AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Louisa May Alcott’s Apple Pal Dowdy or Apple Slump Recipe, and other delicious literary culinary concoctions. Books and food – what could be better?

Literary Feasts: Recipes from the Classics of Literature by Barbara Scrafford discusses delicious food scenes from famous books, and provides accompanying recipes. Reading and cooking!

There’s an Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. Apparently, the recipes include French Bread from the Mellark family bakery, Katniss’s lamb stew with dried plums, Rue’s roasted parsnips, Gale’s game soup and Capitol-grade dark chocolate cake. It features more than 150 recipes from the meals in the trilogy written by Suzanne Collins.

Salami by Hans Gissinger and Gerard Oberle is a monograph all about salami, with gorgeous photos and accompanying essays. Perfect for the meat-loving artist.

High literary comedy from Mark Crick at The Independent, who imagines what celebrity cookbooks would look like if Virginia Woolf, Geoffrey Chaucer or Raymond Chandler had turned their skills to cooking. The Chandler part is brilliant. Woolf Gently she melted the butter, transparent and smooth, oleaginous and clear, clarified and golden, and mixed it with [...]

I always thought food was for eating, but a photographer called Carl Warner is proving me wrong. Apparently, food is ideal for creating photographic landscapes and Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes is hot property after an appearance on CBS TV yesterday. He uses fruits, vegetables, cheeses, breads, fish, meat, and grains, and the book offers a [...]

Michelle Obama has a new book on the way: “American Grown: How the White House Kitchen Garden Inspires Families, Schools, and Communities” will be released in April 2012.

My next cookbook is going to be this one – 1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega and published by Phaidon Press. Mouth-watering recipes from every region of Spain. Over 200 illustrations. A Spanish institution since 1972. Check out that cover artwork by Javier Mariscal. The recipe for potatoes with chorizo and bacon looks great. I went [...]

Mmmm… the Hungry Happenings blog has some chocolate books.

August’s Avid Reader is about regional cookbooks. My colleague Beth writes…. “Lemongrass, ginger, fennel and ghee, tamarind, prosciutto and so much more. The world is absolutely full of flavor, just waiting to be brought to life in any combination the human mind can dream up. For a self-confessed book junkie and culinary experimenter, cookbooks are [...]