COOKBOOK WATCH

The newest releases in the Knopf Cooks American series show that an easy definition of American cooking is impossible to articulate. In Ken Hom’s “Easy Family Recipes From a Chinese-American Childhood” (Knopf, $27.50), the BBC-TV cooking-show host and cookbook author takes readers back to the Chicago Chinatown of his childhood. The home-style recipes come from his mother, from the Chinese American restaurant where he first learned to cook at age 11 and from other Chinese Americans nostalgic for the food of their youth.

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“Latin American Cooking Across the U.S.A.,” by novelist and historian Himilce Novas and teacher and author Rosemary Silva (Knopf, $27.50), is a survey of the many cuisines of Latin America now cooked in the United States. Among the offerings are Puerto Rican Spanish rice, Brazilian empanadas, Colombian arepas and Mexican pork enchiladas with poblano chile cream sauce.