New cookbooks to warm up your winter

I didn't realize how much my cooking skills had improved over the years until we were iced in early this month — trapped in our Seattle home, unable even to get out for work. We hadn't shopped since returning from the Thanksgiving holiday, and now dinner, as well as lunch, breakfast, and any and all snacks, was reduced to whatever we could make out of the fixings in our pantry and refrigerator.

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I admit, I felt a little proud to be able to use my cookbooks, online recipes, and my own creativity to turn out varied and healthy meals from what was around the house. My family has been spoiled by the fact that we're just six blocks from two giant grocery stores, four minutes from a wonderful weekend farmer's market, and until recently, enjoyed home produce delivery. But my adventure with the wintry weather was a good lesson in using up what we have, both clearing out the fridge and cupboards and requiring some creative recipe wrangling. The cabin fever did set in after about three days, but it wasn't brought on by any limited food choices.

Our roundup of winter cookbooks has an especially sunny, warm focus this season. Baking and winter go so well together — the toasty ovens and delectable smells make any kitchen warm right up. And we also examine books from Italy, Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, providing a little winter escape even for the homebound.    —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Books Editor

Start your ovens
Perhaps Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies should be considered a benchmark for the remaining recipes in her cookbook, “Baking: From My Home to Yours” (Houghton Mifflin, $40). Fifteen minutes after I pulled the first pan from the oven, no fewer than seven of the sandy, chocolate-and-butter cookies had vanished. I know they’re only a couple of bites each — but seven gone so fast? Then I tried one myself and marveled at tiny salty bursts of fleur de sel, a perfect complement to the chocolate.

The fragrant fresh ginger and chocolate gingerbread follows suit, this time contrasting hot ginger with the chocolate. Sturdy and mildly spicy, the gingerbread makes the perfect welcome-home on a cold day.

Translucent maple tuiles go the lighter route. Just four ingredients, they’re simple to mix up. The fun lies in the baking, where dough spreads into thin pools of bubbling caramel. Out of the oven, draped quickly over a rolling pin, the caramel sets up curved, like fragile, lacy roof tiles. The fig cake for fall, pleasantly tactile, pairs a bumpy honey-cornmeal cake with fresh figs, then tops them with a cloud of whipped cream and port sauce.

Gorgeous photographs accompany well-organized recipes, each with helpful side notes on serving and storing. Greenspan’s instructions are thorough but friendly, and provide key lessons along the way. Take her lead, for example, with the delightfully silky French lemon cream tart, where Greenspan helpfully walks you through each change in form: “As you whisk the cream over heat — you must whisk constantly to keep the eggs from scrambling — you’ll see that the cream starts out light and foamy, but then the bubbles will get bigger, and as the cream is getting closer to 180 degrees F, it will start to thicken and the whisk will leave tracks. Heads up at this point—the tracks mean the cream is almost ready.”

How could you go wrong? This book is tops.    —Joan Wolfe

No turkey here
There are cookbooks whose lavish photographs make them ideal coffeetable fare, cookbooks whose cultural insights make for great bedtime reading, and cookbooks packed with practical and delicious recipes to actually cook. Yet some books, like Claudia Roden’s “Arabesque”  (Knopf, $35), which covers the foods of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, work on all three levels.

"Arabesque" features explanations of the history of the cuisine of each country and current trends in home and restaurant cooking, all accompanied by enchanting photographs. Middle Eastern cuisine is hardly exotic these days, but the book includes many new twists on now-familiar ingredients, including a dish of baked chickpeas, tahini and yogurt over toasted flatbread (a sort of deconstructed hummus and pita). 

Hosts of large events will find each cuisine, with their emphases on starters (kemia in Morocco, meze in Turkey and mezze in Lebanon) a boon for cocktail-party planning. These tantalizing small dishes range from cold salads of carrots and cumin or cucumber and yogurt to hot dishes like a chicken and onion pie and of course innumerable eggplant-, tomato-, or chickpea-based dips.  It’s easy to assemble an impressive buffet that cuts across each cuisine, especially since almost everything can be prepared in advance.

For smaller gatherings or just family, the main dishes, whether one of the many Moroccan tagines (lamb with caramelized onions and baby pears is a sweet and savory standout), Turkish roast chickens, or Lebanese stuffed vegetables, are sure things.  Less typical Middle Eastern dishes, such as seared tuna with lemon dressing or prawns in spicy tomato sauce, make for simple and elegant quick meals.  “Arabesque” is a must for cooks and readers alike.    —Hannah Meehan Spector

Year's best recipes
Confession: as a subscriber to “Cook’s Illustrated” and a regular viewer of “America’s Test Kitchen, I took on “The Best of America’s Test Kitchen: The Year’s Best Recipes, Equipment Reviews and Tastings 2007”  (America’s Test Kitchen, $35) because I assumed I’d already tried most of the recipes and I could write this review without too much extra work. As it turns out, the main magazine and television show are just the tip of the iceberg for the America’s Test Kitchen publishing empire. This book covers the best of everything they’ve put out this year, including light recipes, 30-minute recipes, family recipes and newer “Cook’s Country” magazine. 

In each case, the editors take a recipe and then perfect it, turning out instructions that sometimes seem overly fastidious but are almost always foolproof. Bonus features scattered throughout include reviews of basics like bakeware and pots and pans; ingredient primers on everything from types of rice to inexpensive steaks; and general tips. A section at the end of most recipes called “Where Things Can Go Wrong” walks through every conceivable pitfall.

Beyond the book’s ease of use, its true value is in the selection of recipes. Once you try one, it's hard not to want to make it a menu staple. The book includes an even balance of tweaks to familiar favorites — I updated my Thanksgiving menu with their rich sweet potato casserole and easy-to-shape Parker House rolls — and new ideas, such as coffeecake-flavored muffins, that are likely to become new favorites. This is more than just a year’s-best round-up; it’s an invaluable resource whether you’re deciding which brand of chicken broth to buy or what to eat for dinner next Tuesday.    —H.M.S.

Stretch your baking skills
If you’re looking for a gift for your favorite baker, consider “Tartine” (Chronicle Books, $35), by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson. The book is gorgeous, a testament to the San Francisco bakery of the same name. Here, a photo of croissants, powdered-sugar dusted, begs you to have a bite. There, caramel-sugar leaves, silver dragees and meringue mushrooms crown a Bûche de Noël. Mark your place with the attached satin ribbon, a thoughtful touch.

The book organizes recipes into nine major categories, from breakfast to basics. Not everything is sweet. “With a Glass of Wine” offers some savory options — such as cheddar-cheese crackers or a wild-mushroom tart — ideal next time you’re planning appetizers. You can’t go wrong making buttermilk scones. Hot from the oven and pleasantly lemony, they’ll make any breakfast special. Serve with your favorite jam.

Fans of chocolate pudding will appreciate the dark, rich version included in the book. Topped it with whipped cream, it’ll get raves from kids and adults alike. For foolproof pie crust, try the flaky tart dough. The recipe makes enough for two tarts, useful for both sweet and savory applications. Unfortunately, the dough shrank some when I baked the shell empty, but otherwise, I’d call the recipe a winner.

Some of the recipes do take practice. The quiche — make this tender custard your base for all manner of add-ins — can easily overtop its crust. I followed the tip for adding excess filling but flooded the pan instead. With the apple nougatine tart, I walked the line between burning the caramel and undercooking the apples. The result: despite a great sugared-almond topping, I faced a too-soggy crust and apples firm enough to struggle with.

So there were a few stumbles. I still consider Tartine a good lesson plan for some exceptional baking, and I value this book because it stretches my skills. Next up: lemon-meringue cake.     —J.W.

‘Naked’ truth
My image of Jamie Oliver was shaped entirely by a few viewings of his first television show, “The Naked Chef,” in which he tooled around London on a scooter and pronounced everything brilliant. In “Jamie’s Italy” (Hyperion, $35), he takes the same approach to Italy, traveling the country and sharing the brilliant things he found there. 

The recipes are pretty standard Italian fare — antipasti, pizzas, pasta, fish and meat, but each section is introduced with a full page of Oliver’s enthusiasm for the course. Scattered throughout are a few informally written recipes, and these are the highlight of the book. In one page, Oliver can convince you to dress cooked greens like salad or walk you through a linguine dish.

Oliver’s directions work better as free-association, outside the standard recipe formula of a list of ingredients followed by instructions. In fact, many of the formal recipes seem to be missing steps (or perhaps he really does think you should not bother letting your pizza dough rise) or are in need of drastic revision. Fried pizza, for instance, sounds like it could be great, but would probably need more frying time than Oliver allows and definitely a lower-moisture cheese than buffalo mozzarella. Of course, it also sounds like something invented at a frat house around 2 a.m., but Oliver insists it is how pizza was originally made.

When the recipes work, they really work — a pork chop stuffed with prosciutto and roasted over pancetta and potatoes is as flavorful and rich as something that loaded with pork fat should be, with the crisp potatoes providing perfect contrast.  There are far too many duds, though, such as a baked pasta with tomatoes and cheese that is unrelentingly bland but which Oliver sells with equal enthusiasm.  If you approach the recipes with caution, though, you can enjoy the ride.     —H.M.S.

Joan Wolfe works in the Editorial Development group at MSNBC.com. Hannah Meehan Spector is a writer in Los Angeles.

© 2012 msnbc.com Reprints