It's fall and you know what that means!
Apple picking. Crispy leaves. Pie.
No, silly—tons of new cookbooks! Our Shop's got stacks on stacks on stacks of 'em, and we're going to help you choose the perfect one! We're basically Mmatch.com for cookbooks.
Our algorithm? Nothing says, "What kind of person are you?" quite like your preferred egg preparation. Fnd your ideal egg below and our highly scientific data will reveal your cookbook soulmate.
Read on to see every type, or jump to your egg preference:
Hard boiled by the batch—to eat on everything, all week
However the hip kids are making them these days
Just give me an egg sandwich, I'm hungover
Over-easy, on toast made by someone with a good story
As a means to more sweets
In an omelette inspired by the contents of your crisper
Baked simply, with cream
How do you take your eggs?
Hard boiled by the dozen—to eat all week!
You'll make a big batch on Sunday nights and then repurpose them day in and day out—in egg salad, for deviled eggs, as topping for asparagus mimosa, and sliced into avocado-tomato sandwiches.
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
A New Way to Dinner: A playbook of recipes and strategies for the week ahead
by Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs (Come on, we had to!)
For the ever-prepared (or for those who aspire to be prepared), A New Way to Dinner is the prep-ahead bible—and just happens to be penned by our co-founders. For each season, Amanda and Merrill lay out four weekly meal plans to get you and your family through five nights of dinners (and brown bag lunches to boot!).
The recipes impress but don't daunt. And most importantly, they make weeknight cooking a brief affair, instead of a main event (the main event should be eating). Take the Merrill's Fall chapter: On Sunday you'll make tomatoey roast chicken, sausage ragu, polenta, roasted applesauce, (and don't forget dessert!). Then you'll use those dishes to build meals throughout the week—where the only things you're left to do are assemble, make easy green salads, bake a sweet potato or two, and bubble up some rice.
Plan ahead, and you'll reap the rewards.
However the hippest new restaurants are serving them.
You're the type who might poach farm eggs in chile-spiked olive oil, served over charred rainbow chard, and top them with flaked salt cod (which coincidentally looks pretty damn great in an overhead Instagram shot) served to 6 of your closest friends.
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
Dinner at the Long Table
by Andrew Tarlow & Anna Dunn with Scarlett Lindeman
Like you, Dinner at the Long Table—the cookbook distillation of a mini food and drink empire in Brooklyn, New York—is bold, glossy, and so very now. Andrew Tarlow’s restaurants, bars, and bakeries are high-design, use high-quality ingredients, and embody everything that is of-the-moment, as is his cookbook.
The book, resplendent with enviable photography, is divided into events: "A Summer Farewell," "Ragu at the End of Winter," "A Clam for Twelve," with menus for each. While the full-scale execution of the menus may border on fantasy (one can only dream of hosting a party with freshly shucked oysters, and a goose whose carcass you've made into a stock, in which you braise its legs, and whose breasts are smoked on an open fire) the recipes themselves have an open door policy. The ingredient lists generally keep themselves to a respectable length and don’t require four separate trips to five different grocery stores. You'll recognize the names of the dishes, even if you've never attempted them before (paellas, tagines, braises, roasts, gratins, tapenades).
These aren't weeknight canon recipes: They're ones you’ll plan ahead for, challenge yourself to make, and sweat a little over—ultimately earning a hurrah from your friends.
Call it the happy medium between the attainable and the aspirational.
Just feed me, I'm hungover.
A bodega egg sandwich (a broken fried egg + american cheese on a soft roll) is your spirit food—followed by a hangover-friendly bitters and soda:
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World
by Robert Simonson
To you, breakfast is just a coda to a night seated across from a ballet of shaking, pouring, tossing, smashing, and spritzing. The bartenders make you feel like you’re in on it, but you don’t really know why the menu has a Boulevardier on it, or who reclaimed the maraschino cherry. For the ever-curious (and the slightly gossipy), Robert Simonson shares the secrets of the cocktail world in a conspiratorial whisper. Not so much a cookbook as a highly entertaining history lesson, A Proper Drink takes you through the American cocktail “revolution.”
You’ll stay well-watered, too: Simonson handpicks 40 drinks spawned from the upheaval and subsequent renaissance. Try the Penicillin: single-malt Scotch, blended Scotch, honey-ginger syrup, lemon juice, and a wedge of candied ginger. It'll put some hair on your chest.
Over-easy, on toast made by someone with a good story.
But when you stopped at the greenmarket to buy the eggs, you got into a conversation with the farmer, who tells you he has been raising his chickens for 60 years, and even fried up eggs as an army cook in the second World War. And the bread you picked out is made from something called Red May wheat, which you immediately google when you get home to find out it was America’s first farmer-selected production wheat (since 1830), developed in Virginia by a farmer whose life was dedicated to preserving truly American cereal crops following the Revolution...
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
Far Afield: Rare Food Encounters From Around the World
by Shane Mitchell, photography by James Fisher
To you, the story behind your meal is just as important as what’s actually in it. Recipes are secondary in Far Afield—you'll get lost in the lives of Tima and Ali, fishermen in Kenya, or Christine and Jean-Jacques, ranchers in Uruguay. Their lives are dedicated to keeping a distinct culinary tradition alive, and Shane Mitchell's first-person recounting and James Fisher's photography capture those far flung corners of the world with vivid detail.
Sure, you might not get around to making Barbacoa de Conejo (grilled rabbit—although you totally could!)—but the profiles they share are more than satisfying enough.
Baked into something fluffy and sweet.
For you, eggs are best when whipped into a meringue or moistening a cake... Flaky pastry wins over scrambled eggs any day, preferably dusted with cinnamon or stuffed with chocolate... And there's no such thing as too much coffee.
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
Classic German Baking: The Very Best Recipes for Traditional Favorites, from Pfeffernüsse to Streuselkuchen
by Luisa Weiss
You're a traditionalist, and you've got a mean sweet tooth. With Classic German Baking by your side, your mornings are for firing up the 'ole oven and lazily rolling out pastry, leaving a thin dusting of powdered sugar over everything.
Luisa Weiss lays out the definitive collection of German baking recipes—the classics, in classic, straight-forward style. She shies away from the new-fangled (she argues that most modern German baking cookbooks focus on American or French baking), instead putting down in ink the beloved recipes that pass from one generation to the next. Streusels filled with apricots, cherries, and apples, almond paste-laced cakes and cookies, and lots of poppyseeds, nutmeg, and rich chocolate tortes. And you can't help but get swept up in the book's cozy, wintry fantasy when there's an entire section devoted to "Christmas Favorites"—gingerbread galore! (We'll also admit that there is a savory baking section. Because every now and then you need a short break from sugar.)
Our favorite part? The goods are as fun to make and as fun to eat as they are to say (Mohnstreuselkuchen, anyone?).
In an omelette inspired by the contents of your crisper.
Your specialty: an anything-and-everything omelette—all the odds and ends from your vegetable drawer (today it was withered chard stems and radishes), stirred into frothy eggs. Seasoned liberally with hot sauce and maybe a swipe of shrimp paste if you have it lying around. And showered with a deluge of cilantro.
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
Lucky Peach Presents Power Vegetables!: Turbocharged Recipes for Vegetables with Guts
by Peter Meehan & the editors of Lucky Peach
You’re adventurous, and you generally don’t give a shit what people think about you. Your cooking is bold and a little haphazard—it sometimes fails (always in a spectacular fashion) but when it’s a success you have to brag about it to everyone know know. Lucky Peach’s Power Vegetables! is for you—gregarious and all-in on those leafy greens and under-appreciated roots. Spicy, pickled, and otherwise big flavors are in abundance here (Buffalo Cucumbers, Kung Pao Celeries, Root Vegetable Tagine with Red Chermoula). And plenty of "I forgot that existed!" recipes—borscht, wedge salad, Quiche Lorraine—that will slide easily back into your repertoire.
Every dish follows four rules (no pasta, no put-an-egg-in-its or grain bowls, fish and dairy are allowed, and fruits count as vegetables) but trust us, you won't miss the meat. And if the recipes aren't enough to convince you of the vegetable's prowess, look to the interviews with chefs who've most recently put cruciferous eating on the map (Brooks Headley, David Chang, Jessica Koslow, and Ivan Orkin).
Baked with a little cream
You're a purist: Baked eggs with just a splash of heavy cream is your idea of a breakfast that doesn't need much else. (Except maybe a dollop of some homemade baba ganoush.)
Then your cookbook soulmate is...
Simple
by Diana Henry
The title tells you most of what you need to know. But don't you dare mistake Simple for "run-of-the-mill".
If you reach for cookbooks that you'll use over and over again (instead of glorified coffee table books), Diana is your girl. Your weeknight staples will get an update (an earthy noodle salad, smoky spanish rice with beans and pumpkin, and chicken thighs drowned in Indian-spiced sauciness) but you won't pull your hair out trying to decipher out-of-reach cooking skills or tracking down impossible-to-source ingredients.
The preparations are simple, but the flavors often take you by surprise—for instance, a cake that combines lemon and lavender makes for a "Huh? Oh!" moment. One second you're puzzled, and the next moment you're wondering why you've never married the two before.
Now that you've found your cookbook, go sweep them off their feet!
What cookbooks are you looking forward to this fall? And how do you like your eggs? Tell us in the comments below!