5 great new directions for the home cook

We’re emerging from cocoons — hungry, more curious, eager to reindulge in the familiar while coveting multicultural foods and flavors. Spring has sprung, and with it comes new opportunities to rediscover culinary pleasures. Home cooks who became brave pi

“World Food: Mexico City” By James Oseland

“Many citizens, one cuisine” is how Oseland, the former editorin-chief of Saveur, describes the enormity that is Mexico City. He takes readers into homes, where traditions play out in everyday cooking, and into marketplaces teeming with intoxicating scents and flavors. From simple appetizers and small plates (guacamole, taquitos) to more complicated dishes (stews and mole), the book’s recipes capture the city’s culinary heartbeat.

“Vegetable Simple” By Eric Ripert

The acclaimed chef, known for his way with fish at Le Bernadin, turns his exacting eye and light hand on vegetables. His deep dive was born from changes both in his work and personal life: Le Bernadin has shifted to more vegetable-focused plates, while the chef has incorporated more vegetables into his diet. The result is a book featuring a collection of recipes that are almost shockingly simple.

“Come on Over!: Southern Delicious for Every Day and Every Occasion” By Elizabeth Heiskell

A Mississippi caterer and author of two bestselling cookbooks, Heiskell knows the Southern larder. When she’s not working or doing segments for the “Today” show, this is what she’s cooking — comfort fare such as chicken and dumplings, spaghetti pie, squash casserole, cobblers, and grillades and grits.

“Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories” By Nigella Lawson

Lawson’s recipes drive her to poetic discourse on the physical and emotional threads woven into day-in/day-out cooking. She can spend pages on the lusty magic of anchovies or rhubarb’s inherent sorcery. It can be heady stuff, but perhaps necessary, as home cooks begin to reindulge.

“The Twisted Soul

Cookbook: Modern Soul

Food with Global Flavors” By Deborah VanTrece

Sure, soul food — rooted in Black culture — may take its name from the fact that “it comes from the soul and feeds the soul,” VanTrece writes. But in a modern, multicultural world, it is much more. And that’s what VanTrece, a former flight attendant turned chef (and owner of Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours in Atlanta), shows in her engaging debut cookbook.