Gift Guide 2023: 9 Small-Batch Cookbooks That Feel Handmade - Remodelista
Remember the cookbooks your grandmother had? Spiral-bound and splotched, often souvenirs from roadside taverns or inns, they felt handmade and personal, never mass-produced or fancy, and the same was true for the recipes inside. Apartamento’s eighth annual cookbook is Tuber or Not Tuber?, and it’s as irreverent as you might expect, with illustrations, root vegetables aplenty, and tuber and tuber-adjacent recipes by celebrated cooks and artists (this one is by baker-to-the-royals Claire Ptak). The cookbook that started us noticing a shift to the intimate and poetic over polished and packaged: [ ] Is a Breakfast Food by Marjory Sweet. More than a cookbook, it’s “a conversation about what to eat in the morning. Breakfast as a mood, a memory, a moment, a mundane routine, a meaningful ritual”; for anyone “who has woken up and wondered what to eat, or who has just woken up and wondered.” It’s $65 from Vestige. Culinary collective Ghetto Gastro “uses food as a platform to spark conversation about larger issues surrounding inclusion, race, access, and how food—and knowing how to cook—provides freedom and power”. Carter’s Cookbook 2 is the second volume by sisters Carter Were (cook) and Harriet (Harry) Were (photographer). The book contains recipes for trusty favorites like rice pudding and Greek salad; it’s printed in Italy and sewn in sections with a laser-cut soft cover. Small-batch in its approach, Table for Two—the debut cookbook by food writer Bre Graham—is filled with recipes just right for a pair. “Gohan literally means ‘rice’ in Japanese,” reads the back of Emiko Davies’ Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking, “but also, as Emiko’s mother, Sumie, says, ‘Gohan means the everyday home-cooked meal. The book feels like a family recipe collection—with photos, dishes from the author’s childhood and adolescence, and sweet illustrations by Indonesian-Australian artist and designer Evi O—published for us all to benefit from. The Joy of Food: A Celebration of Good Things to Eat by Rory O’Connell is filled with the Irish chef’s recipes—and charming doodles. Alternatively, and perhaps better yet? Gift the home cook (or the chronicler of family history) a cookbook to fill themselves.