Many cookbooks are primarily kitchen manuals filled with no-nonsense instructions.

Not “Ripe.”  Author Cheryl Sternman Rule and photographer Paulette Phlipot break the cookbook mold.  Their  gorgeous tribute to fresh produce in all its glory is more inspiration than instruction, although filled with creative recipes.

“Ripe” (Running Press, 2012) will send you straight into the kitchen – right after you get home from the farmer’s market.  You may find yourself keeping it out on the coffee table, though, to thumb through in idle moments.  The photographs are downright luscious and the text is whimsical, amusing and informative.

Rule and Phlipot wanted to get away from the “eat your vegetables” cookbooks.  Their goal is to make you want to eat vegetables and fruit just because they’re so irresistible.

They definitely succeed.  Even the photograph of a red apple is tempting, and I don’t care much for red apples.  Raspberries glow, peas gleam, bok choy beckons.  The Bosc pear belongs on the wall of an art gallery.

The beautiful photographs are the appetizers of this cookbook. They draw you in and prime your palate with vivid colors and textures. Sections are arranged not by seasons, as is common in produce cookbooks, but by color.

The main course, though, is the encyclopedic introduction to a wide range of fruits and vegetables, from pomegranates to jicama. Even familiar vegetables show a fresh side of their personality here.

Rule is an engaging writer and gifted cook who offers a little background on each fruit or vegetable along with a few simple uses and an unexpected recipe.   The pomegranate, for instance, is represented by a pomegranate clove thumbprint cookie, tomatoes by an open-faced grilled sandwich with smoked mozzarella.  I loved the kumquat and arugula salad, which explodes with bold but complementary flavors.  The Israeli couscous with fava beans, shallots, and olives was stunning.

I zeroed in on the broccoli soup with cheddar croutons, however, because  it felt particularly appropriate given the cookbook’s mission to entice diners into eating fresh produce.  When Supreme Court justices go out of their way to badmouth broccoli, you know its reputation could use a little help.

The creamy green soup is especially healthful because it doesn’t include a drop of cream.  But it’s packed with so much flavor from cumin, coriander and fennel balanced with lemon and Greek yogurt that you’ll never notice.  Just go slow on the crunchy cheddar croutons, which are infinitely munchable on their own.

The soup was even better the second day, when the flavors had time to meld.  Although Rule recommends pureeing with an immersion blender, I got a far smoother texture with a more powerful standing blender.

I should note that Rule is a San Jose resident and I got to know her when I was a food writer at the Mercury News.  I’ve followed her freelance career ever since and am a fan of her blog, 5 Second Rule.  This cookbook with Phlipot is her first.

No form of cooking intimidates beginning cooks quite like baking.  Because the chemistry must be precise for cakes to rise and cookies to achieve the right balance between chewy and crisp, there’s very little room for error.

That doesn’t mean it has to be mysterious or terribly difficult.   All aspiring bakers really need is someone to offer a little gentle guidance in the kitchen.

Pat Sinclair does just that in the newly revised second edition of “Baking Basics and Beyond” (Surrey Books, 2011).  She breaks all the steps in baking down into easy to follow instructions.  Sprinkled among the recipes and descriptions of ingredients and techniques are little tips I wish someone had shared with me long ago.  Who knew you could test whether the sugar has dissolved properly in a meringue by rubbing a little bit of the beaten egg whites between your fingers?

This cookbook has an old-fashioned feel and the recipes are not going to inspire adventurous bakers. But Sinclair covers all the homey baked goods most of us really crave, from biscuits and cobblers to brownies and tarts.

I might quibble with a few of her instructions.  I’ve never had much success using a pastry cutter as she recommends, although I’ve known home cooks — including my mother — who would swear by them.

My luck has been a lot better since I’ve learned to use my hands to blend the butter and flour.  I cut the butter into small cubes and rub them into the flour between my thumb and fingers with a quick motion, much like snapping my fingers.  It only takes a few minutes to produce a mixture resembling crumbled feta cheese with a few pea-sized chunks scattered about. I’ve described this hands-on approach in more detail here.

Scones are one of my weaknesses and this recipe attracted my attention because it includes cornmeal in the dough, which lends a nice crunch.  I’ve added a little lemon zest because I can’t resist the combination of blueberries and lemon.

These little treats are simple to make.  You just stir them together, drop the batter on a cookie sheet and bake.  They come out of the oven with a crisp crust and fluffy interior.

Sunday brunch just got a whole lot easier.

BLUEBERRY CORNMEAL SCONES
Makes 8 scones

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons cornmeal, divided use
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, cut into 4 or 5 pieces
Zest of 1 lemon
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup blueberries

Heat oven to 400 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven.  Grease a large cookie sheet or line with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.  Sprinkle with about 2 teaspoons cornmeal.

Combine flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.  Using a pastry blender or your fingers, cut butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces.  Stir zest into the milk and pour into the middle of the flour, stirring with a fork until a sticky dough forms.

Add blueberries and stir gently.  Drop dough on the baking sheet in 8 mounds of about 1/3 cup each.

Bake 16 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: If you’re substituting frozen berries for fresh, do not thaw berries before adding to the dough, and lengthen the baking time by a couple of minutes.

Adapted from “Baking Basics and Beyond,” by Pat Sinclair

Popcorn was the last thing on my mind when I bought a carbon steel wok last fall. My goal was to get a pan that could withstand high enough temperatures to actually sear meat and vegetables in a stir-fry.

But new woks need seasoning to get that wonderfully slick, virtually non-stick surface I coveted. My efforts in that direction were agonizingly slow until I found Grace Young’s account of seasoning a wok by making popcorn in “Stir-Frying from the Sky’s Edge” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). She points out that popping corn distributes a thin coat of oil all over the pan and the high heat helps it adhere.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how good the popcorn would be. Every kernel popped up big and fluffy with just enough oil to help the salt stick.

I used extra virgin olive oil — despite conventional wisdom that it’s not really suited to high temperatures — for popping and truffle salt for seasoning.  The results were mind-bogglingly good and the air popper my family had used for years is now consigned to the pantry.

One of the chief benefits is that we no longer need to add melted butter to make the popcorn palatable.  The small amount of good quality olive oil used in popping takes care of that.  Seasonings stay on better, too.

The process is simple.  The only equipment required is a wok with a lid.  Of course you could use a large soup pot, too, but I doubt it needs seasoning.  Although Young lines her lid with aluminum foil, I just wipe it clean with a paper towel when I’m done.

Plain sea salt is good for seasoning. but it’s much more fun to experiment.  We love truffle salt straight out of the jar.  When we’re feeling festive, however, we might throw in a cup of finely grated Parmesan with  a couple tablespoons of minced thyme and salt to taste.

Recently, we started playing around with furikake, the Japanese rice seasoning.  Since my jar was a little stale and I didn’t want to go out on a rainy day, I made some from pantry ingredients and it was quite good.  The interplay of sesame seeds, chili flakes and toasted seaweed with popped corn turns a simple snack into an intriguing nibble worthy of a party.

I plan to pop a lot of corn between now and the Oscar ceremonies a week from Sunday.  There are still a bunch of nominees out on DVD that I haven’t seen yet.

Tis the season of cookbooks.  Publishers wait until the last quarter of the year to release their best new culinary books in time for holiday giving and it’s an exciting time for anyone as addicted as I am.

Still, I’ve had to put myself on a cookbook diet.  Only the books that really speak to me earn a spot on my overcrowded shelves now.  A few come over the transom as publisher releases.  Most I buy myself because I can’t resist their siren call.

That means this year’s collection of holiday cookbooks is an idiosyncratic lot.  The only celebrity chef in the bunch is Jacques Pepin, who earned his toque decades ago and has become a favorite.  The rest appeal to me because they teach me something new or offer a different perspective on a familiar theme.

There’s a wide range here, from the gorgeous coffee table-worthy “The Food of Spain,” by Claudia Roden, to the latest contribution from the ingenious “Five Minutes A Day” bakers, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  Take a peek.  These are cookbooks worth giving.

“BiRite Market’s Eat Good Food,” by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough (Ten Speed Press, 2011, $32.50)

Perhaps my favorite selection, this book is more about ingredients than recipes.  It’s the story of a little neighborhood market that became a food lover’s mecca in San Francisco’s Mission district.   Owner Sam Mogannam, who cooked for a living before reluctantly taking up the family business, believes in local, seasonal and artisanal food.  He walks his readers through the jam-packed little market, sharing tips on shopping for everything from olive oil and sea salt to biodynamic wine.  The section on produce is organized by seasons and offers invaluable information on buying, storing and using fresh vegetables and fruit, starting with avocados and ending with pomegranates.  This is a reference book that already is getting a lot of use in my kitchen.

That would be reason enough to buy this book, but the recipes interspersed throughout are winners, too.  Spaghetti with tuna, capers, and chile flakes is one of the best pantry pastas I’ve ever made and I plan to pick up some Delicata squash at the farmers market this week to make the salad with arugula, fingerling potatoes and pomegranate seeds.

“The Food of Spain,” by Claudia Roden (HarperCollins, 2011, $39.99)

When Claudia Roden writes, readers learn as much about history and culture as about cooking.  I’ve long relied on her cookbooks for the last word on Middle Eastern cuisine.  Now she’s taken on Spain, tracing the culinary roots of a nation that more recently has built a reputation for adventurous cooking. The first section of the 610-page book is a beautifully photographed travelogue of Spain’s major regions and their signature dishes.  Among the recipes are all the familiar classic dishes, including gazpacho and paella in several variations, as well as many dishes that will be new to anyone who hasn’t been immersed in Spanish food.

I’m looking forward to spending more time with this treasure during the long, dark days of winter.  So far, though, I’ve eaten mostly with my eyes: the photographs are stunning.  When quinces were readily available, I made Roden’s extremely simple dulce de membrillo, which roasts the astringent fruit slowly with sugar until it is transformed into a luscious, fragrant paste. Her spinach and chickpea soup from Castile, a Lenten specialty, is on my list for a rainy day in the near future.

“Essential Pepin,” by Jacques Pepin (Houghton Mifflin, 2011, $40)

I’ve never encountered a cookbook by Jacques Pepin that I didn’t like.  He earned his reputation, making his name as a chef  long before he debuted on public television some 25 years ago.  He’s a master who not only understands how to cook but also how to teach others to cook.

This new book is the culmination of a long career that has included more than 20 cookbooks.  It has the feel of a personal scrapbook filled with more than 700 updated recipes that span Pepin’s wide-ranging food interests, from a classic fines herbes omelet to a Vietnamese-style soup.  In the place of the usual mouth-watering photographs are the chef’s charming drawings.  Although recipes may be stripped down to match contemporary sensibilities, they’re never simplistic.  I particularly liked his pumpkin au gratin, a luxurious dish made with eggs, cream and cheese that was far more than the sum of its parts.

On a modern note, Pepin has included a DVD  featuring videos on clarifying stock, trussing a chicken, making puff pastry and more.  Initially, I bought the Kindle version of the cookbook in order to view the videos on my iPad.  They were charming and very helpful, but the rest of the book didn’t work that well in an electronic format.  So I bought the paper and ink version to browse and let inspiration strike.

“The Bonne Femme Cookbook,” by Wini Moranville (Harvard Common Press, 2011, $24.95)

If your vision of real French food involves hours spent in front of the stove, it’s time to meet Wini Moranville.  A freelance food editor and writer, Moranville and her husband have spent every summer since the early 1990′s in France.  Along the way, she’s picked up the secret of simple everyday French food a la bonne femme, French for “good wife.”

This cookbook is packed with casual recipes with real French flair. They employ the same shortcuts French home cooks take all the time, frozen puff pastry and canned chicken broth among them.  I’m smitten by the chapter on poultry, which presents chicken in a delicious new light — just what we need at my house.  The osso buco-style chicken thighs with wine and tomatoes were great and the flavor was even better the next day.  I’m also looking forward to Moranville’s streamlined version of coq au vin.  Desserts were a little disappointing, mostly simple fruit tarts and crepes.  That shouldn’t have been a surprise, though.  The French leave elaborate pastries to the neighborhood patisserie, after all.

“Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day,” by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (Thomas Dunne, 2011, $27.99)

The no-knead method of bread baking that Hertzberg and Francois popularized in their first cookbook was a stroke of genius.  It’s very convenient to stir up a batch of dough and let it ferment in the fridge for a week or so until I’m ready to bake off a loaf.  However, I confess I’ve used the technique far more often for pizza than for loaves of bread or rolls.

So I jumped at the chance to review this new cookbook.  A number of the same or similar recipes can be found in the authors’ two earlier cookbooks, but this one brings all of my favorites together under the same cover.  Plus there are new recipes, such as the one for stuffed naan and another for lahmacun, a Turkish spiced lamb flatbread.

I still haven’t worked my way through all the pizza recipes but I can give two thumbs up to the individual breakfast pizzas.  What’s not to like about sausage, spinach and cheddar cheese freshly baked on a pizza crust?   My husband really liked it with an egg on top, too.  This is going to be the go-to brunch dish at my house this holiday season.

I can’t go on vacation without a book tucked into my bags.  Even the most exotic destination requires a good read for the plane or those odd hours between excursions and dinner.

Since I can’t go for long without thinking about my next meal, either, a food book is always a great choice. This year, my nominees for the best summer food reads include a new look at the life of M.F.K. Fisher, a beautifully written chef memoir, and an inspiring diary of gardening and cooking from one of Britain’s best food writers.

“An Extravagant Hunger,” by Anne Zimmerman (Counterpoint, 2011) and “Blood, Bones & Butter,” by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House, 2011) are portable enough to carry in a beach bag.  They’re fascinating stories of lives shaped by food, cooking and a hunger for love and meaning.

“Tender,” by Nigel Slater (Ten Speed Press, 2011) is fairly bulky and better suited for a week or two at a country cottage, preferably with a farmers market nearby.  It practically demands that you get into the kitchen and cook after reading Slater’s loving descriptions of his London vegetable patch and the dishes he prepares from his produce.

“An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher”

Even though I have read and loved almost everything ever written by the venerable M.F.K. Fisher, I’ve always felt I missed something just beneath the surface of her words. While her writing is intensely personal and sensuous, it often skips lightly over important events, among them the failure of her first marriage.   Zimmerman fills in the blanks with finely researched detail in her excellent biography.

Some of Zimmerman’s conclusions about what went wrong after Mary Frances Kennedy married Al Fisher in 1929 are speculative at best.  Still, the story she has extracted from Fisher’s letters and personal papers  reveals the extent to which the woman who paved the way for modern food writing was shaped by her longing for intense emotion.   Anyone who wants to learn more about the elusive personal life of M.F.K. Fisher should read this book.

“Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef”

Gabrielle Hamilton, on the other hand, leaves very little to the imagination in her memoir.  Hamilton, who was named Best Chef: New York City at the James Beard Awards in May, is a gifted writer who doesn’t hesitate to discuss killing chickens, snorting cocaine and stealing from the boss, or cheating on her lesbian lover with an Italian doctor she later married so he could get a green card.

What sets this book apart, though, is not just the unflinching honesty.  The language is powerful and the narrative nicely structured. Hamilton earned an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan between stints at the stove and it shows on every page.  The writing is so wonderful, even people who aren’t interested in food will find themselves sucked into Hamilton’s gritty world.

“Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch”

The best vacation I could imagine would be to visit London and have Nigel Slater feed me. I’ve been entranced by his lusty, no-fuss approach to cooking since I first spotted “Real Food” (Harper Collins UK, 1998) in an Edinburgh book shop.

Since that vacation is not in the cards, I’ll settle for his latest book, which zeroes in on vegetables in all their glory.  Slater’s story of planting a garden behind his urban terrace house and tending his crops is as engrossing as a novel and it nurtures my dreams of growing my own produce  once again.

Take this little treatise on growing tomatoes as an example:  “A tomato’s character is enhanced by a rough life, a certain negligence, a gasping thirst, and the occasional drenching downpour.  Pamper a tomato, overfeed it, overwater it, and you will get a Paris Hilton of a tomato.  The rougher time it has, the more ugly its appearance, the more interesting it generally is.”

The recipes that accompany Slater’s discourse on vegetables are just as compelling.  This savory dressing for tomatoes is destined to become a summer standard at my house.

I grew up eating biscuits.

After my mother went back to work, they started with a box of Bisquick more often than not.  But she had the proverbial light hand and her biscuits always came out of the oven fluffy and tender with a golden crust that crunched ever so slightly at first bite.  We frequently ate biscuits as shortcake when strawberries were in season.

Sadly, I didn’t inherit my mother’s delicate touch and have always used a food processor to make biscuits — until now. “Southern Biscuits,” by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart (Gibbs Smith, 2011), gives such clear and detailed instructions on the gentle art that my handmade biscuits almost meet my mother’s standards today.  And as much as it pains me to admit, they’re far lighter than anything I’ve ever made in my trusty Cuisinart.

These brown sugar shortcakes — really just barely sweetened biscuits — are at once buttery and rich, airy and light.  They’ve become my family’s preferred base for luscious local berries and softly whipped cream.  As a bonus they’re easier to make than most biscuits and don’t require kneading or cutting into rounds before baking.

Dupree long has been one of the big names in Southern cooking.  She’s written 11 cookbooks, including two James Beard Award-winners, and hosted more than 300 cooking shows on television.  Graubart is an author and former television producer who became friends with Dupree when she worked on one of her television series.

Together, they have created a collection of every type of biscuit imaginable, from the simplest biscuits made with sour cream in the place of butter and milk to flaky pecan party biscuits.  They even give recipes for dishes to make with leftover biscuits, if you have any.

What sets this cookbook apart, however, is the encyclopedic and meticulously illustrated chapter on biscuit basics, starting with the issue of flour.  The flour preferred by Southerners for the lightest biscuits is milled from a soft winter wheat that is lower in protein and produces less gluten than the all-purpose flour more commonly found in the West.

If, like me, you can’t find Southern brands such as White Lily and Martha White at your market, Dupree and Graubart suggest mixing cake and all-purpose flours.  They also explain how to make your own self-rising flour mix, an ingredient often called for in Southern recipes but sometimes difficult to find in other regions.

The real treasure, though, is the description of how to mix fat into the flour properly, which is a key to great biscuits.  The authors recommend cutting cold butter into two different size pieces.  The tiny cubes are rubbed into the flour between thumb and finger with a quick motion, much like snapping your fingers, until the mixture resembles crumbled feta cheese.  Then the bigger cubes are mixed in with the same technique until no piece is larger than a pea.  The fat should be well-distributed to create flaky layers.

This instruction was a revelation and has made all the difference in my biscuits.

The shortcake, which Dupree attributes to intern Hayley Daen, is mixed together with 1/2 -inch cubes and buttermilk. It also uses ordinary all-purpose flour.  The authors call for the batter to be scraped into two 6-inch iron skillets and baked at a high temperature and the shortcakes do turn out beautifully that way. But I had good results, too, using small cake pans.

Once you’ve eaten this shortcake topped with ripe berries and a cloud of whipped cream, you’re bound to become a fan of Southern biscuits, too.

Small cubes of butter are rubbed into the flour, liquid is added and the dough is stirred together before it is scraped into skillet for baking.

It’s only natural to envy Patricia Wells.  The American journalist has lived the fantasy of many a food lover since she moved to Paris in 1980.

As the restaurant critic of the International Herald Tribune for 27 years, she made her living by eating and writing about some of the best food in the world.  Now she splits her time between Paris and Provence, teaching small groups of students how to shop, eat and cook like a French woman.  Hard life, eh?

The rest of us are grateful that Wells shares her good fortune in a string of  terrific cookbooks, starting with “Bistro Cooking” (Workman, 1989), which revealed the secrets of the small family restaurants of France for soul-satisfying dishes such as celery remoulade and pot-au-feu.  Now, just in time for the salad days of spring and summer, William Morrow has released “Salad as a Meal,” her ninth collection of recipes.

This is a cookbook for the way we eat now, based on fresh produce and bright flavors.  Along with updated versions of classics such as salad Nicoise and the iceberg wedge, Wells presents inspired new ideas, like this hearty quinoa salad with a jolt of lemony dressing.  Bay leaves contribute a deep, herbal bass note to the trendy grain.

Her soba noodles and chicken salad with a ginger-peanut sauce was a bit heavy on the sodium for my taste with 6 tablespoons of tamari in the dressing, but the flavors and textures were very nice.   I really like the spring salad with asparagus, peas, slender green beans and crisp fennel.

The real treasures of this collection, however, may be the little extra touches.  Baking polenta into croutons is an inspired idea, picked up during one of  Wells’ regular frequent visits to Rancho La Puerta spa in Mexico.

I’m addicted to her extremely simple vinaigrette made by shaking together in a small jar 1 tablespoon good sherry vinegar, 1 tablespoon good red wine vinegar and 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil with a pinch of sea salt.  If you can’t find red wine vinegar that comes up to the mark, Wells also gives easy instructions for making your own.  I wish I had found them before I began making mine last year.

She also offers appealing recipes for appetizers, soups, and homemade bread to go with the salads.

I can’t wait until the summer tomato harvest begins so I can try her stacks of eggplant, tomatoes and goat cheese, the deconstructed club sandwich salad, or a crunchy Greek salad with homemade pita.

After a long winter, the salads of spring and summer beckon.

Meet my new favorite cookie.

I know, I’m a fickle cookie lover, easily distracted by the latest flavor sensation.  I’ve rarely met a homemade cookie I didn’t like.

But this combination of toffee and chocolate chips has my number.  It’s chewy and nutty at the center with crisp edges and the buttery flavor of toffee playing off  bittersweet chocolate chips. One just leads to another and another and…..

It all began with a cookie I spotted at the bakery counter at the local Whole Foods.  I was intrigued by the idea of a toffee cookie and the one I bought was pretty good.  But it was too sweet on balance and far too cakey for my taste.  I knew it could be much better with a few tweaks.

I started with a standard chocolate chip cookie batter and began playing around.  First I needed to find the toffee and, although I’ve read that toffee chips are available in markets, I couldn’t find any where I live.  So I settled on toffee candy bars — Skor brand were the best — and chopped them up myself.

I tweaked the proportions of ingredients, cutting the total amount of sweetener and shifting the balance from granulated to brown sugar for deeper flavor.  I added sea salt and doubled the vanilla.  Then I let the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to allow it to hydrate.

The biggest change, though, was a switch from all purpose white to whole wheat pastry flour inspired by Alice Medrich’s incredible cookbook, “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies” (Artisan, 2010).  Alice is a wizard and her whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are so good that no one would ever compare them to dowdy health food store cookies.

The key is the pastry flour, which is softer and contains less protein than regular whole wheat flour.  It produces a tender cookie with a nicely nutty flavor set off by a generous portion of toasted walnuts.

I’ve been baking these cookies all winter.  The story I tell is that I need to test the recipe one more time to make sure it’s right.  But I’m not fooling anyone.  I’m hooked.

I hope you love them, too.

A cookbook needs to be more than a compendium of recipes to catch my eye these days.  My shelves already are overflowing with encyclopedic tomes and the Internet covers almost every culinary base if you make careful choices.

What I want is a cookbook with personality, one I can curl up with on a rainy afternoon as well as take into the kitchen for a marathon session with the pots and pans. It should offer a new way of looking at food and act as my trusted guide in the kitchen.

That’s a tall order and few new cookbooks measure up. So I’m not going to offer my own variation on The Ten Best Cookbooks of 2010 here.  Instead, I’m showcasing the handful of offerings that qualify as keepers in my kitchen. With the exception of Dorie Greenspan’s irresistible best seller,  I’ve focused on the works of Bay Area authors.

Any of these books would make a welcome gift for the enthusiastic cook this season.  If you’re really feeling generous, you could match it with a new piece of kitchen equipment that fits the author’s cooking style.

“Around My French Table,” by Dorie Greenspan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, $40)

Greenspan is one of those authors you want to call by her first name because it feels like she’s writing just for you.  Her prose is so enthusiastic, it’s contagious.

She made her name with sugar, butter and flour, writing baking books with the likes of Julia Child and Pierre Herme.  Now, she’s venturing into savory cookbooks for the first time.

“Around My French Table” is filled with anecdotes and recipes from her experiences living part of each year in Paris.  This is the food I could happily eat for the rest of my life. Her recipes are relatively simple and she figuratively holds your hand through each step of preparation.

Every recipe I tried—puffy gougeres, classic onion soup, and an aromatic chicken and vegetable couscous — were all winners. I can’t wait to taste her boeuf a’la mode, a slow-cooked pot roast made with chuck or rump roast, vegetables and a bottle of fruity red wine.

Although the gorgeous photographs by Alan Richardson are worthy of a coffee table book, this is a cookbook you’ll want to keep in the kitchen.  It will appeal to the experienced cook as well as the budding Francophile.

For a really special present, pair it with a enameled Dutch oven, the essential pot for a number of Greenspan’s recipes.  Le Creuset, a French import, is the gold standard, but the covered pots run more than $200.  Lodge makes a highly-rated model for under $100.

“Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys,” by David Tanis (Artisan, 2010, $35)

David Tanis, who shares the post of head chef at Chez Panisse, is another one of those lucky people who get to live half the year in Paris.  He calls himself  “a restaurant chef who has always preferred to cook at home” and his seasonal recipes are designed for flavor and conviviality rather than show.

Tanis celebrates the craft of cooking.  He takes pleasure in peeling fruit, kneading bread, boiling up small batches of jam, and slowly braising a pork roast in a sauce made from dried New Mexico chiles.  Other times he’s just as content to pass around a platter of fresh strawberries and bowls of creme fraiche and sugar for dessert.

When I first thumbed through his previous book, “A Platter of Figs,” I wasn’t impressed.  There were few culinary surprises and the  food often seemed too simple to merit a recipe.  Yet I found myself returning to it again and again because it delivered the sort of food I really wanted to eat.

This new volume is written in the same spirit, but Tanis more clearly states his kitchen philosophy and offers an extra measure of anecdotes to go with his appealing recipes.  He prefaces his dinner menus for each season with little essays on his personal kitchen rituals, from building a flawless ham sandwich with a fresh baguette and good butter to making his own chorizo sausage.

Attention to detail is what sets Tanis’ recipes apart.  His fresh-tasting salad of romaine lettuce hearts, shaved Parmigiano cheese and a bright lemon dressing rivals the best Caesar salad. The buckwheat galettes, Brittany’s hearty version of crepes, were easier than expected and so good, I’m including the recipe below.  Come summer, I’m sure his layered tomato and bread salad will be a staple at my house.

This is a book for the cook who finds joy working with fresh, local ingredients in season.  The most appropriate piece of equipment to give with it would be a mortar and pestle.  Tanis keeps about a dozen in his kitchens for pounding the garlic, spice and herbs essential to his recipes.

“Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich,” by Alice Medrich (Artisan, 2010, $25.95)

It’s hard to believe the world needs another cookie book.  But when Alice Medrich is the author, what cookie lover can resist checking it out.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The diva of chocolate has produced a truly original collection of recipes, many of them inspired variations on old standards.  In her hands, even the ubiquitous chocolate chip cookie gets a delicious new personality with whole wheat pastry flour and an extra measure of chopped nuts.  She also introduces gluten-free versions of most of her cookies and brownies, although I confess I didn’t test them, and creates cookies to fit the Weight Watchers point system.

The recipes are organized by texture, making it easier to find the cookie that best fits your taste.  One of the most intriguing new category of cookies is the thin, crisp sticks designed for maximum crunch.  The coconut sticks reminded me of tender, intensely flavored biscotti.

This is a book for cooks who like to indulge their inner cookie monsters.  It would pair nicely with a kitchen scale, which Medrich recommends using for best results, or a cookie scoop with a squeeze-release handle.

“D.I.Y. Delicious,” by Vanessa Barrington (Chronicle Books, 2010, $24.95)

Check out the labels on the packaged foods you bring home from the supermarket and you’ll discover a whole new vocabulary of unpronounceable chemicals as well as far more fat, salt and high fructose corn syrup than anyone could imagine.  Vanessa Barrington, a writer and chef based in Oakland, decided she would rather make her own condiments, crackers, pickles and cheese — as much for the satisfaction of reviving lost kitchen arts as for the health and environmental benefits.

Barrington shares what she’s learned in this charming little book with its folksy design and minimally-styled photographs.  There are recipes for making mustard and ketchup as well as yogurt, fresh cheese and butter.  In addition there are step-by-step guides to making fresh pasta, tortillasm kimchi and root beer.  I’m a big fan of her sesame crackers.

Along the way, Barrington also offers recipes for dishes that employ the homemade pantry ingredients.  I’m waiting for spring to make the fresh pasta with asparagus, homemade cheese and lemon.

This book is just the ticket for young urban homesteaders or amateur chefs who literally want to cook from scratch.  To help them store all their new staples, why not wrap up a few glass canning jars, too?

Homey chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies are all very well for the rest of the year.  The holidays, though, cry out for something spectacular.

It takes an over-the-top cookie like these chocolate cherry hazelnut bars to stand out among the fanciful sugar cutouts, elaborate spritz and spicy gingerbread men found on platters at every neighborhood party and office pot luck this time of year.

I usually try out a new cookie every year during the holidays, but this recipe has become a standard.  It’s always a hit on the cookie platter and it makes great gifts, too.  The fact that it takes only minutes to pull together only adds to its charm.

The generous layer of high quality chocolate atop a crunchy cocoa-dusted crust makes a truly decadent offering.  I use the best bittersweet and milk chocolate I can find—Valrhona when I can find it at a good price. What really sets these cookies apart from the familiar 7-layer bar recipe  found on  the back of cans of sweetened condensed milk, though, is the grown-up flavors of tart dried cherries and toasted hazelnuts.

The only problem is they go fast, even though they’re incredibly rich.  So slice the bars smaller if you’re expecting a crowd.

Or set aside a few for yourself.  The cook deserves a treat, too.