Ladies and gentlemen, start your ovens

When collecting cookbooks for our quarterly roundups, we always aim for that sweeping generalization of "something for everyone." We probably came closest this time than ever before, as among the new cookbooks we tested was one for dogs. OK, so unless your dog is Lassie, she's probably not going to whip up doggie meatloaf on her own, you're going to have to help out.

The human-centered cookbooks are all over the map. As fall settles around us, soups sound better and better, so we've tested a soup cookbook. The flavors of the Arab world, still unfamiliar to many of us, delight the tongue in May S. Bsisu's "The Arab Table." We also examine books focusing on Asian cuisine and on cooking for novices. And for our final book, we go straight to Hell — or, Hell's Kitchen — reviewing a tome from foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Enjoy!    —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Focus on an overlooked cuisine
Possibly excepting hummus, food from the Arab world isn’t exactly a staple in American kitchens. That alone makes the clear, instructive tone of May S. Bsisu’s “The Arab Table” (William Morrow, $35) — and the well-defined flavors of its recipes — compelling.

Bsisu, a Jordanian-born cooking instructor who now lives outside Cincinnati, takes a notably pan-Arab approach, covering cuisines from Morocco to the Persian Gulf — largely without politics and with a focus on the Muslim and Christian cultural traditions that govern her selected dishes. Want to know about Ramadan meals? She offers 10 pages of detail, including menus.

Little surprises abound. An oregano salad, flavored with sumac, sounded improbable but resulted in a perfect mix of fresh, evocative tastes. An Iraqi dish of red snapper in pomegranate syrup, though a bit soggy, provided a splendid balance of sweet, tangy and hot.

Tiny details are crucial — like the mastic (pebbles of tree resin) that adds a woody spice note to chicken shawarma — but Bsisu is refreshingly precise with measurements and instructions.  An included glossary and ingredient source list are quite helpful.

One minor road bump: Many recipes require other preparations from the book, presumably because the ingredients can’t exactly be found at the corner store. The shawarma calls for a garlic paste that in turn needs labneh (yogurt cheese), itself an overnight effort.  Preparation times should be checked carefully.

But Bsisu deftly sheds light on a largely overlooked culinary topic. Your guests will be eager for more, and perhaps full bellies are the first step to rapprochement.    —Jon Bonné

@$%#!$ ‘Chef’
Though Americans primarily know British celeb chef Gordon Ramsay via his Fox reality show, “Hell’s Kitchen,” the man has written at least five cookbooks in addition to gathering Michelin stars.  The concept of “A Chef for All Seasons” (Ten Speed Press, $28) certainly shapes up nicely; Ramsay and co-author Roz Denny divide the book — newly available in a U.S. printing —  into four sections, one per season, each featuring a brief primer on seasonal ingredients and matching recipes.  The dishes sound delightful; the photos match Anthony Bourdain’s cover-blurb description as “food porn.”

So why, to paraphrase Ramsay’s TV persona, is this $@##@^% book so utterly #&#@^#@-ed up?

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