Best Books for Christmas
Cooking
The Jewish Cookbook
Leah Koenig (Phaidon, $80)
A beautiful volume in every sense – as rich as Ottolenghi’s Yemeni Oxtail soup, as generous and sweet as the Mexican Chocolate Babka recipe from Mexico city’s Jewish community, as inventive as New Orleans chef Alon Shaya’s Schmalzy Corn Bread with Aleppo Pepper. This magisterial work deserves its “The”, leaving no matzo ball unturned. There are New York-style bagels, Montreal-style bagels and Jerusalem bagels; Jewish food traditions; dumplings, noodles, kugels, condiments, drinks, fritters, cookies, puddings, mains, breakfasts, spreads and breads, vegetables and grains. You could spend a lifetime working your way through these 400 recipes, from a far-flung diaspora, and die fat and extremely happy. (Although heart disease might be fended off with the vegetarian Groundnut Stew from the Abayudaya, a Jewish community from Uganda.) “Jewish food is as varied as Jewish culture,” writes the author, New Yorker Leah Koenig, who has created a kitchen classic. ZB
WeekLight
Donna Hay (Fourth Estate, $50)
Slice a small raw beetroot with a mandolin! Press a hunk of salmon into black chia seeds! Dip those schnitzels in quinoa! Vwah-la! Great big gorgeous photographs/matte paper/loosey goosey styling/super simple, imaginative lunch and dinner recipes... we must be in a Donna Hay book. The themes are health and speed (plus a chapter called “there’s always room for sweets”), with vege-ocentric recipes great for the gluten intolerant, the vegetarian or the vegan – or anyone looking for fresh ideas. There are a few pictures of Donsky gambolling on Australian beaches, but we’ll forgive her those
