Summer to savor
Don’t cook much in the summer? Sure you do. Those delicious, memorymaking “Can I get that recipe?” dishes for picnics, backyard barbecues and swim team potlucks aren’t going to cook themselves. These five cookbooks, which debut from now through September, hold the secrets to all the new tacos, burgers, ice creams, salads and pastas you’ll want to make — not just this summer but all year long. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
‘Easy No-churn Ice Cream’
No ice cream maker? No problem.
Baking blogger Heather Templeton got rid of hers years ago. Now, she makes creamy, cold treats — from classic vanilla to chunky rocky road and peach crumble — using a strategic ratio of condensed milk, heavy cream and half-and-half. To that base, she adds simple ingredients, like strawberries and sugar or, say, Biscoff cookies. Pour the mixture into a loaf pan and freeze for three to five hours or overnight. That’s it.
Debuting June 21, “Easy No-churn Ice Cream” (Page Street, $23) is easy to follow, requires only a whisk and bowl and offers 50 indulgent recipes, including ice cream bars and sandwiches, like summer-defining cookie dough ice cream sandwiches.
‘Between the Buns’
If Sam Zien, aka Sam the Cooking Guy, calls a burger a sandwich, just go with it.
In his new cookbook, “Between the Buns” (Countryman, $30), the San Diego restaurateur and Youtube cooking sensation — he has 3.3 million subscribers — unleashes his “big in taste, small in effort” ethos on handheld foods, including sandwiches, burgers, burritos, brats and tacos. Yes, tacos, including classic San Diego fish tacos.
The cookbook, his fifth, is perfect for summer cookout season, with 100 drippy, toasty, always-better-witha-fried-egg recipes, from a Buffalo chicken burger to a garlic bread steak sandwich. It’s a stuffed, protein-heavy ode to comfort food a la bread — whether that’s a homemade tortilla or French toast — plus the sauces and sides to make it sing.
‘The Cook You Want to Be’
Berkeley native Andy Baraghani’s highly anticipated debut cookbook is a peek into the rising food personality’s love of cooking, including but not limited to the dishes of his Persian heritage. Who could forget the former Bon Appetit senior editor’s viral recipe video for kuku sabzi?
That fluffy kuku is one of 110 gotta-make recipes in “The Cook You Want to Be: Everyday Recipes to Impress” (Lorena Jones, $35). Chapters include Salad for Days (hello, persimmons with torn burrata and fresh lemon) and Meaty Things (shawarma-spiced lamb chops with pickle salad) as well as thoughtful personal essays on salting fruit, working at Chez Panisse at age 15 and his almost spiritual relationship with rice, whether studded with nori or crusted with tahdig.
‘Dinner in One’
Bestselling author Melissa Clark on one-vessel cooking? Yes, please. Our worn copy of Clark’s “Dinner in an Instant” has more stains on it than a preschooler. If you buy one cookbook this summer, make it “Dinner in One” (Clarkson Potter, $30), which debuts Sept. 6 and delivers straightforward, flavor-packed, home-run recipes for busy people who don’t like washing dishes.
The New York Times food writer covers it all, from sheet pan dinners (crispy lemon chicken with potatoes, oregano and capers) and one-bowl cakes (ricotta olive oil pound cake) to one-pot pastas (gingery coconut noodles with shrimp and greens). She even makes a beets and greens phyllo pie in a skillet.
All 100 recipes offer vegetarian or vegan alternatives or ingredient substitutions, so you can use the asparagus you have instead of running to the store for snap peas (or vice versa). Thanks, Melissa. You get us.
‘That Noodle Life’
Whether you skew ramen or rigatoni, you’ll fall in love with the stories, flavors and food porn photographs in “That Noodle Life” (Workman Publishing, $30), Mike and Stephanie Le’s ode to everyone’s favorite carbohydrate.
The authors of the award-winning I Am a Food Blog have traveled the world in search of the most slurpable pastas and covered the range with impressive gusto, offering 75 recipes for everything from super savory Taiwanese beef noodle soup and French onion mac and cheese to miso clam linguine and luxe lamb ragu.
There are tips on how to elevate instant noodles, steps for making pasta from scratch and all the homemade toppings necessary to reach noodle nirvana, including chile oils, sauces and garlic breadcrumbs. There’s even a section on Sexy Date Night Noodles.