Cookbooks

"Semenology": New Book Explores Craft of Semen Cocktails

Scavenger Hunt and $3 Cookbooks at the Library's Big Book Sale

Looking for some vintage James Beard cookbooks or to read and learn the rules of hospitality from restaurant guru Danny Meyer? Consider stocking up on cookbooks at the upcoming 49th Annual Big Book Sale, which benefits San Francisco's public libraries and is held at the Festival Pavilion of Fort Mas ... More >>

Tyler Florence on His New Cookbook and What to Make Right Now

Local celeb chef Tyler Florence -- he of Wayfare Tavern, SFO T2, and Food Network fame -- has a new cookbook out, and will be signing copies of it in the city and at his Mill Valley shop next week. Tyler Florence Fresh is the chef's most ambitious book to date, a gorgeous volume showcasing the seaso ... More >>

Treat Your Favorite Carnivore to the Gift of 4505 Meats

All through December, SFoodie is bringing you local gift ideas for the food obsessives in your life. Friends, around the holidays, we understand the need to get cozy and ring in the celebrations with certain holiday fare. You will attempt to get snuggly with hot chocolate, mulled cider, and hot tod ... More >>

Where The (Cook)Books Are: Chronicle Books Sale

All through December, SFoodie is bringing you local gift ideas for the food obsessives in your life. Want to give and possibly get fed in return? Gifting a Chronicle cookbook may just entice your adorable friend to whip up a batch of Cake Pops or addictive Tartine bread in return. The warm and fuzz ... More >>

Buy These Books: The Latest Cookbooks With Tasty Bay Area Ties

The latest in Bay Area-related cookery titles worthy of space in your (compact, apartment) library. Kim Severson spent many years as a food scribe for the San Francisco Chronicle before moving to the East Coast. (We fondly remember how she reported on the nation's gayest Safeway!) Severson has be ... More >>

Hubert Keller Charms Omnivore Books Patrons Tomorrow Evening

To be in the presence of witty chef and restaurateur Hubert Keller is to be instantly charmed. This is probably why the French expatriate can operate an elegant and timeless French restaurant (Fleur De Lys) at the same time as he can hawk stunt burgers and logo-imprinted panties atop a Union Square ... More >>

Revisiting My Side of the Mountain in the Locavore Era

One of my favorite chapter books growing up was My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George's 1959 fable about a boy who runs away from New York City to the Catskills and lives off the land, aided by his trusty falcon Frightful. I picked up the book for a quick reread one night over Thanksgiving ... More >>

Two New Local Cookbooks Help You Cook Like Chinese Nomads, Improve Your Sex Life

Here's a duo of new Bay Area cookery titles worthy of space in that (compact, apartment) library of yours. Linda Lau Anusasananan is a food writer and former Sunset Magazine cookbook consultant who used her own ethnic heritage as a backdrop to research The Hakka Cookbook (University of California P ... More >>

Who Wrote the Fifty Shades of Chicken Cookbook?

There's a new novelty cookbook hitting the shelves next week (Nov. 13), just in time for white elephant party season. Fifty Shades of Chicken is a clever parody of the scandalous triology written under the pseudonym F.L. Fowler. The book tells the story of a meek chicken ("Ms. Hen") and a sexy chef ... More >>

Meet Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman This Sunday

We've been admirers of Deb Perelman and her cooking blog Smitten Kitchen for years, and are stoked that her simple, elegant recipes and gorgeous photos have finally made their way into a cookbook. As she writes in a blog post announcing its release, the cookbook has 105 recipes (85 new, never appear ... More >>

Out the Door: Admire the Cookbook, Eat at the Restaurant

Score Bargain Cookbooks at the Library's Big Book Sale

Hey fellow cookbook obsessives, you should go to the 48th Annual Big Book Sale at Fort Mason put on by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. The sale started today in the hanger-like Festival Pavilion and will continue through the weekend, and there are two huge tables of all manner of cooker ... More >>

New Cookbook Explores California's Culinary Past

Local culinary history nerds rejoice: Author Mark Thompson has compiled a set of 300 recipes from the state's first cookbooks for his new cookbook, Vintage California Cuisine. It's a fascinating peek into the early stages of so-called California cuisine, and many of the recipes he's dug up -- aspar ... More >>

Fall Book Preview: 5 Local Food Titles to Anticipate

When it comes to food-centric books, the Bay Area is a publishing powerhouse, and this fall is no exception. Here are the titles we're most anticipating this season, presented in chronological order: The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee: Growing, Roasting, and Drinking, with Recipes by James Freeman, Ca ... More >>

Cookin': Helping You in the Kitchen Since 1981

Glass cake pedestals and ornately decorated ceramic dishes teeter in tall stacks. A single container holds a wire nest of no fewer than 14 different kinds of whisks. Baskets full of vintage cookbooks sit on the floor. If you're looking to acquire some eclectic and time-tested cookware, the Divisader ... More >>

Cindy Pawlycn's Newest Cookbook Promises a First Class Ticket Around the World

Cindy Pawlcyn's latest cookbook, Cindy's Supper Club: Meals from Around the World to Share with Family and Friends, takes readers on a sophisticated and diverse culinary journey around the world. The book highlights menus from a weekly informal supper club that Cindy hosts at her restaurant in ... More >>

The BrokeAss Gourmet Cookbook: $20 Meals Feed Four

How do San Franciscans afford to eat out every other night? It's time for the sensible (and broke ass) to kick the $40 fried mac 'n cheese habit and eat at home for a change. Thank the food gods for Gabi Moskowitz, author of The BrokeAss Gourmet Cookbook. She gathered 116 recipes that cost no more t ... More >>

Why You Should Go See Tamar Adler Read at Omnivore

It's rare for a cookbook to be devoted to making and using leftovers, and eating meals as simple as a bowl of chicken broth or a plate of cold roasted vegetables. But Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace is not quite a cookbook -- it's a story about how to shop and eat s ... More >>

Andrea Nguyen's Asian Tofu Teaches You to Make Your Own

If you move in food-obsessive circles, you'll see certain recipes become cult projects. David Chang's ramen from ​the Momofuku Cookbook. Modernist Cuisine's pressure-cooker caramelized carrot soup. Chad Robertson's master bread recipe in Tartine Bread. SFoodie suspects the next one will be tofu fr ... More >>

The Inspired Vegan Cookbook Release Party with Eats by Soul Cocina

What: Cookbook launch party for Bryant Terry Where: The Museum of the African Diaspora When: Tues., January 24, 7:30-9 p.m. Cost: $30 with book, $15 without The rundown: Bryant Terry, author of the hit cookbook, Vegan Soul Food, is back again with a second, The Inspired Vegan. The book is a co ... More >>

Foodzie Founder Emily Olson's 2011 Finds: Heidi Swanson and Local Polenta

​SFoodie is calling up food types around the city to ask them about their favorite discovery of the past year, whether it's new or ancient, an ingredient or a person. We'll be running their responses through the end of the year. When SFoodie originally asked Emily Olson, cofounder of online indie ... More >>

Fresh Eats: Gobba Gobba Hey Leaves Baking

Gobba Gobba Hey Started With a Street Tray and Ends With Cookbooks

Steven Gdula/BloomsburyGobs in their first incarnation (left) and the Gobba Gobba Hey cookbook.​In his lovely essay "Never Can Say Goodbye," author and food entrepreneur Steven Gdula lays out his decision to stop his Gobba Gobba Hey baking business after 33 months, having faced a crossroads on whe ... More >>

Alanna Hale Photographs Mission Chinese Food From the Inside Out

Alanna HalePreparing for battle.​Photographer Alanna Hale, who's been filing SFoodie's "Behind the Menu" series of chef portraits, is working on another project: a profile every day, which she posts on her Tumblr, alannahale.tumblr.com. Most of them are insiders' shots of  Mission Chinese Foo ... More >>

A Gluten-Free Cook Book for Foodies at Last

We usually don't review cookbooks by non-local authors here at SFoodie, but sometimes we'll make an exception in the case of something exciting or different that catches our eye. There's no way around the fact that gluten-free cookbooks tend to be boring and bland. They are often written by unski ... More >>

Oh God It Is Present-Buying Season. Quick, Buy Everyone Cookbooks.

This isn't on anyone's lists yet, but we'd still recommend it.​Piling on the retailers of America, who would like all red-blooded Americans, Christian or no, to participate in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the food media has come out with a strong message to shoppers: Buy cookbooks for Christmas. ... More >>

Tonight: Celebrate Mitch Rosenthal's New Cookbook (Jacques Pepin Loves it!)

​What: Mitch Rosenthal Reading Where: Omnivore Books When: Thurs., November 17, 6-7 p.m. Cost: Free The rundown: Mitch Rosenthal, the esteemed chef from such San Francisco institutions as Town Hall, Anchor & Hope, and Salt House, will speak about his new cookbook, Cooking My Way Back Home ... More >>

Eat a Staff Meal at Camino to Celebrate New Off the Menu Cookbook

​What: Camino Staff Meal Where: Camino When: Wed., November 16, 6 pm. Cost: $50 The rundown: Oakland's Camino is hosting a special dinner to celebrate the debut of Marissa Guggiana's new cookbook, Off the Menu: Staff Meals from America's Top Restaurants. Guggiana will be at the event, sig ... More >>

Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food Brings More Than Recipes to the Table

Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough​ The San Francisco restaurant scene is rife with restaurant cookbooks these days, with what seems like every popular chef and restaurateur working on a collection of favorite recipes. There are so many wonderful books about local ... More >>

Don't Worry About the Future of the Cookbook

Is this the future of cookbooks? (Cross your fingers.)​Yesterday, the New York edition of Grub Street published a great essay by Hugh Merwin on the bright future of cookbooks, even as more and more readers are switching to e-readers and bookstores are flailing. Cookbook sales are still strong, an ... More >>

Oakland's Camino Restaurant Hosts Mozza Cookbook Dinner

​Nancy Silverton's Los Angeles Italian restaurants -- Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza, co-owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich -- have earned a cult-like following, which might inspire Silverton to stay guarded about their food's secrets. But instead, she's opening the restaurant's recipe ... More >>

Mission Street Food Book Launches

​ission Street Food's restaurant memoir-cookbook, which officially launches tomorrow with a party at the Make-Ot Room, is remarkably modest. The word shitshow appears quite a few times, the intro to the recipe section includes the disclaimer "What follows will not impress every chef out there..." ... More >>

Ten Worst Celebrity Cookbooks

The must-have celebrity accessories change as frequently as the daily fro-yo flavors. Move over small dogs, adopted children, and Birkin bags, this is the age of celebrity cookbooks. Eva Longoria, G Pal, Sheryl Crow (author of If It Makes You Healthy), and of course Bon Appetit coverwoman Gwyneth, a ... More >>

Ascending Ramen in Parkside, Falling Stars and Their Grilling Tips: This Week in Food Bloggery

My own favorite celebrity cookbook.​Highlights from the blog this week: 1. Carina Ost dredged the internet and pulled up 10 sopping, putrid celebrity cookbooks. Now that food has become the new rock, expect the System of a Down cupcake guide sometime soon. 2. Luis Chong continues to monitor San ... More >>

Who's Got a Beard (Award)?

​Friday night was the first of the James Beard Foundation's two national awards galas this year. This one celebrated the media, with awards given out for television shows, print and online journalism, and cookbooks. There were upsets (Jonathan Gold only took home one one of the three awards he was ... More >>

A Ban on Live Chicken Sales, Protection for Your iPad Cookbook

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media.1. No more sales of live chickens. SF Appeal and other sources report that, after years of protest, a group named LGBT Compassion has managed to get Raymond Young Live Poultry and Bul ... More >>

Choose Your Own Library Books, Praise for S.F.'s Compost Program

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 2. More about the library's cookbook collection. The main branch of the San Francisco Public Library has played a huge role in my culinary education, starting with my cooking days, w ... More >>

S.F. Public Library to Acquire the Six-Volume Modernist Cuisine

​ I was out for dinner with a couple of friends this week, talking about the reading Nathan Myhrvold gave this week at Omnivore Books, which we had all missed. The cost of attendance: purchasing a copy of Myhrvold's six-volume, 2,400-page Modernist Cuisine -- one of the most talked-about, controve ... More >>

Peepsmania, Aging Actresses, and the Horror of Flax Seeds

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. The Return of Peepsmania. Dyed Easter eggs, chocolate bunnies, sweetened egg breads -- they've all been eclipsed by America's ultimate holiday food, the Peep. The Washington Post ... More >>

Eating Well at Denny's, Eating Pasta in S.F., Parsing Gwyneth's Cookbook

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Healthful chain meals take off. I've scoffed off the "healthy" options on the menus of chain restaurants as the dietetics equivalent of greenwashing. But USA Today just reported t ... More >>

McSweeney's Taking Preorders for Mission Street Food Cookbook

McSweeney's​Last month we tipped you to the book Mission Chinese Food/Commonwealth's Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz were writing, Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant, to be published this summer by the new McSweeney's cookbook imprint. Today comes word that ... More >>

Inspecting Modernist Cuisine, Preventing Recipe Theft, Sympathizing for the Guy

​1. The critics take on Modernist Cuisine. As SFoodie mentioned yesterday, Nathan Myhrvold's 2,438-page Modernist Cuisine is now out, and most of the big papers are running reviews today. Legendary cookbook author Michael Ruhlman, writing in the New York Times, and Washington Post contributor Andr ... More >>

Local Authors Make IACP Award Finals

​The International Association of Culinary Professionals just released its list of finalists for its annual cookbook and journalism awards. Local publishers Chronicle Books, Ten Speed Press, and UC Press all fared well this year, and a number of Bay Area authors were named. Here's the list of loca ... More >>

McSweeney's to Publish Mission Street Food Cookbook

Warning: This is not the offical cover.​An article today in Publishers Weekly revealed that San Francisco-based published McSweeney's is launching a cookbook imprint. The first release will be a quarterly publication from Momofuku's David Chang, to appear as a 12-page print periodical and an iPad ... More >>

Omnivore Launches Cookbook Club for Autograph Lovers

Omnivore Books​Just in time for the more generous gift-givers out there (whether to oneself or others), Omnivore Books has launched a new signed cookbook mail order club ($120 per year), tapping into the pool of culinary luminaries passing through the shop for appearances. Books will ship on t ... More >>

Martin Yan Hits the Food Court, The Corner Fans Itself

​ ​The past 24 hours in gossip, innuendo, and cold hard facts about the San Francisco restaurant scene. In the print edition of Inside Scoop, Paolo L. reports that local cookbook author and TV star Martin Yan is bringing a new restaurant to the Westfield San Francisco Centre food court sometim ... More >>

Entrez au Jardin

A brief encounter with the author of Cooking for Mr. Latte at Jardinière

Dish