter that is an absolute joy.
Designer Nathan Turner's style is synonymous with the easy glam of California living. His first book introduced readers to his casual American style and chic design sense. Now, he has written a love letter to his home state in I Love California. This book is a journey up and down Highway 1 that takes readers from the redwoods of northern San Francisco, to the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, to the beaches of Southern California. Simple recipes and tips for entertaining are featured alongside never-before-seen interiors. Lavish photographs capture the homes, people, and food of each unique location in glorious,…
As a child of divorce who moved around often, cooking and entertaining was consistent in my life on both sides of my family. The comforting smells and traditions around food in the home became a religion to me—something I could count on. My grandmother was a hostess to be admired—her impeccable entertaining etiquette was where my love of hosting was born. My degree in psychology lends itself to sharing what’s so important about creating intentional gatherings at the table. My education and passion for creative arts pair well with my husband’s expertise as an Architect, where we understand the importance of creating inviting spaces for people to occupy.
Another lifestyle cookbook with recipes and tips that are simple, comforting, and family-friendly. Kristin shares not only recipes for healthy comfort foods, but also the staple ingredients she keeps in her pantry. I love how she offers gluten and dairy-free alternatives in her recipes and how she uses natural sweeteners such as maple syrup and honey. The Nashville Hot Chicken Salad cups and the Creamy Roasted Veggie Pasta Salad are my two favorite dishes to make from this book—and my family agrees!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The TV star and author of True Roots shares 130+ of her favorite recipes for healthy, natural, wholesome comfort food in this essential cookbook.
“Kristin’s family-friendly, decadently ‘health-ified’ recipes will have you reliving favorite memories and making delicious new ones bite after bite!”—Daphne Oz, Emmy Award-winning television host and bestselling author
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY DELISH
Over the past few years, Kristin Cavallari has become known for the healthy recipes she cooks at home for her family. In her bestselling cookbook, True Roots, she shared the recipes that keep…
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken…
As the author of nine cookbooks, I strive to help readers master new skills and to become more comfortable in the kitchen. I’m constantly reading other cookbooks to keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening in the food world, as well as to improve my own culinary prowess. It’s been nearly 20 years since I graduated from culinary school, and I love that I can open a book to refresh a forgotten skill, learn a new one, or delve into the “why” behind cooking’s biggest questions. These books have kept me entertained and intrigued, not to mention well-fed. I hope they do the same for you!
Most people identify either as cooks or bakers, and I can see why—it certainly takes a different mindset to bake bread or a cake. Baking is a far more precise science, which is one of the reasons I’m very picky about what baking recipes I trust. It’s one of the reasons I love having Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book in my arsenal. I have always been a big fan of the magazine, where the writers prepare countless versions of the same recipe, changing ingredients, methods, and other factors to arrive at the most perfect version. This cookbook follows the same format, covering savory recipes like tarts, quiches, pizzas, and rolls, in addition to every classic sweet recipe you could want. It was this book that ended my long search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie… the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie is a refinement of the classic Toll House Cookie. I’m glad…
Baking demystified with 450 foolproof recipes from Cook's Illustrated, America's most trusted food magazine.
The Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book has it all—definitive recipes for all your favorite cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, breads, pizza, and more, along with kitchen-tested techniques that will transform your baking. Recipes range from easy (drop cookies and no-knead bread) to more ambitious (authentic croissants and dacquoise) and the trademark test kitchen expertise shines through each one. Discover why spreading the dough and then sprinkling the berries leads to better Blueberry Scones, why cubed versus shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese makes all the difference in our irresistible Cheese…
