Holiday Cookbook Guide: The Best Presents For Them...And You

Dandelion and Quince: Exploring the Wide World of Unusual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs by Michelle McKenzie

This beautifully illustrated cookbook educates and honors the abundance of farmers markets and grocery stores alike. It features many overlooked and yet to be discovered by domestic cook ingredients, from nettles, to sunchokes, exploring fava leaves, kumquats, mustard and more. The bounty of leaves, roots, blossoms and berries curated in Dandelion & Quince are simple foods that can easily be incorporated into everyday cooking, while bringing some much needed diversity to the kitchen and to our diets. It pays tribute to the care taken by farmers, teaching readers how to select the best produce and where and when to use it. Everything from overlooked leaves, easily dismissed weeds, and previously discarded seeds have found a passionate champion in Michelle McKenzie, who delivers over 150 recipes to satisfy all palates. Her book provides guidance, tricks, tips, and advice, such as tasting your food constantly and how to embrace mistakes. Known as the program director and an instructor at 18 Reasons, a cooking school, event venue, and community gathering place in San Francisco's Mission District, McKenzie has clearly found her calling in communicating her love of food onto the page, making this a handsome, thoughtful gift for anyone who loves to cook.

Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs by Julia Turshen, Gentl + Hyers and foreword by Ina Garten

In this stunningly designed and deeply personal collection Chef April Bloomfield's "simple, achievable recipes," you will find a focus on bold flavors, pure ingredients, and hearty dishes for meals around the clock. Not only does Turshen provide straightforward recipes, but includes two or three spinoffs for each one, allowing variation and encouraging experimentation. Nothing is fussy, nothing is rigid, and everything is open for a home cook's delicious exploration. As well, Small Victories has a genius section of 7 Lists of 7 Things You Can Do, featuring chicken, ground beef, pizza dough, seafood, soup, and more. This is the perfect cookbook for busy, on-the-go folks who come home at 6pm and confront a fridge of leftovers, wondering "what can I possibly cook?" With more than 160 to-die-for photos, concise instructions and inspirational modifications, this book is an essential and covetable gift for both novice and advanced cooks--and it's sure to get you an invitation for dinner!

Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from An Unlikely Life on a Farm by Molly Yeh

The charming, eloquent, and effervescent Molly Yeh celebrates her Jewish and Chinese background with lovingly tested recipes for Asian Scotch Eggs, Scallion Pancake Challah Bread, Cardamom Vanilla Cake and Marzipan Mandel Bread, as well as dishes to surprise and delight everyone. Food almost takes a backseat to Yeh's writing, which is powerful, funny, and so filled with life that you'll want to curl up with this book and a plate of cookies for a long afternoon. Fans of Yeh's blog, My Name Is Yeh, will be delighted with this gracing their kitchen shelves and newcomers to Yeh's kitchen witchery will delight in getting to know her, her husband, and their brood of chickens. Packed with everyday classics, updates to traditional comfort food, and unique ingredients, each recipe is backed by a personal story from Yeh's life, cementing the connection between living and eating well. This is a great gift for someone who just moved into their own place for the first time, a new cook, or someone who has recently transplanted, as Yeh is a city girl turned farm girl, hauling herself from New York to North Dakota--but really, there aren't many people who won't fall head over heels for Molly on the Range.

Dorie's Cookies by Dorie Greenspan

Need a gift for someone with a sweet tooth or are you dying to dig into a delicious New Year? Then you simply must pick up a copy of Dorie's Cookies! Written by Greenspan, otherwise known as 'The Cookie Jedi,' brings her 25 years of culinary mastery into this delightful ode to everyone's favorite dessert. The IACP and James Beard award–winning chef and New York Times bestselling cookbook author playfully admits in the introduction that she has wanted to create an all-cookie cookbook for over twenty years, every since she wrote her first book back in 1991--so you know she has thought through every single recipe in this decadent bible. In the gorgeously photographed pages, you'll find everything from her famous Lunch-box Blueberry Buttermilk Pie Bars to They Might Be Breakfast Cookies packed with raisins, dried apples, dried cranberries, and oat, to her three ingredient only Almond Crackle Cookies, and holiday favorites like Italian Saucissons and German jam sandwich cookies.

Modern Potluck: Beautiful Food to Share by Kristin Donnelly

If you want to give a gift with the sentiment of dining, look no further than Modern Potluck. What better way to bring loved ones together than over savory, simply recipes designed to delight every palate? With over 100 day of and make-ahead recipes, this is the perfect present for busy households or fans of one-dish-dining.