The cookbooks we can't cook without

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Pizza pizza
I love the monomaniacal obsession of single-topic cookbooks, but I don’t usually turn to them every week. Peter Reinhart’s “American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza” (Ten Speed Press, $25), is the exception. Reinhart travels across Italy and America, from Naples to Phoenix, and then presents definitive recipes for every imaginable style of pizza. Napoletano, deep-dish, grilled, California — it’s all here. I followed Reinhart’s journey in my own kitchen. I set up a card table by the grill to top a pizza in a manner that was more performance art than cooking; I grudgingly topped a pizza with clams; I happily experimented with smoked salmon. I finally found my mainstay in the same recipe with which I started. It’s the basic thin-crust Napoletano, but it really is nothing short of perfection.

Getting started
Whenever a friend begins to cook, I always give them a copy of “A New Way To Cook” (Artisan, $40). Sally Schneider’s comprehensive cookbook is designed to be healthy, a fact I often forget, since not a single recipe tastes remotely dietetic. I used to add Post-its to my favorite recipes — something I stopped doing after one recipient pointed out I had flagged nearly everything. More than any one recipe, though, Schneider has taught me techniques that allow me to use butter and cream, for instance, in unimaginably tiny quantities for huge results. (I have stopped forcing guests to guess how much butter is in her piecrust. They don’t believe me, anyway.) I use her methods for steam-sautéing vegetables, pan-searing fish, and soaking French toast even when cooking from less fat-conscious recipes. The goal of this cookbook is not to eliminate “bad” foods but to eat really, really well — and it more than succeeds.

Goddesses unite
I am far from a domestic goddess. I thank heaven for the word “rustic” every time I bake one of my raggedy looking pies. More than that, though, I thank Nigella Lawson for “How to Be A Domestic Goddess” (Hyperion, $35). Don’t let the cupcake on the cover fool you — this is a book even for bakers whose arts and crafts skills are lacking. Baking with Nigella is not about Martha Stewart-style frosting skills, but about feeling warm and cozy. Nigella expects you to lick the bowl. I pull "Domestic Goddess" out when I need an emotional lift, when I need a foolproof dessert for a dinner party, and when I just want to muck around and make something scrumptious. —Hannah Meehan Spector

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Hannah Meehan Spector is a writer in Los Angeles.

CONTINUED : Hungry for breakfast?

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