Ronni Lundy (Sorghum's Savor) invites home cooks along for a road trip across the Southern Appalachians in Victuals--pronounced "vidls"--that's sure to stoke appetites and tug heartstrings.

Lundy reminisces about the meals of her childhood in Corbin, Ky.; interviews the farmers, restaurateurs and porch-sitting folks who carry on the slow food tradition of the region; and shares regional recipes, including familiar favorites like Skillet Fried Chicken and Milk Gravy, foraged bounty like Morels and Ramps with Eggs, and creative fusions like Kentucky Kimchi. The accompanying photographs bring Appalachia to life with landscapes presented in nostalgic black-and-white and food in vivid color, showing off glistening tomato slices as meaty as a rare steak, and egg yolk somewhere between the hue of butter and sunshine.

Culinary enthusiasts who enjoy deeper looks at the tradition surrounding their meals will love Lundy's essays exploring how food, economics and social life have intertwined in the Appalachian region. Casual cooks will stay for the fluffy buttermilk biscuits. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Deciding what to make for dinner (or any meal!) is made incredibly easy by Jean-Francois Mallet's Simple: The Easiest Cookbook in the World. Every recipe fits on a single page, each ingredient photographed; snap one picture with a smartphone and take it to the store for an easy shopping list.

There are hundreds of meals to make to ensure delicious fare for everyone and every occasion. While the cooking instructions might be simple, the food is anything but, with directions on how to create beautiful, varied dishes, like Bow Tie Pasta with Green Vegetables, French Onion Soup, Penne with Winter Squash and Walnuts, Veal Cutlets with Morel Mushrooms.

Some of the recipes require a bit of culinary knowledge, but most contain everything needed to create a delicious and satisfying meal with streamlined directions and, again, big, beautiful photographs to entice even the most reluctant cook. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer/editor

Cooking delicious food for a holiday crowd is tough enough, but when the crowd is vegan, finding the right menu options can become complicated. Isa Chandra Moskowitz of Post Punk Kitchen comes to the rescue with The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook.

Moskowitz follows the calendar year with complete menu plans for most mainstream United States festivities, including major entertainment events like the Super Bowl, secular celebrations like Mother's Day, and both Jewish and Christian holidays, with a chapter on Passover following one on Easter. The festively bright color scheme cheers on home cooks to entertaining success with spicy Gingerbread Waffles for Christmas breakfast, crispy Indian-inspired Samosa-Spiced Latkes for Hanukkah or a greens-heavy Gumbo Z'Herbes for Mardi Gras. With many gluten-free offerings, Moskowitz solves multiple dietary restriction challenges at the same time.

Whether guests want a dressed-up salad, a comforting casserole or a luscious dessert, Moskowitz's varied and versatile dishes will lay the foundation for superfun times for all. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Seaweed may seem initially off-putting as a food source to many people, what with its somewhat slimy reputation. But Ocean Greens: Explore the World of Edible Seaweed and Sea Vegetables: A Way of Eating for Your Health and the Planet's is sure to change opinions on that. Full of gorgeous photographs and vegan recipes that showcase various forms of seaweed--including Sea Chowder (kombu and potato based), Zucchini Spaghetti with Sea Pesto and the authors' special Dutch Weed Burger, a plant-based hamburger whose popularity in the Netherlands led to a documentary.

Tips on the nutritional values of different seaweeds, interviews with seaweed harvesters, suggestions of ways to locally source seaweed and creative recipes that showcase "the new kale" make Ocean Greens an eminently useful tool for anyone thinking of trying to make their diet more plant-based. Ocean Greens is a perfect gift for vegetarian friends, or chefs who like to branch out into new food groups. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

In the words of Rebecca Katz, "this book is dedicated to the proposition that everyone can enjoy making soup." In Clean Soups: Simple, Nourishing Recipes for Health and Vitality, Katz (The Healthy Mind Cookbook, The Longevity Kitchen) and coauthor Mat Edelson focus on the revitalizing power of soup. The collection begins with mineral-rich broths that can be made ahead of time, frozen and used as bases. Next come blended concoctions, like velvety roasted apple and butternut squash soup, and hearty healers, like caramelized fennel and chickpea soup with saffron. Katz concludes with a section on toppers such as silken nut creams and polenta croutons.

Designed for efficiency, with guidelines for pantry stocking and broth doctoring, this cookbook also includes prep times, cook times and notes alongside lush photographs. Suitable for eaters ranging from carnivores to vegans, and accommodating gluten-free and dairy-free diets, Clean Soups never compromises on flavor--promising a few simple steps between an array of ingredients and, as Katz's writes, a "bowl of yum." --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

The potato has its origins in ancient Andean civilization and is an essential ingredient in billions of homes in more than 100 countries around the globe. Self-professed potato-holic Rahgavan Iyer (600 Curries) gives the tuber a turn in the spotlight in his colorful, fun-filled and curiously entertaining cookbook. Smashed, Mashed, Boiled, and Baked--and Fried, Too! offers a primer on the varieties of potatoes that exist in the world (5,000 types worldwide, in starchy and waxy variants), their uses in various cooking methods and odd trivia bits (like a shout-out to the American who became the first non-Japanese citizen to pass the shochu distilled beverage advisor test). Throughout, the well traveled, James Beard and IACP Award-winning author offers intriguing recipes, many of which can be prepared in nine steps or fewer. Highlights include a Hmong-inspired sweet potato, chicken and lemongrass stew and a mojito potato-pomegranate salad. Who knew tubers could be so versatile? --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Atlanta-based chef and caterer Asha Gomez hails from Kerala state in South India, where "enticing aromas from pungent seasonings like kodampuli, asafoetida, and cambogia [arise] from cast-iron griddles and clay cooking pots." A resident of the American South for nearly two decades, Gomez's culinary style is one of synthesis and cross-pollination, using Cajun and Southern ingredients in typically Indian recipes and vice versa. My Two Souths walks the reader from breakfast to dessert, showing Gomez's particular talent for eliding the distinctions between foods from different cultures. The cookbook is full of interesting tidbits and personal reflections along with easy-to-navigate steps on how to make homemade chai tea as well as fried rabbit. While Gomez unfortunately doesn't include cook and prep times at the beginning of her recipes, fans of adventurous cooking won't let that deter them. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum of Natural History Chicago, Ill.

Gourmet cooks with a passion for New England's seafood--as well as culinary memoir--will savor Black Trumpet, Chef Evan Mallett's debut collection of 250 decadent dishes created and served at his family-owned bistro and wine bar of the cookbook's name. Featuring locally sourced ingredients from Black Trumpet's setting in the seaport town of Portsmouth, N.H., Mallett's creative fare is precisely synced with New England's "eight seasons": Early Winter, Late Winter, Early Spring, Late Spring, Early Summer, Late Summer, Early Fall and Late Fall.

Black Trumpet features Mallett's personal stories of becoming a chef, his passion for fresh, seasonal food and his recollections of the restaurant's compelling history in the seaport community that is both tourist destination and home. --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com

Restaurateur Masaharu Morimoto aims high in Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking. The title is a self-conscious reference to Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Morimoto hopes to do for Japanese cooking what Child did for French cooking: inspire home cooks with a passion for an unfamiliar cuisine and give them the tools to understand it.

Morimoto argues that home cooks have not attempted Japanese cooking because of the mystique surrounding the skills and ingredients used by restaurant chefs. In Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking, he introduces the simpler food prepared by Japanese cooks at home. After chapters describing the basics of Japanese cuisine--rice and the seaweed-based stock dashi--Morimoto organizes his book by cooking techniques. Chapters on simmering, steaming, grilling, dressing and pickling are augmented with personal stories about his education as a chef and sometimes surprising practical advice. If Morimoto succeeds at nothing else, he'll convince you to buy a rice cooker! --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

As a young student in Taipei in the 1970s, Carolyn Phillips--food writer, scholar and artist--quickly discovered that the Chinese food she ate in China was nothing like that offered in the United States. This inspired her to begin an evolving quest, seeking to gain a "broader understanding of China's major cuisines... and how they related to one another." Phillips (The Dim Sum Field Guide) explores China's many culinary traditions and the forces behind them through favorite recipes from distinct cultural regions, from the ageless North and Manchurian Northeast to the spicy Central Highlands and the arid Northwest. Phillips's first-hand personal experiences--along with historical facts, detailed illustrations and maps, suggested menus and an ingredient glossary--accompany more than 300 recipes spelled out in exacting detail from the savory (Mock Shark Fin Soup) to the sweet (Candy Coated Almonds), the traditional (Yellow Braised Duck) to the refined (Oyster Spring Rolls). An inspiring, enlightening necessity for food enthusiasts everywhere. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Cinnamon, pomegranate molasses, saffron, lamb, eggplant and tomatoes bring to mind rich flavors, and are some of the ingredients found in the bean dishes, flatbreads, soups, stews and other savory and sweet meals in Taste of Persia. For this excellent cookbook/travelogue, Naomi Duguid (author of the IACP Award-winning Burma) collected recipes from Iran and its neighboring countries, a region of varied cultures and religions and blended cuisines that date back to the time of Cyrus the Great. "Persian foodways have had a huge impact on the rest of the world. The legacy of the Persian Empire includes apricots and bitter oranges... ice cream, the pulao family of rice dishes and the use of tart fruits in savory dishes," writes Duguid. A map, glossary and list of basic and foreign pantry staples are included, along with beautiful color photographs that highlight the food, scenery and people of each region. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Katie Button is part owner of two restaurants with her husband; a chef with Southern U.S. roots and a chemistry degree, she began her career in fine Spanish restaurants. In Cúrate, she aspires to bring the best home cooking of Spain to U.S. kitchens. Each chapter offers a manageable variety of clearly written recipes, with a short paragraph of cultural context and tips. Most of the recipes are simple: tomato bread, butternut squash soup, beer-braised chicken, Tuna and Tomato Salad, Sautéed Shrimp with Garlic, simple cocktails, vegetables and bean dishes. She also gives recipes for paellas, simmered octopus, fried eggplant with honey and rosemary, herbal ice creams and Baked Apricots with Sweet Yogurt Mousse and Pine Oil. There are many lovely full-page color photographs, including photo essay spreads that demonstrate how to clean and cut up an octopus or make the perfect gin and tonic. This is a beautiful and well-organized book that offers new ideas for both family meals and more elaborate dinner and cocktail party cooking. --Sara Catterall

Wanderlust and cuisine that is unusual, hard to find or simply odd go hand in hand for food and travel writer Shane Mitchell. On assignment for Saveur, Travel + Leisure and other publications, Mitchell has followed her nose and her stomach all over the world. In Far Afield, her first book, Mitchell presents the stories (with James Fisher's striking photos) of her encounters with 10 traditional foodways and the people who are keeping them alive, including Icelandic shepherds, Uruguayan gauchos and African refugees living in France.

Along with the stories, Mitchell has collected 40 recipes, most of them dishes intended for the family table. Some are simple but hearty, like the chivito ("Uruguay's answer to the hamburger") or basmati coconut rice. Several are more complex, such as spicy Mexican grilled rabbit or Icelandic fish chowder. All carry the rich flavors of their communities, where land, food and family are intimately tied together. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Every cook at a potluck wants to go home with an empty dish. Formerly of Food & Wine, Kristin Donnelly has a lifetime of experience with shared meals, first in a large extended Pennsylvania family, then as a food editor writing about the perfect dinner party. When motherhood limited her prep time, she returned to the concept of every guest bringing a dish. Modern Potluck is her collection of 100 "updated, foolproof, crowd-pleasing recipes" that are "a little bit impressive."

A "Rules of the Potluck" introduction alleviates anxiety about bringing cooks together. Donnelly designed the recipes to be made ahead, travel well and scale up for a crowd or down for a family. Eight chapters cover categories including drinks and condiments "and other things in jars": Who wouldn't welcome Spicy Fennel Salt? "The 9x13-Inch Pan" chapter offers modern spins on classics, including Smoky Squash Mac & Cheese and Healthy Root Vegetable Gratin with Buttery Walnuts.

From carnivores to vegan diners, Modern Potluck guarantees everyone at a communal table will clean their plates with delight. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

The recipes in Marbled, Swirled, and Layered build on traditional baking techniques, but add marbling, layering and new flavor combinations in ways that make classic baked goods feel new and exciting. Cookies, cakes, pies, brownies, muffins, breads and nearly any other baked good imaginable are eligible for upgrade in the kitchen of Irvin Lin, the blogger behind eatthelove.com. Jumbo Arnold Palmer Cookies combine lemon and tea in a classic sugar cookie; Carrot and Parsnip Layer Cake offers an upgrade to the classic cream-cheese frosted delight; Grapefruit and Earl Grey bread opens entirely new doors in the world of quick breads.

With his background in design, it's no surprise that Lin's baked goods are as lovely as they are delicious--a fact evidenced by the full-color photography accompanying nearly every one of the 150 recipes in Marbled, Swirled, and Layered. These inspirational photos, combined with specific, detailed instructions and suggestions for variations on each recipe, offer a warm invitation to bakers of all skill levels to get creative--and play with their food. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Dandelion and Quince is a beautifully produced cookbook aimed at the home cook who loves to experiment. It focuses on unusual ingredients that are increasingly available from farmers markets, CSAs and many grocery stores, such as kohlrabi, Buddha's Hand, green garlic and purslane, and some that have been widely available for longer, such as Asian pears, radicchio and shallots. Michelle McKenzie is program director and chef at a San Francisco cooking school, and her interpretations of Chinese medicine influence her recipes. She explains how to build a small temporary smoker, and how to harvest pollens to use as condiments. There are teas and jellies, a minestrone, a slow-cooked lamb shoulder, Celery Leaf and Duck Egg Custard, Grilled Quail with Treviso and Fava Leaves, a nettle sandwich, and Short Ribs with Kumquat and Kombu. Most of the recipes are technically simple, and McKenzie also offers detailed advice on shopping, storage, equipment and original recipe composition. --Sara Catterall