COOKBOOKS

VEGGIES, CAKES AND ICE CREAM PAIRINGS

“The Vegetable Butcher: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice, and Masterfully Cook Vegetables From Artichokes to Zucchini” by Cara Mangini (Workman Publishing, $29.95).

Like her Italian grandfather and great-grandfather before her, Cara Mangini is a butcher. But instead of hacking chicken, beef and lamb, she carves carrots, fennel and kale, using her tools to turn the produce into dice, halfmoons and thin ribbons.

Cara Mangini is a vegetable butcher.

She learned her craft at New York’s Eataly market, where for the convenience of customers she “shredded cabbage, shelled fava beans, shaved celery root, and prepped case after case of baby artichokes.” She is now the chef and owner of Little Eater, a produce-inspired restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and its companion market.

With fingers apparently still intact, she elucidates the art of vegetable butchery in her new book, offering tips on selection, storage, seasonality, flavor pairings and varieties to try. She tells you how to cut the mustard, and cook it, too.

Got extra tomatoes on hand? Make Tomato Tarte Tatin.

What to do with zucchini? Mangini suggests tossing the prolific summer squash with penne, sweet corn, basil, pine nuts and mozzarella, or as the star ingredient of olive oil cake, glazed with lemon.

Come fall, you may want to try Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Pomegranate Seeds, Walnuts and Manchego. Or Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Sauteed Chard and Coconut Black Rice.

But first, are you ready to butcher a sweet potato? Mangini will show you how.

“American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Story Behind Our Best-Loved Cakes from Past to Present” by Anne Byrn (Rodale, $29.99); due to be released Sept. 6, 2016.

Henceforth, when I have a question on cake, I will refer to Anne Byrn’s ambitious, fastidiously researched volume.

Author of the best-selling “Cake Mix Doctor” series and a former food editor of this newspaper, Byrn does her homework, sifting through layers of baking arcana to pile high the fascinating layers of the history of American cake, from Colonial times to the present, from 1700s gingerbread to today’s Beet Red Velvet Cake.

From Byrn’s authoritative and eloquent voice, a narrative rises: The story of a nation — changes wrought by war, politics, fads, shortcuts, new tools, ingredients and techniques — told via pound cake, fruit cake, spice cake, sponge cake and angel food cake, among numerous others.

As Byrn sees it, cake is much more than butter, eggs, sugar, flour. It’s geography and fashion and the make-do, can-do spirit of a people. It’s Cowboy Cake (cooked in a Dutch oven), Robert E. Lee Cake, Bangor Brownies, Appalachian Apple Stack Cake, Coca-Cola Cake and Pink Champagne Cake, as pretty and feminine as Marilyn Monroe.

A child of the ’70s, I had forgotten about Watergate Cake (made of white cake mix and pistachio pudding mix, topped with, ahem, Cover-Up Icing) and Sock-It-To-Me Cake (a sour cream coffee cake swirled with cinnamon, brown sugar and pecans), though my mother and her circle certainly baked and shared plenty of them.

The recipes that grab my eye here are the timeless ones: Leah Chase’s homespun Butter Cake, Julia Child’s Queen of Sheba Cake (an elegant affair of chocolate, rum and almonds), and Amelia Simmons’ gingerbread, which is not all that different from the version my grandmother baked nearly 200 years later.

Every cake has a story. We are lucky Byrn has chosen to tell them.

“A La Mode: 120 Recipes in 60 Pairings” by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough (St. Martin’s Griffin, $24.99).

There’s not a cake, cobbler or pie that doesn’t taste better with ice cream. If you believe that, then Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough have your number.

For their latest effort, the QVC regulars and prolific cookbook authors have baked and churned up a collection of original recipes pairing fanciful baked goods with imaginative ice creams, gelati, frozen custards and yogurts, sherbets, sorbets and semifreddos.

The chapter on ice cream basics is full of good tips, and the very first recipe combo, for Bourbon Peach Pie with Vanilla Bean Gelato, is enough to steal this Southern boy’s heart.

But wait: I also like the sound of Rhubarb Pie with Strawberry Jam Ice Cream and Salty Key Lime Tart with Triple Coconut Frozen Custard.

Though some of the concoctions seem a little forced or overly complicated — Squash and Honey Pie with Indian Pudding Ice Cream, anyone? How about Fennel-Raisin Pie with Pine Nut Frozen Custard? — I’m intrigued with the duo’s Cracker Jack riff: Peanut Brittle Tart and Popcorn Frozen Custard.

There are plenty of good ideas here for using summer fruit, and if you aren’t up for an allnighter, you can pick one dish and save more ambitious projects for later. I like that there are easy sheet cakes (as well as more involved layer cakes, jelly rolls and steamed puddings). And I’m already starting to mix and match a la mode treats in my head: Fudgy Brownies with Marshmallow Semifreddo sounds amazing. But why not top the chocolate with pistachio ice cream? See what I mean! This book will inspire you to do naughty things in the kitchen.