COOKBOOK REVIEWS: AUTUMN 2026
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These are the titles in this review:
Ottolenghi Simple Too · Yotam Ottolenghi
Persiana One · Sabrina Ghayour
Mediterranean All the Way · Ayesha Nurdjaja
Bistro · Stéphane Reynaud
French at Heart · Marjorie Taylor & Kendall Smith Franchini
The Big Book of Dinner · Melissa Clark
Good Things · Samin Nosrat
Every Leaf, Every Stem · Pierce Abernathy
Fundamentals of Flavor · Nik Sharma
Breaducation · Andrew Janjigian
Follow Your Heart’s Vegetarian Soup Cookbook · Janice Cook Knight
Cookbooking: A Fan’s Guide · Debbie Berne
COOKBOOK REVIEWS: AUTUMN 2026
Whenever I get a new cookbook, I read it cover to cover, though not necessarily in order, jumping from one image to another, from one recipe to the next and back again, until the book is bristling with torn bits of paper, post-it notes and bookmarks of one kind or another, each marking a recipe I want to come back to and cook. I know the signs: a festooned stack of books on the kitchen table, little flags of paper waving “look here!” and “cook me!” It’s hard to know where to start. Here are some of my favorites from this season’s bumper crop, along with a couple of recent favorites I couldn’t leave out.
Sunday, November 1, is the very first National Buy a Cookbook Day, a celebration of authors, independent bookstores, and the joy of cooking at home, just as the holiday shopping season begins. What better excuse to add a new cookbook (or three) to your shelf? Wherever possible, please buy from your local independent bookshop. Here in Santa Barbara, Chaucer’s Books is a treasure, and if you’re in San Francisco, Omnivore Books is a cookbook lover’s paradise. Wherever you live, your local bookseller will be happy to order any of these for you.
MEDITERRANEAN & MIDDLE EAST
Ottolenghi Simple Too — Yotam OttolenghiTen Speed Press · October 6, 2026 · 304 pages · $45.00Publisher page I have long been a fan of all things Ottolenghi and have cooked my way through all his books, so I was thrilled to hear that a new one was on its way. Simple Too is a follow-up to his very successful Simple (2018), returning to the same principles eight years on. Co-written with chef Verena Lochmüller, it has 135 new recipes organized by type or ingredient: breakfast, snacks, meat, fish, veggie mains, pasta, sides and salads, through to dessert. In keeping with the title, every recipe is simple in at least one way: under 30 minutes, one pot, or make-ahead. Recognizing how busy everyone’s lives are, the authors set out to create quick, delicious, and gorgeous recipes, and they delivered. The ingredient lists are short or manageable (unlike some of the other Ottolenghi titles, which I know scared some people off), and the recipes burst with Ottolenghi’s trademark Middle Eastern-inspired flavors.
I have so many bits of paper in this book that I can’t list all my must-cooks, but here are a few: Yogurt and Za’atar Chicken with Lemon (five ingredients and five minutes of prep for a succulent dish); a fragrant salmon with an apricot and cilantro pesto inspired by the Mexican sauce chamoy; sweet potato fritters, a perfect seasonal treat as we head into Thanksgiving; and a luscious herby leek and celery root soup. For those with a sweet tooth, my favorite right now is the apricot, marmalade, and almond bake, which takes just 15 minutes to put together before going into the oven. It makes an excellent breakfast if there’s any left the next day.
Persiana One: One Pan. One Tray. One Pot — Sabrina GhayourMitchell Beazley · September 15, 2026 · 240 pages · $34.99Publisher page British-Iranian chef and food writer Sabrina Ghayour is a multi-award-winning, bestselling author who made her name hosting the hugely popular “Sabrina’s Kitchen” supper club in London, specializing in Persian and Middle Eastern flavors. Persiana One is the latest in her Persiana series, and it is organized entirely around minimal washing up: every recipe uses one pot, one tray or one pan, with shortcuts that don’t sacrifice flavor. As she writes in her introduction, “We all crave simple recipes that involve minimal effort and kitchen equipment and less washing up, but still deliver big on flavor, and that’s exactly what this book is all about.” Chapters move from Really Useful Staples, such as spice mixes, “butter bombs” and pasta sauces, through dips, salads and easy weeknight dishes to slower cooking. There must be a trend for meatballs right now, because, like several books this season, this one has a selection of meatballs, all bathed in succulent sauces. As with all her books, the recipes are mouthwateringly inviting and the techniques approachable.
Here are a few I have earmarked: a feta and herb yogurt dip that is crying out for pita or toast; spiced beans with pomegranate, which would make a terrific holiday side dish; a watermelon salad with tamarind-lime dressing, which (incredibly, given it’s late October) I’m looking forward to making this weekend while juicy melons are still around; a golden, turmeric- and curry-scented parsnip soup, perfect for when the predicted rains arrive; and a rich Moroccan harira, which I’d like to serve with sticky sesame-glazed spring onions. There are many more, but you get the gist. Delicious!
Mediterranean All the Way: Bold Flavors, Built to Share — Ayesha NurdjajaClarkson Potter · October 20, 2026 · 304 pages · $45.00Publisher page There is one word to describe this book, and in turn its author: exuberant! This is the debut cookbook from the chef behind Shuka and Shukette in New York, featuring bold, vegetable-forward Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dishes and over 120 recipes. The layout, chapter titles, and dishes are COLORFUL and bountiful, and make you want to pick up a piece of pita and dip it into the page! This is food meant for sharing, with lots of dips and sauces for dragging bread through: hummus, labneh and easy flatbreads, plus produce-led dishes like roasted cauliflower with dates and pistachio chermoula. There are heartier mains too, such as sesame-crusted chicken schnitzel and Middle Eastern meatballs (yes, it’s a thing!).
Ayesha Nurdjaja is a James Beard Award finalist, and Shukette has been on The New York Times’ list of the 100 best restaurants in New York City three years running. I haven’t had the opportunity to eat at her restaurants, but when I make it back to New York, I will make a beeline there. The playfulness of chapter headings like “Livin’ On The Veg” and “Off The Hook” percolates into joyful recipes that make your taste buds sing. There are a lot of summer recipes, so some dishes will have to wait until the right ingredients roll around at the market again next year. In the meantime, I will be delving into her seared Brussels sprouts with date tahini, roasted beets with orange and tarragon, and her shortcut version of shawarma in the form of chicken kebabs. It’s a book that makes you smile.
FRANCE
Bistro: French Food and Wine for Every Occasion — Stéphane Reynaud. Mitchell Beazley · September 22, 2026 · 480 pages · $50.00 Available at Chaucer’s Books or your local bookstore. If your idea of heaven, or of the perfect evening, is to stroll into a French bistro, sit at the zinc bar sipping an aperitif and nibbling on rillettes with a perfect baguette, before being squeezed onto a banquette at a small wooden table, all the while ogling the mouthwatering food carried past by waiters in long white aprons, then delving into a soupe de poisson, a chou farci, a salade landaise or a daube, remembering to leave room for the cheese platter, followed by a crème caramel or a tarte tatin, then this is the book for you.
It is a huge, celebratory book about all things bistro, from the Paris bistrotier whose restaurant, Oui Mon Général, was voted best bistro in Paris in 2020. Its 250 recipes and 100 wine pairings are arranged as though you were spending a day in a bistro, slowly working your way through the menu, with all the classics, from caillettes and sole meunière to steak tartare and asperges mousseline. It’s a feast of a book and a true celebration of classic French food. My father gave me a copy of the French edition, which came out in 2021; the English-language edition has just been released, and it is a treat.
French at Heart: Recipes That Bring France Home — Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini, with Jess ThomsonAbrams · April 8, 2025 · 304 pages · $40.00Publisher page This book speaks to me in so many personal ways, because our cooking-school ethic and aesthetic run in parallel on both sides of the Atlantic. The mother-and-daughter team who founded The Cook’s Atelier cooking school in Beaune, Burgundy, came from the American Southwest and settled in France to share their love of French cooking and French style with their students. I am a French-English transplant to California, teaching Mediterranean-style cooking here. Their love of France and French cooking shines through this gorgeous book, which is as much about French living as French cooking. At its core is the idea that being French at heart means slowing down and enjoying the small details of every day, wherever you live.
The recipes range from French classics like Salade Niçoise, French Onion Soup and Oeufs Mayonnaise (which, like meatballs, is a “thing” right now, not just in cookbooks but on every bistro menu in France) to modern twists like Duck Confit Tostadas, alongside advice on cheese and charcuterie boards, a French pantry, a kitchen garden and the farmers’ market. Woven through it all is a tender mother-daughter story. If you want good, classic French recipes, you will be well served by this lovely book.
EVERYDAY COOKING
The Big Book of Dinner: Recipes and Rules (and How to Break Them) — Melissa ClarkClarkson Potter · November 17, 2026 (available to pre-order) · 448 pages · $50.00Publisher page Melissa Clark has been thinking about dinner for a long time; her 2017 book Dinner: Changing the Game was on the same subject. In The Big Book of Dinner, she takes it a step further with a method I love. Each of the 175 recipes is a base recipe, followed by its “rules”, the elements you can’t leave out because they make the dish work, and then variations, the things you can change. Her avgolemono with chicken meatballs and rice (and yes, more meatballs!) becomes, for instance, an Italian meatball soup with escarole and pecorino. I always tell my students that recipes are building blocks: once you master the basic version, you can experiment, and that’s the fun part. This book encapsulates that idea.
Two of my favorites so far: her spin on French onion soup, which swaps the gooey cheese topping for crunchy, cheesy croutons floated on top, and a sweet-and-spicy chicken with cumin and honey that becomes a gingery marmalade chicken in its variation. Both equally scrumptious!
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love — Samin NosratRandom House · September 16, 2025 · 464 pages · $45.00Available at Chaucer’s Books or your local bookstore
In the introduction to Good Things, her long-awaited second book after Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Samin Nosrat writes, “The beauty of cooking is that it’s a vessel for both time and attention. Cooking for someone, or sitting down to a meal together, is about more than nourishment—it’s a way to share what’s most valuable to you with the people you care about.” How true. At a time when everyone seems to be in a rush, it echoes one of my father’s favorite sayings: remember to take time to smell the roses.
The book is a delicious collection of her favorite foods, told through recipes and stories that make you think about how you want to create a dish. Its running theme is that recipes, like rituals, are best shared. Most food writers I know have notebooks, recipe boxes or files stuffed with clippings, scraps of paper and postcards scribbled with ideas, a cornucopia of flavor combinations, much like a keepsake box. (She writes about just such a treasure box belonging to a neighborhood child.) Her book makes me think of exactly that: this is Samin’s keepsake box, and she has generously and beautifully shared its contents with us. What a treat!
I want to try her creamy lemon-miso dressing, curried carrot and coconut soup, vibrant beet labneh, preserved Meyer lemon paste (!) and her dreamy-looking vanilla bean flan. One of the last recipes in the book is for apricot jam, which, coincidentally, was the first jam I learned to make as a child, with my grandmother. Samin describes using the apricot kernels to give the jam a particular scent; extracting them is a painstaking process, and we used to do exactly the same thing. Looking at the photographs of Samin cracking open the pits to release the kernels, I felt as though I had stepped back in time to my grandmother’s table. Food does indeed connect us all.
Every Leaf, Every Stem: Craveable, Creative Vegetables All Year Round — Pierce Abernathy. Clarkson Potter · August 18, 2026 · 272 pages · $40.00 · foreword by Alice WatersAvailable at Chaucer’s Books or your local bookstore
I first discovered Pierce Abernathy on Instagram, when I came across a video of him making mushroom soup, and I’ve been following along ever since. His down-to-earth approach to cooking comes through in his debut cookbook. He doesn’t come from a traditional food career; he’s a recipe developer, content creator, and model based in Brooklyn, and his cooking grows out of his curiosity about plant-forward food and his Armenian heritage. His passion shows on every page.
The book celebrates seasonal produce, with a particular gift for making unfamiliar or overlooked vegetables exciting. Its 90-plus plant-based recipes are organized by season, with an Evergreen chapter of dishes made from vegetables and pantry staples available all year. There are plenty of dips, twists on classics and unexpected combinations, such as a summer panzanella with peaches and fried basil, tomato toast with corn butter, and a winter squash soup with kimchi and nori croutons. The apricot labneh dressing served with grilled chicories is terrific. He also shows you how to use every part of your produce, even when it’s past its best. If you get a CSA box, this is a great addition to your cookbook collection.
THE SCIENCE OF IT
Fundamentals of Flavor: 100 Recipes for the Science of Better Cooking — Nik Sharma. Chronicle Books · September 22, 2026 · 352 pages · $45.00 Publisher page “The elements of nature are not just a force in my cooking; they are the essence of who I am and the journey I’ve embraced. To become a cook, I became a scientist. To become a scientist, I became a cook,” writes Nik Sharma, the molecular biologist turned chef, in the introduction to his new book. His appreciation and unique understanding of the forces of nature are evident on every page of this masterful book.
The 100 recipes are organized around the four elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water, and how each affects cooking. For each element, he sets out a group of techniques, the science behind them, and the transformative effect they have on different foods. Fire delves into caramelization, the Maillard reaction, roasting and grilling. Earth explores how salt and minerality shape texture and flavor. Air looks at drying, baking, and how moisture loss transforms a dish. Water dives into methods like braising and sous vide, of which he’s a big fan (it’s a technique I admit I don’t use, but after reading this I might!).
The book is a reference for cooks who want to understand why a recipe works, not just how. If you want to know why shallots caramelize more quickly than onions (they contain twice the natural sugar), this is the book for you. Between the gorgeous photos and recipes (grilled portobello mushroom salad with a pomegranate vinaigrette that melds oranges and grilled mushrooms: yes, please!) are excellent diagrams and charts that explain it all in greater depth. If you are at all geeky about the science of cooking, it’s a must-read. He is a flavor alchemist, and his creativity shows as he masters fire (Basque cheesecake), savors the earth (a savory tomato sorbet and a killer carrot cake), whisks up wonders with air (pistachio amaretti and pavlovas) and navigates the flow of water (sous vide rye bread and a spiced crème brûlée).
Breaducation: The Science and Practice of Baking Bread at Home — Andrew Janjigian. Ten Speed Press · November 17, 2026 (available to pre-order) · 384 pages · $45.00Publisher page If you like reading Harold McGee or Nik Sharma to understand the how and why of cooking, then you will LOVE Andrew Janjigian’s book on all things bread. It’s a treasure trove and a complete guide to the science of baking leavened bread at home. I first “found” Andrew through his Substack, Wordloaf, which is a gold mine of information, and he has distilled all that baking know-how into this book. Yes, it does have a scientific feel at times, but if you are really into baking bread, tables and charts will be familiar territory!
The book covers every stage of a loaf’s life, core ingredients, baker’s math and reading formulas, then goes on to advanced techniques like scalds and milling your own grain. Its 50-plus recipes range from crusty sourdough, rye and grain-filled loaves to brioche, challah, baguettes, bagels and flatbreads, plus ways to use up discard and old bread. I want to dive into the entire flatbread section, from focaccia to fougasse to pita.
CLOSER TO HOME
Follow Your Heart’s Vegetarian Soup Cookbook (2026 edition) — Janice Cook KnightThe Heart Natural Foods Inc · 2026 · 200 pages · $29.99Available at Chaucer’s Books Just released, this is a new edition of the much-loved soup book from Follow Your Heart, the Canoga Park vegetarian restaurant and market that has been a Southern California institution since the early 1970s. The 1983 original gathered more than 50 of the restaurant’s soups, with names like Dear Aunt Lilly’s Lima Bean, Rainbow Vegetable, Enchilada and Mushroom Stroganoff, and it still has devoted fans. Janice, the restaurant’s former head chef and author of the original, has revised it for 2026, with 60 luscious creations, including dairy-free and plant-based alternatives and many new recipes.
Soups hold a special place in my heart because I grew up eating them every day as a child. There are so many I’d like to make from this book, including the cream of asparagus, Thai coconut mushroom soup, and Scandinavian fruit soup. They range from light and refreshing to warm and hearty, and the mouthwatering photography makes you want to dive into each bowl.
Janice, my good friend and fellow writer, is a Santa Barbara cooking teacher, a contributor to Edible Santa Barbara, and the winner of the 2015 Les Dames d’Escoffier M.F.K. Fisher writing prize.
Cookbooking: A Fan’s Guide — Debbie BerneHardie Grant · August 18, 2026 · 224 pages · $30.00Publisher page As many of you know, I L.O.V.E. cookbooks. I have been collecting them for more than forty years, and my collection follows me every time I move, to the chagrin of anyone who has helped me pack them up, but to my delight, as they are my delicious escape. I wrote about the joys of a cookbook collection in Culinary Journeys. Debbie Berne obviously shared that passion. Her book is about cookbooks in all their guises rather than a cookbook itself. There are no recipes here, but rather a colorful survey of the most influential cookbooks and her best-loved titles, told through photographs, lists, graphics, and lively writing. Chapters cover the visual history of cookbook design, what’s in a cookbook’s “front matter”, diet cookbooks through the decades, and the waves of French, hippie, TV-show, science, restaurant-chef and children’s cookbooks, from the earliest to the most iconic. She notes early on that this is her list, and that everyone would have their own to add. Mine overlaps with hers, but the comparison perfectly illustrates how personal food, cooking, and the sharing of meals can be. The book is very much written from an American point of view. Her opening line is “Did your mother have Joy of Cooking? (Of course she did.)” Mine did not, and I suspect nor did anyone else growing up in London in the 1960s. On that side of the Atlantic it was much more Elizabeth David or, in our case, the huge French tome, Raymond Oliver’s La Cuisine. Whatever the book, these were the trusted guides we turned to again and again, slowly collecting the odd splatter of sauce across their pages, stuffed with bookmarks and handwritten notes. They are our culinary talismans. This lovely book celebrates why recipe books are so engaging and collectible, and such good companions, whether you’re ensconced on the sofa with a hot cup of tea or tucked up in bed.
Berne was a book designer whose cookbook work included The Downton Abbey Cookbook and Somebody Feed Phil, and she also wrote The Design of Books. Sadly, she died last December, before Cookbooking was published. It is a fitting final work: a book designer’s love letter to the books she spent her life making beautiful.
P.S. These are just a handful of this season’s riches. If you’d like the full picture, Jenna Helwig of Cookbookery Collective, who also created National Buy a Cookbook Day, has rounded up more than 175 fall cookbooks, with a trend report, in her Fall 2026 Cookbook Preview. Proceed with caution; your wish list will grow!If you’d like to browse earlier reviews, you’ll find The Cookbook Reviews 2022 and 2023 on the website.
