One of the reviews of Alice Medrich’s latest cookbook, Pure Dessert described it as being a book about “elaborate simplicity.” It seems like a contradiction in terms, but the description is actually right on in sentiment: in the book, Medrich puts her considerable cooking/baking skills to the task of getting the most flavor out of simple, high-quality ingredients.

The cookbook is divided up by flavor, rather than by type, and include Milk, Fruit, Honey and Sugar and Flowers and Herbs, among other things. The flavor categories themselves are ingredients, but through her discussion of each one Medrich makes it clear that her recipes are about making the most of them and bringing out the best aspects of their flavors. As a result, the recipes in the book seem quite simple. The ingredient lists are relatively short because only one item is really featured by each recipe. That said, many of the recipes do call for ingredients that you can only find at a specialty grocer, such as lemon verbena and quark (a tangy, cream cheese-like product). The recipes are very clearly written and easy to follow - much like the recipes in each of Medrich’s previous cookbooks.

Overall, this is a beautiful book with fantastic visuals and equally appealing recipes. Medrich is best known for her use of chocolate and it’s great to see a book that really showcases her talents with desserts in general. I should also note here that Pure Dessert is this years’s 3rd James Beard Baking and Pastry Cookbook Nominee, along with Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads and A Baker’s Odyssey.

Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor is one of the nominees for best Baking and Pastry Cookbook in the 2008 James Beard Awards. If you’re not familiar with the awards, they’re designed to recognize excellence in the food industry with awards for everything from best chef to best new cookbook to best newspaper food section. But fans of Peter Reinhart won’t need an awards nomination to know that his new cookbook is a standout. Reinhart is the author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, a book that is almost like a bible of bread-baking to most cooks and bakers.

Whole Grain Breads carries on in the same vein as The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, giving readers tons of in-depth information on the different flours and ingredients that are used in the construction of artisanal whole-grain breads, as well as detailed instructions on the various methods he employs to get them to turn out perfectly. In spite of all this background-type information, this is not a novice baking book at all. Reinhart’s instructions are clear and he makes the recipes as detailed as possible, giving ingredient amounts in volume, ounces and grams while carefully describing each bit of the dough making and shaping process. But even though it is carefully done, bakers who have some experience working with starters, bigas and other slow-fermenting doughs are the ones who will find themselves on the most familiar territory here. It’s not that baking with whole grains is necessarily difficult, but it can be more complex than “regular” bread baking, since the various flours and grains used have a wide range of properties that must be taken into account - unlike your typical baguette recipe, where water, salt and the protein content of the flour are really the only things that need to be taken into account when building a dough.

It seems like this book is not a stand-alone volume in the way that BBA is. It is more like a sequel that builds upon the story of the first volume. It is a fantastic resource for bread bakers who are looking for more professional recipes and tips to perfect their breads. Unlike some other whole grain books, it doesn’t spend that much time catering to the less experienced or to those looking for a “quick-fix” bread recipe. It might not be the best “starter” cookbook on the topic, but this volume certainly seems like one that will stand the test of time and become a shelf-staple for bakers, just like its predecessor.

Lately, I’ve been watching more Gordon Ramsay - both the new season of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares (UK version, not US) - and have been enjoying it more and more. While the US shows play up the more sensational aspects of Ramsay’s character a bit more than the British ones, his overall goals of creating dishes with clean, simple flavors always seem to come through. It seems to be the underlying theme of his newest cookbook, Gordon Ramsay’s Fast Food.

I say underlying because the book is actually about less-than-30-minute meals. Every recipe in the book takes less than 30 minutes to prepare and cook and each menu suggestion takes no more than 45 minutes. As usual with these “timed” recipe, it does help a bit if you have some knife skills and other cooking experience to help you out, but the book strikes me as a 30-minute meals book for chefs and home chefs - not for the same crowd that just wants to get some kind of casserole on the table at 6:30 (not that there is anything wrong with that!). The recipes range from things like beef fajitas with guacamole and frittatas, to dishes that call for more gourmet ingredients, like duck, quail’s eggs, blood sausage, lobster, etc. Granted, not everything is going to appeal to everyone, but the variety is definitely refreshing when quite a lot of quick-fix cookbooks seem to have been dumbed down. There are also recipes for soups, salads and many, many desserts in addition to the mains and sides.

The book has an appealing layout and the recipes are well-presented, with succinct instructions and usually with short ingredient lists to go with them. Measurements are given in standard and metric. The only potential issue is that some of the recipes call for ingredients that are not common stateside, such as clotted cream. For these, the book offers some suggestions for substitutions and you should be able to find the exact ingredient you’re looking for at specialty markets without too much difficulty.

Cookbook author Lori Longbotham has a whole series of cookbooks that start with the word “luscious” in the titles. Luscious Chocolate Desserts. Luscious Berry Desserts. Luscious Lemon Desserts. The word is excellent for inspiring thoughts of richly satisfying, melt-in-your-mouth desserts and indulgences, but I think that her newest book, Luscious Creamy Desserts has topped all of her others in terms of inspiring a desire for dessert.

This book is all about creamy desserts, from cheesecakes and puddings to ice creams and syrupy sauces. The desserts that are in this category really tend to embody the concept of “comfort food” and Lori’s recipes not only cover the classics (such as Butterscotch Pudding or Banana Cream Pie), but use new ingredients and flavors to make the dishes even more intriguing (Goat’s Milk Vanilla Ice Cream or Cannoli Cheesecake).

The book is divided up by type of dessert, making it fairly easy to find what you’re looking for. Chances are, if you’re looking in this book, you’ve already ruled out most cupcakes and cookies, so finding a recipe to tempt you shouldn’t be any problem at all. The recipes are well-written and easy to follow along with. Lori provides a lot of detail with each one, so the reader isn’t going to be left in the dark about any step of the cooking process. This should give some piece of mind to readers who are novices when it comes to custards and such, since desserts in this category have a reputation for being temperamental. There are lots of tips about the properties of the ingredients used in the desserts and on cooking everything to perfection on top of the recipes’ instructions themselves. There seems to be a range of recipes, so experienced bakers will probably get some new techniques, as well as getting inspiration from the photos and creative combinations that are included

Generally speaking, the cookbooks that are spawned by popular TV series are not necessarily collections of culinary greatness - largely because most regular TV series are not really food and cooking oriented. Bravo’s Top Chef is a big exception to this rule, as it is a regular TV show more than it is a food network-style cooking show but it happens to be all about cooking. The show is in its 4th season right now and the creators have decided to turn their popular online recipe archive into a cookbook.

Top Chef: The Cookbook has two main components: recipes and background on the chefs. It includes the cooks from seasons 1 through 3, as well as the judges, and gives some great background on each of them. The recipes are divided up by course and by type: appetizers, entrees: meat, entrees: poultry, entrees: fish, entrees: vegetarian and dessert. As an aside from the cookbook, fans of the show will probably find it a bit funny that there is an actual dessert chapter, since the chefs on the show do not usually excel in that area and spend quite a lot of time reminding each other and the cameras that they are not bakers.

I love all the background included in this book, from the intro by Top Colicchio to the snippets of interviews with the show’s producers and execs. It provides some fun detail on how the show is put together and what people’s reactions to it are. The recipes in the cookbook are from both the quickfire challenges and the regular challenges. On each, the season and show number are noted. There is some nice food photography, but unlike other cookbooks, you’ll probably be a bit more motivated to choose some to make based on favorites ( I am!), rather than being heavily influenced by the beautiful shots alone.

There are two main ways to learn how to bake. One way is to teach yourself, working with recipes as guidelines, and one is to have a teacher to demonstrate the techniques involved to you. No one learns exclusively with one method or the other, so it’s not surprising that any time the two come together - descriptive recipes and experienced teachers - we get the some of the best results.

A Baker’s Odyssey is a cookbook that manages to bring these two instructional methods together. The cookbook is full of about 130 recipes, all of which are from different cultural traditions that came together in the US. In other words, all of the well-written recipes are for the kinds of baked treats that your mother, grandmother or great grandmother (whoever in your family immigrated to the US and was the primary cook of the household) made from “back home.” A DVD is included with the cookbook that really sets it apart from others in the category. On it, author Greg Patent demonstrates some of the trickier techniques that are made much, much easier with a demo (although if you could ask your grandmother, I’m sure you might get some of the same baking tips if her specialty is also one of Patents).

The cookbook is divided up not by country, as you might expect with a cookbook that is a collection of recipes from multiple cultures, but by type: fried pastries, cookies, flatbreads, cakes, etc. With this kind of layout, it’s easy to find the kind of baked good you want to make and just as easy to see some of the cross-cultural similarities. Patent also includes a section with some basic recipes that are used repeatedly, like pie dough and almond paste. With each recipe, whether it’s a stuffed Indian flatbread or a light Australian pavlova, Patent starts off with a description of the dish and gives a bit of background on where the dish came from, as well as on who his version of it was originally made by.