Cookbooks

Served this quick dinner recipe on buns, like barbecue; or like soft tacos—on flour tortillas topped with sour cream and pico de gallo.

Ancho chile powder adds a remarkable smokiness to this dish, while the cilantro beautifully brightens it up. Choose the best-quality short ribs you can find. It makes a nice difference in flavor and fat content.

Many people enjoy chicken pho with a side of this zippy sauce. They dip the flesh into the sauce as they eat the soup. The fresh ginger bite adds a last-minute layer of flavor that some find to be scintillating while others find to be distracting. Try it out and judge for yourself.

Get the richly flavored comforting broth of traditional pho in half the time when you use your Instant Pot.

You get great flavors in this Cajun dish from the spices. Be sure to smash some of the cooked beans to thicken up your stew. Serve over brown rice, quinoa or sorghum for a change of pace.

Cauliflower is a magical vegetable. It’s tasty on its own, but it can transform into oil-free creamy sauces and even replace meat. In this recipe, it’s the base for a creamy, cheesy take on queso dip. This is great on chips but even better on top of burritos and enchiladas. Best of all, you can get the pickiest of eaters to eat their veggies this way.

This cultured coconut milk yogurt is lightly sweetened and perfectly topped with grain-free granola!

The essential ingredients for this Portuguese-inspired Indian dish are wine, vinegar, and garlic. Additions of mustard seeds, cumin, turmeric, and chiles make it specifically colonial Goan.

An elegant dish that may be served to the family or at a grand party. Rice is the ideal accompaniment.

This is a South Indian–inspired sweet, mild curry. Serve it with steamed white rice and a tangy fruit chutney like cranberry or mango for a perfect rainy day meal. The recipe calls for a rather small quantity of butternut squash, so you may want to reserve the rest for another recipe.

Shrimp are quick to cook, but still manage to feel rather special. This recipe borrows spices from the southern shores of India; I tasted a dish similar to this when I was learning about the local cuisine. At first, you get pure heat from the chiles; when it subsides, you're left with delicate and delicious flavors. Here, I have toned down the chiles and added some background warmth by using fresh ginger instead. I’ve used tiger shrimp and removed most of the shell, apart from the tail. I prefer to leave the tail on, as it means that you have something to hold on to when biting into the shrimp, but you can take the entire shell off if you prefer. Just make sure the shrimp are raw and that they have been deveined.

Make this traditional German Kranzkuchen for a festive sweet treat to serve on Christmas morning.

A one-pot evening meal with minimum fuss and maximum taste.

You’ve heard it said that the best spaghetti sauces are simmered all afternoon. If that’s true, why not let the slow cooker do the cooking for you? This sauce takes 5 minutes to make and is loaded with vitamins. Make a double batch and freeze half for another day.

Roasting grapes is fun and unexpected, although very popular in the wine regions of Italy. I remember being surprised to find juicy grapes cooked into a dense olive oil cake in Tuscany years ago. Here the sweetness of the grapes balances the earthy truffle oil and rosemary, and the feta adds a salty kick. The flavors are just perfect, and this flatbread takes me right back to Tuscany every time.

Dulce de leche literally translates to “candy of milk.” In layman’s terms, it’s a caramel-like concoction made from boiling sweetened condensed milk until it becomes . . . well, pretty much an eighth deadly sin. What I love most about dulce de leche is that it has the beautiful color and deep flavor of caramel, but not the chewiness . . . so you don’t have to expend needless energy flexing your jaw muscles.

Quinoa—either red, black, or white—adds body and heartiness to this warming bowl of tomato-basil soup.

Two warnings about these cookies: Don’t give them to young children before bedtime and don’t leave them lying around, if you want any left for yourself. These cookies are crisp on the edges and have a chewy middle strewn with pockets of soft chocolate. The espresso powder, as Kelsey (The Naptime Chef) noted, amplifies the chocolate, but not the sweetness, making it a grown-up cookie. When making any cookies, make sure to cream the butter really well—this aerates the cookies and integrates the sugar—but be conservative with your mixing once the dry ingredients are added.

Broccoli-cheese soup is my life. There’s something about it that triggers a happy, peaceful memory. I just don’t know what the memory is. So I guess technically, it isn’t really a memory at all. I think a memory, by definition, is something that someone actually has to remember.

For a German apple cake full of sweet, tart flavor, cookbook author Luisa Weiss swaps out raisins for fresh cranberries and skips the sugar in the filling.