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. (more…)

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. (more…)

When temperatures soar and appetites wilt, nothing is more appealing than a salad packed with cool, crisp greens.  Add a little protein and dinner is ready for the table.

This summer, I’m enamored with the pork tenderloin salad with warm strawberry dressing I found in “The Berry Bible,” by Janie Hibler.  Nominated for a James Beard award when it was first published in 2004, the cookbook is one of the books Amazon Encore is bringing back because customer reviews and other sources indicate they were overlooked and under-appreciated when they were first released. (more…)

Summer books should be entertaining page-turners.  Who wants to get bogged down in obtuse economic theory or convoluted political arguments while stretched out on a beach towel or curled up in an Adirondack chair?

Fortunately for food lovers, there’s a whole crop of fun reads out this year that explore the culinary world.  You don’t even have to be a cook to enjoy these memoirs.  Here are my choices:

Spoon Fed, by Kim Severson (Riverhead Books, 2010, $25.95).

Kim Severson, one of the best food journalists in the country, has been at the New York Times since 2004 but she began building her reputation at the San Francisco Chronicle six years earlier.  I’ve always admired her as an excellent reporter with a great eye for the stories that define our times.  She’s also an engaging writer with a cheeky sense of humor. (more…)

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman always seems to have his finger on the pulse of how America cooks.  His encyclopedic book of pared-down recipes, “How to Cook Everything,” Wiley, 1998, long ago displaced the venerable “Joy of Cooking” as the everyday kitchen reference in our house.  My husband would be lost without it.

Now Bittman has joined the smart phone age with his nifty new iPhone app, “How to Cook Everything On the Go” ($4.99). I’m not going to give up my hardback version of his cooking bible anytime soon but I’m smitten with this clever bit of technical wizardry.  It has everything in the book and more in a to-go format that is much easier to search.

The shortcake pictured here is based on the simple scone recipe I found while browsing among the strawberry entries.   The ingredient list is short, the instructions are simple, and the results are delectable.  This may be the easiest, most tender and flaky scone I’ve ever made even though I switched out half of the white flour for whole wheat pastry flour.  Use a food processor and the scones are ready to bake before the oven has warmed up. (more…)