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When Dawn Hudson got word on Jan. 7 that she needed to evacuate her Pacific Palisades home, her cook’s instincts kicked in. Thinking she’d be home the next day, she spent more time gathering ingredients to make dinner and breakfast for the friends giving her shelter than she did packing valuables. Ground lamb, berbere spice, fresh lettuce, naan and the farmers market eggs she loves from seaweed-fed chickens went into a cooler. On her kitchen counter she left a few extra eggs that she knew she’d want to eat when she returned. She never got to eat those extra eggs.
Like so many others, she lost her home in the fire.
Not long afterward, two big boxes arrived for Hudson at the condo of a friend where she was staying. Inside were bread pans and cookie sheets, a set of mixing bowls, spatulas, a whisk and much more.
“Everything I would need to set up a kitchen again,” says the entertainment consultant and former CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Hudson was overwhelmed with the kindness of the gift, especially when she saw that along with the kitchen equipment, her friend, busy film executive Amy Pascal, had taken the time to include six cookbooks she’d chosen for rebuilding a kitchen library: “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan, “Chez Panisse Cooking” by Paul Bertolli with Alice Waters, “My Kitchen Year” by Ruth Reichl, “Vegetable Literacy” by Deborah Madison, “Baking With Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple” by Dorie Greenspan and “Great Grilled Cheese: 50 Innovative Recipes for Stove Top, Grill, and Sandwich Maker” by Laura Werlin.
“I opened them feeling like, ‘Oh, there is a future. We’re starting again,’” Hudson says. “It was a turning point for me.’”
Author Molly Baz and many more cooks lost their kitchens in the Eaton and Palisades fires. How they’re rebuilding their kitchen lives one spoon, cutting board, bag of beans or bottle of wine at a time.
Hudson’s story got us thinking about our emotional connection to cookbooks even at a time when just about any recipe we want can be pulled up on our phones in seconds. What makes an essential cookbook? Is it a collectible with a vintage-cool cover or beautiful photography? Is it a teaching book that led you to find your own cooking style? A book full of go-to recipes that you rely on for entertaining or everyday dinners? Maybe it’s a book with a narrative — a memoir with recipes. Or a book with some other sentimental meaning.
For Hudson, the book she’s connected with most in this season of loss is Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life.”
“I read it page by page,” Hudson says, “because she went through a grieving period after Gourmet magazine closed and it mirrored some of the grieving I was going through. It was the perfect cookbook to have sent me after the fires.”
Also on her essential cookbook list: a “Joy of Cooking” edition that her grandmother gave her for her 21st birthday (it burned in the fire), “The River Cafe Cookbook” by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, and at least one Julia Child book, either “The Way to Cook” or “Julia Child & Company.”
“Her recipes seem long and complicated at first, but they’re not,” Hudson says. “She’s just explaining every variation. She gives you confidence. And I love her mantra: ‘Never apologize.’”
Hudson’s top pick, however, for what she’s now thinking of as her desert island cookbook shelf, is Yotam Ottolenghi’s “Ottolenghi: The Cookbook” and “really all of his books,” because she thinks of the author and restaurateur as “the Wong Kar-wai of chefs.” The boldness and colors of Ottolenghi’s food reminds her, she says, of the director’s exhilarating style in “Chungking Express” — “His recipes are precise and cinematic.”
To find out what others would put on their desert island cookbook shelf, we asked chefs, writers and food lovers to share their five essential cookbooks.
What about you? Let us know your essential cookbooks (see below) and we’ll keep building our library.
— Laurie Ochoa
Jon Yao
Chef, Kato
These five cookbooks paint a specific perspective; they have a lot to do with how Asian American food is now. Although I don’t cook from cookbooks, I really like the stories about how people came to do what they do, what ingredients they use or how they came up with the recipes. Pictures are nice too. About 70% of my books are fine dining. Other ones are really old Chinese cooking books. I tell Ken Concepcion from Now Serving, “Any vintage Chinese book you get your hands on, I’ll grab from you.” They’re good snapshots of the time they’re from.
“Mr. Jiu’s in Chinatown” by Brandon Jiu. I think the base recipes are so good, and it really validated a lot of recipes I took from my mother. Sometimes when tradition needs to be recontextualized in a modern way, a lot of my cooks look at this [book].
“Made in Taiwan” by Clarissa Wei. I think the stories in “Made in Taiwan” are so good. Clarissa was able to portray Taiwan in a boots-on-the-ground way.
“The Food of Taiwan” by Cathy Erway. Cathy walked so Clarissa could run. When you’re introducing people to Taiwanese food, this is a very useful reference point. The recipes, how they’re put together, remind me of my mom’s cooking and I can see certain things where she got that from.
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“Win Son Presents a Taiwanese American Cookbook” by Josh Ku and Trigg Brown withCathy Erway. It’s a great reference point for how Taiwanese American food progressed.
“Benu” by Corey Lee. The book is so beautiful from an artistic point of view. There’s a clear perspective on it, and even though it’s a decade old, it seems not just modern but futuristic. There are a lot of ingredients associated with Chinese cuisine but worked with in a modern sense. To me, it’s the pinnacle of Asian American cuisine in a fine-dining context.
Ruth Reichl
Novelist, restaurant critic
“The Breakfast Book” by Marion Cunningham. Like almost everyone who ever met the late author, I loved her dearly. When I miss Marion I open the book, hear her voice — and then cook up some Heavenly Hots (the best pancakes on the planet).
“How to Cook and Eat in Chinese” by Buwei Yang Chao. Completely charming, utterly original and an eye-opener when I came upon a new edition of the 1945 book in the 1970s, introducing us not only to Chinese food but also to Chinese culture.
“Vibration Cooking or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl” by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor. This book had an enormous impact on me when it first came out. At the time I’d never heard about Gullah culture and I loved the author’s bold voice and sassy attitude. I’ve tried to cook by vibration ever since.
“Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé. This book changed America, revolutionizing the way many of us think about food. Fifty years later it’s still having an impact.
“Cucina Fresca” by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman. I pretty much cooked my way through this book when it came out — it was the first time I learned you could make your own ricotta — and I still find myself turning to it all the time for really simple, fresh Italian recipes.
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Justin Pichetrungsi
Chef, Anajak Thai
“Amrikan” by Khushbu Shah. Probably my favorite cookbook of last year. Khushbu opens her book with a dedication: “For every diaspora kid with big dreams.” It’s a hilarious and fun way to burst your mind on how wild and yet simple Indian food can be to prepare. The photos by Aubrie Pick are gorgeous.
“The French Laundry Cookbook” by Thomas Keller. Read the acknowledgments and the introduction alone and you may tear up. I read this when I was 14 years old while standing in the Borders bookstore across the street from Anajak. I was glued to the words — chapters about the importance of rabbits, how cooking allowed you to travel in time, the most renegade sourcing of its time. I still open it up to remind myself of the purity of being a chef.
“Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home” by Arnold Myint and Kat Thompson. It’s coming out in October 2025, but this book by the James Beard -nominated chef at Nashville’s International Market is as stunning and as bedazzled as Chef Arnold is. Meeting him was like meeting a long-lost brother across the country. The book, his restaurant, his spirit is a high-definition snapshot of where Thai c uisine is at today. His family pioneered the early phases of the diaspora, and for that I am eternally grateful.
“Rintaro” by Sylvan Mishima Brackett with photos by Aya Brackett. I never thought they would release this cookbook. I always thought they would keep these simple secrets close to the chest, but no, they released it and shared everything about the great cooking at their San Francisco establishment. Photography is beautiful. I’m obsessed.
“Astrance: A Cook’s Book” by Chihiro Masui, Pascal Barbot and Christophe Rohat. One of the most coveted cookbooks for a chef and easily the most expensive. On E Bay it can go for $1,500! But when you thumb through it, you will see why. There’s very little description to the recipes. It’s almost poetic the way it speaks to you. The photography by Richard Haughton captures the essence of what it means to cook contemporary French and vegetable cuisine. I have only borrowed Johnny Lee’s copy; one day I will get my own!
Michelle Huneven
Novelist, food writer
“Jerusalem” by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I have cooked throughout this book, from Ottolenghi’s almond and orange syrup cake to his indispensable zhoug (the spicy green salsa/table condiment scented with cardamom). I rely on his chicken with caramelized onions and spices; it’s invariably a hit with guests and easier each time I make it (except that caramelizing the onions still tests my patience).
“Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure” by Lorna J. Sass. I love my pressure cooker. I use it for making stock and cooking beans as well as risottos and stews. Once I learned from Sass how to make risotto in a pressure cooker, I never stirred another! And never a single complaint, either! I constantly use Sass’ book for its timetables and know-how: for how long to cook a certain bean or how to do a quick presoak. But I have also come to love her toss-everything-into-the-pot recipes, which turn out to be astonishingly delicious.
“The Joy of Cooking” by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. I know, I know. If I were a serious cook, it would be Julia’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” But I rely on my old 1984 copy of “The Joy,” if mostly to manage the massive production of Hachiya persimmons we get each year from the 100-year-old tree in our front yard, the tree under which we were married and which, miraculously, survived the Eaton fire. The persimmon pudding is dangerously rich (so use only as much cream as you think fit). And the applesauce cake recipe works beautifully for a persimmon cake when you sub persimmon pulp for the applesauce. (I also use only brown sugar and half what the recipe calls for.) This “Joy” also has the best basic gingerbread recipe (sadly revised in subsequent editions), which I use — again, halving the sugar — on its own and as the basis for an upside-down pear gingerbread. This “Joy,” as ever, is a great, reliable source of cooking knowledge and I’m touched that a friend, who has kept several editions over the years, generously replaced the one I lost in the fire.
Chef Ari Kolender’s L.A. restaurants Found Oyster and Queen St. combine the charm of Charleston and the cult of seafood with chill cross-coastal vibes. His first cookbook is out: “How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.”
“The Settlement Cook Book” by Mrs. Simon Kander (Lizzie Black Kander). I will have to live without the copy of “The Settlement Cook Book” my mother received as a wedding present in 1948, a volume appallingly splotched with food, falling apart, taped together and full of Mom’s handwritten notes. (She died in 1988.) The subtitle of the book (tellingly credited to Mrs. Simon Kander) was “The Way to a Man’s Heart,” and indeed, the cover showed a long line of female cooks carrying trays of food to an enormous heart. A beginner’s or newlywed’s text with directions for setting a table and a decidedly Jewish slant, I mined it for childhood favorites — like molasses crinkle and other cookies — and hauled it out at Passover for the terse, simple but fully functional versions of matzoh balls and kugel. Kander’s extremely handy index in the front of the book should really serve as a template for more cookbooks!
“Love Soup, 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes” by Anna Thomas. I recently spent most of a year cooking soup for dinner (as I described last year for this paper) and the book I used the most was Anna Thomas’ “Love Soup.” You’d do well to buy the book just for Thomas’ “green soup,” a no-fail super-nutritious puree of multiple leafy greens that even teenagers eat with relish. Thomas, who gave us the well-before-its-time “The Vegetarian Epicure” series, writes her recipes in a way that make one a better cook — they’re clear and easy and often contain a valuable tip (never puree a potato too long lest it become slimy!). From pea soup to artichoke stew, Thomas’ dishes always surprise me with their refinement, easy sophistication and depth of flavor.
Chad Colby
Chef, Antico Nuovo
“Preserving the Italian Way” by Pietro Demaio (the original addition before they edited out all the humor). This book has a naturalistic approach to cooking rarely seen in cookbooks. For example, in the chapter on salumi the book directs you to buy a live pig and to consider buying two if your family has eight or more people in it.
“Cooking by Hand” by Paul Bertolli. This is the most high-minded cookbook on traditional cooking. The treasures of this book lie beyond recipes and are in its philosophy and approach to cooking.
“Italian Regional Cooking” by Ada Boni. A great historical resource to Italian recipes rarely seen today. There are many ingredients featured in this book that have all but disappeared from the Italian table like snails, frogs and eels.
“Pleasures of the Italian Table” by Burton Anderson. This is less of a cookbook and more of an encyclopedia crossed with gonzo journalism. It is a definitive resource of information on Italy’s most iconic food traditions, following by the documentation of first-hand experiences meeting the artisans behind them.
“Pomp and Sustenance” by Mary Taylor Simeti. Sprinkled with recipes, this book documents the history, culture and cuisines of Sicily as it has conformed and adopted influences from centuries of occupation from multiple outside cultures.
Betty Hallock
Deputy Food editor
It seemed like an impossible task: to choose five cookbooks from my collection that are most essential. For weeks I couldn’t narrow it down to fewer than 20 and included some of my most esoteric or most valuable, such as “ph10 patisserie pierre hermé,” a heavy, nearly 600-page tome from the legendary Paris pastry chef (all in French). But what books were most meaningful and personal, the ones that changed how I thought about food or cooking, the ones that carry the strongest memories? In some ways, there was everything before “Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes From London’s Ottolenghi,” published in 2010, and everything after, because the cult classic sparked in me a renewed love for vegetables. The roasted, split eggplant slathered with buttermilk sauce on the cover is iconic. The first time I ever made brioche, I used the recipe from “Desserts by Nancy Silverton,” and the result was a rock-star loaf of bread — fluffy and buttery — that I’ve never forgotten. “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food” (an expanded update of the 1972 original) from Cairo-born writer Claudia Roden plugged me into so many intricate facets of not just regional home cooking — in Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Iran and beyond — but ways of living and eating intertwined with art, politics and tradition. Her book was my introduction to Moroccan vegetable couscous and Egyptian lamb stew. “Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art” by Shizuo Tsuji is an influential classic, and my copy is dog-eared; the detailed step-by-step illustrations of foundational techniques are mesmerizing, and I can flip through them again and again. I bought “The Bar Radio Cocktail Book” on a rainy evening in Tokyo directly from esteemed bartender Koji Ozaki himself. When I forgot my umbrella at the end of the night, after the rain had cleared up, one of his colleagues ran after me for several blocks just to return it, and it cemented my love for the bar — and this book of more than 1,000(!) stylish American cocktail recipes and their variations — forever.
Danielle Dorsey
Senior Food editor
For me, cookbooks represent the demarcation of my adulthood, after I moved out of my parents’ home and began searching for everyday recipe ideas. My mother never collected cookbooks, but I remember the thick red spine of “The Joy of Cooking” by Irma S. Rombauer on our bookshelf growing up. It seemed natural that I would seek out a newer edition — now decades old — to begin my home chef journey. As I found my rhythm in the kitchen, culinary historian Toni Tipton Martin became a guide, with her American South-cum-Southern California roots somewhat similar to my own. I refer to “Jubilee,” Martin’s tome that celebrates two centuries of African American cooking, most often, but her more recent “Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice” cookbook is helpful when I want an appropriate cocktail pairing. Cocktail expert Shannon Mustipher’s “Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails” is another favorite; its neon-vibrant, almost-glowing photos of caipirinhas and mai tais helped whisk me from dull surroundings during the depths of COVID isolation. And one recently purchased addition is perhaps my most prized: “The Ebony Cookbook” by Freda DeKnight compiles recipes from her long-running “Date With a Dish” column in Ebony magazine. Published in 1962, the cookbook challenged the notion that African American cooks specialized only in Southern cuisine (though there’s plenty in that vein as well); in it, you’ll find old-school recipes for arroz con pollo and Yorkshire pudding, plus celebrity contributions including scrambled eggs from musician Duke Ellington and East Indian chicken from singer-actor Lena Horne. With its fragile spine and recipe notes fading in the margins, I always handle the vintage collector’s item with care.
Jenn Harris
Food columnist
I have vivid memories of my mother thumbing through each of these five books, making notes in the margins and staining the pages. They remind me of home and the time I spent at her side in the kitchen. The first is a volume of three books produced by the members of the Honpa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Hawaii called “Favorite Island Cookery.” It’s a collection of recipes from their many Oahu kitchens. “Benson & Hedges’ 100 Presents 100 Recipes From 100 of the Greatest Restaurants” helped develop my fascination with restaurants. “Jaws,” a Jewish community cookbook published to raise scholarship funds for students in Israel, has been used so frequently the binding has come apart. There’s no relation to Peter Benchley’s novel or film, but the cover does feature a striking illustration of a woman with shark-like teeth. “The Joy of Eating: A Simply Delicious Cookbook,” first published in 1976 by Beverly Hills cookbook writer Renny Darling, taught me how to make real Caesar dressing. And Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” was the one cookbook I brought with me to my college dorm room.
Daniel Hernandez
Food editor
With little, if minimal (if zero), resources, I began cooking ardently when I lived in Mexico and had a market to mine across the street. I admire many cookbooks by people in my generation, but if I’m being honest, my cooking now relies on tons of cross-referencing of standard recipes for guisos across the multiverse of Mexican cooking, as well as uncredited supermarket handout recipe pamphlets. Really. My famous (among my friends) caldo de camarón is based on the spring 2017 handout from Northgate Markets called “Más Sabor!” It’s full of seafood recipes for Cuaresma or Lent, when traditionally Catholic Mexicans abstain from meat on Fridays until Easter. I add deeper chiles and seasoning to make mine extra hot. I love “The Los Angeles Times California Cookbook” (1981) for a time-machine view of standardized California cooking at the start of the ’80s. There’s a recipe for pink mayonnaise in it. I own a well-preserved bilingual edition of “Pre-Hispanic Cooking” by Ana M. de Benítez (1974), which I use to examine the view of standardized cooking with native Mexican ingredients in the 1970s. And I cherish a government-published “Recetario indígena de Baja California” (2000) or “Indigenous Recipes of Baja California,” to cross-reference methods from the state of my ancestry. One title I do heavily cook with is by a figure who went out of fashion with a sizable set of Alta California tastemakers, Diana Kennedy. The late, grumpy British cook, who spent most of her life in a small town in Michoacán, published in 2013 a useful compendium of her most memorable recipes by Editorial Oceano for Spanish readers, “México: Una odisea culinaria con más de 250 recetas.” It’s a treasure trove. I started with the simplest recipe I could find — papas pastoras from Zacatecas, which Kennedy credits to Señora María Guadalupe de Zorrilla — and have never stopped cooking it. The hot appetizer of baby potatoes cooked quickly in oil, lime juice, onion, serrano peppers and lots of cilantro hits everything a fine Mexican entremesa should do. It made me a serrano convert for life.
Stephanie Breijo
Food reporter
“Sweet” by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh. Savory cooking tends to come much more intuitively for me, so when I turn to cookbooks it’s often for desserts or general baking. This is my go-to. I’d wager most home cooks are familiar with the savory-leaning tomes of London chef Yotam Ottolenghi, but his 2017 desserts-only cookbook, co-authored by pastry chef and recipe developer Helen Goh, should be on everyone’s shelves — especially for those looking to replicate some of the cookies, cakes and meringues that famously wait in the front windows of many of the chef’s restaurants. There’s something for every sweet tooth here, but I’ve found the flourless chocolate layer cake with coffee, candied walnuts and rose water is a showstopper to bring to a party.
“A Treasury of Great Recipes” by Mary and Vincent Price. Screen legend Vincent Price is best known for his roles in horror classics such as “House on Haunted Hill” and “House of Wax,” but offscreen, the man was a bona fide gastronome. He and his wife, Mary, traveled the world dining at some of the 20th century’s top restaurants, and in the process, managed to source and publish some of their recipes for home use. Organized by country, this 1965 cookbook published recipes and old menus from dining legends such as New York’s since-demolished Lüchow’s, Paris’ Lasserre and L.A.’s own Scandia. As ardent dinner-party hosts, they even throw in a few of their favorite Price family dishes, plus hosting how-to’s for folding napkins and pairing wine. It’s restaurant history, 1960s kitsch and a glimpse into the life of a cinema legend all rolled into one. My 1974 copy, with a puffy cover and gold embossing, will always be within easy reach in my home. Vintage copies are regularly listed on E Bay, but a 50th-anniversary edition, released in 2015, is even easier to find (though if you’re hunting for a cookbook as iconic as the Prices’, I say opt for the vintage version).
“The Brown Derby Cookbook” by Robert Cobb and the staff of the Brown Derby restaurants. There are a few Los Angeles restaurants I daydream about traveling back in time for, and among the top tier is the Brown Derby. The mythical restaurant nearly synonymous with Hollywood’s Golden Age closed its last location unceremoniously a few years before I was born, but thanks to its 1949 cookbook, the famed (original!) Cobb salad, the Derby beef stew and other signature recipes live on. You can no longer “eat in the hat,” but at least you can bring the hat home. I cherish a first-edition copy, its corners frayed, but a new 2020 reissue can be purchased for less than $20 online.
“Appetites” by Anthony Bourdain with Laurie Woolever. This is Bourdain’s version of a home cooking catchall, a family cookbook, an everyday-use collection of recipes and straightforward techniques that could teach even the most novice chef to scramble an egg or assemble a “straight-ahead” potato salad. That’s not to say that Bourdain and his longtime collaborator Woolever don’t work some sparkle into everyday dining: There’s also fresh pasta with wild boar sugo, Macau-style pork chop sandwiches, veal Milanese and everything else I’d like to be eating at all times. Irreverent but informational, this 2016 release sings with Bourdain’s voice and, for years, has proved far more personally useful and approachable than the late chef/author/host’s earlier cookbooks.
“The Silver Spoon.” It’s one of the bestselling cookbooks in Italy for a reason. Originally published in 1950 as “Il Cucchiato d’Argento,” it’s seen near-constant updates to its gargantuan collection of classic and hyper-regional Italian recipes. In 2005 it was finally translated into English, and sometime within a decade of that, my own Italian American grandmother bought me a copy — its cover a sleek red leather — and I always think of her when I pull it from my cookbook shelves. “The Silver Spoon” is dense and comprehensive but still feels (and reads) approachable — a near miracle, considering it holds more than 2,000 recipes.
Bill Addison
Restaurant critic
My cooking life began in college, when I would check out stacks of cookbooks from the Boston Public Library. The one from those years that most carried me into my 20s, working as a pastry cook in restaurant kitchens, was “Chez Panisse Desserts” by Lindsey Shere. The collection is as much a primer on French and elegant Americana sweets (tarts, cobblers, crisps, so much ice cream-making inspiration) as it is a fantasia on the mythical land of California, overflowing with heirloom peaches and citrus hybrids with names like “Lavender Gems.” I moved from New England to Atlanta, where I had the honor to meet Edna Lewis, one of our nation’s defining chefs, before she died in 2006. Her “The Taste of Country Cooking” is essential, but I turn again and again to “The Gift of Southern Cooking,” which she authored with Scott Peacock; among its many produce-rich recipes, I’ve never found a better version of macaroni and cheese. My best friend is Lebanese, and she introduced me to “Lebanese Cuisine,” the first cookbook by Anissa Helou, published in 1994; it taught the world how there is far more to her country’s cooking than kebabs and hummus. Likewise, “The Palestinian Kitchen” by Reem Kassis honors the history, culture and familial variations on the region’s cuisines. Her “lamb kafta and tahini bake” is one of my favorite weeknight-dinner recipes. Admittedly, working as a restaurant critic I don’t cook at home as much as I once did. To reorient to the kitchen, I open Samin Nosrat’s “Salt Fat Acid Heat,” to my mind the most exuberant and approachable book on cooking technique — on how to think about food, not just follow instructions — written in the English language so far this millennium.
Laurie Ochoa
Food general manager
Anyone who has been to my house has seen the stacks of cookbooks I own, many of which line the sides of a large staircase in the entryway. But if forced to choose, there is one I consider my most essential cookbook: “Simple French Food” by Richard Olney. Four years before his 1999 death, I was able to interview the expat American cook and artist whose passion for good food and uncompromising standards won over the French. He signed my battered paperback, which was the first book that taught me what it means to think like a cook. Beautifully written, his recipes assume flexibility — with regionality, with the seasons, with what you happen to have in the kitchen. My touchstone Olney recipe is Soupe au Pistou or vegetable soup with basil and garlic. It’s been the centerpiece of many gatherings at my house with everyone always going for an extra spoonful of pistou — which, as Olney in his inimitable way wrote, “is like some unleashed earth force, sowing exhilaration in its wake.”
The rest of my essentials shift from year to year, but at the moment they are “The Zuni Cafe Cookbook” by the late San Francisco chef Judy Rodgers, not just for her classic dry-brined roast chicken recipe, which is readily available online, but for her seductive writing and thinking behind each recipe; Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking,” which guided me through my early cooking years; Claire Ptak’s “The Violet Bakery Cookbook,” which has become a go-to book for my daughter, Isabel, who has added Ptak’s braised fennel bread pudding to our Thanksgiving table; and Angelo Pellegrini’s “The Unprejudiced Palate,” which I consider required reading for all aspiring food writers.
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