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.

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

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