Bookshelf: All About Austin

Bury your nose, whet your appetite

The One-Bottle Cocktail

Ten Speed Press, 2018

Most of us are familiar with the pains of trying to recreate a complicated cocktail with the tools from your home bar. You invest in bottles of fancy liqueurs, procure some hard-to-find bitters, and you’re left with a drink that still doesn’t wow you. Maggie Hoffman’s The One-Bottle Cocktail offers a simple (almost self-explanatory) solution. Each recipe only requires one liquor, and none require bitters or liqueurs. The rest are ingredients you can pick up from the grocery store or scavenge from your fridge and transform into the likes of a pineapple ginger punch or blackberry cucumber mule.

Shaya

Knopf, 2018

Does food forge a cook’s identity, or is it the other way around? For New Orleans chef Alon Shaya, the answer is both: Food has guided every turning point in his life, and the food he cooks is a reflection of his experiences. His first book recounts it all across twenty-six chapters. Along the way, he stops to share recipes that help tell the story paprikash with tarragon dumplings in honor of his father’s Romanian roots; a pork and mushroom risotto he learned to make as a culinary apprentice in Italy; and za’atar-dusted fried chicken, a tip of the hat to the late NOLA icon Willie Mae Seaton.

The Austin Cookbook

Abrams, 2018

While Austin, Texas, has long been the home of famous barbecue and Tex-Mex galore, the city has undergone something of a food revolution over the last decade. It became ground zero for the food truck renaissance that’s spread throughout the nation and is now a culinary landmark for gastronomically inclined travelers. Just ask author Paula Forbes, an Austin transplant by way of Iowa, who’s seen the transition firsthand and shares her appreciation for the meeting of Old and New Austin in her recent release, The Austin Cookbook. Old Austin hasn’t disappeared, she explains in the book’s introduction. “The air still smells like wood smoke and the tortillas are still fresh.” Yet, new restaurants continue to appear next to storied institutions, and Forbes packs it all into this bold and vibrant volume, alongside tips and tricks that include a crash course on smoking meats and a chile roasting primer. Divided into sections like barbecue, tacos (a good Texan can make anything into a taco), Texas standards, and new Austin classics, the book is stocked with recipes from Austin restaurants from the well-known to those off the beaten path. While Forbes warns that the recipes aren’t “dumbed down” from the restaurant versions, nor are they meant to be easy weeknight meals, she insists they are all achievable for a home cook with the right tools and motivation—what better motivation than chorizo potato pizza, sweet potato nachos topped with chile mayo, or everything bagel kolaches with cream cheese filling?

Get the Recipe: Sweet Potato Nachos

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Cookbook Club

Q&A with Chef Maneet Chauhan About Her Latest Book, Chaat

Chauhan fills the pages with stories that pay tribute to her home country, and specifically, its fascination with chaat, the “sweet, salty, spicy, crunchy, creamy, hot, and cold snacks—street food, really—found in Indian markets, train stations, and home kitchens.”

Cookbook Club

A Treasure Trove from Cheryl Day

We catch up with Cheryl Day to learn more about her inspiration and creative process to write her latest cookbook, and the one dessert that will never get old.

At the Table

At Home with Nathalie Dupree

At age 80, the doyenne of modern Southern cooking reflects on forging her own path, the power of female connections, and why she cooks grits in the microwave.