It has been FAR too long since I’ve done one of these cookbook round-up posts. Amazing books have been stacking up all around my apartment (quite literally, there are piles nearly everywhere you look) and there are so many I want to share with you. So I’m going to get back into the business of featuring the best of the food-focused books that are crossing my threshold. Today’s post features four such books that came out in the last three or four months and would all make great additions to your culinary library.
This summer was a really good time for jar-focused cookbooks (including mine!). One such book is Shaina Olmanson’s first, called Desserts in Jars. You might know her from her blog, Food For My Family. Shaina did all the writing, recipe development, food styling and photography for this book. My hat is off to her and the beautiful, accessible book that she created.
Desserts in Jars features all manner of cakes, pies, custards, puddings, fruit desserts and frozen desserts. There’s also a section in the very back filled with mixes for giving. There are a number of people on my holiday list who will be receiving jars of her Spiced Hot Chocolate Mix in their gift baskets this year.
Many words of praise have been heaped on Nigel Slater’s Ripe since it was published (it’s been out since 2010 in the UK, but has only been available in the US since late spring). It deserves every ounce of adulation too. It is beautifully written and photographed. The recipes are creative and allow you the space to adapt and explore the featured main ingredients.
The recipes in Ripe are named things like “A sharp damson pickle for cold meats” and “A high-summer jam to serve warm.” How could you not want to make things with such romantic and descriptive handles? One dish that I’m hoping to make in the very near future is his “Apples and quince baked in cream.” Just saying the name makes me feeling like I’ve been transported to a small village in the English countryside.
Written by the founder of Brooklyn-based Anarchy in Jam, Laena McCarthy’s Jam On is a really masterful preserving book because it doesn’t just contain a series of recipes. Laena has included the how and why of jams that she has learned throughout her career as a professionals fruit preserver. For instance, there’s a chart that breaks down which fruits are high in pectin, which have moderate amounts and which are quite low in pectin. That’s the kind of knowledge that makes it possible for cookbook users to explore fruit and put together their own jams, butters and marmalades.
Jam On has sections devoted to jams and jellies; preserves, marmalades and chutneys; sugar-free jams and fruit butters (I get lots of questions about sugar-free canning, those of you interested in this topic should definitely check out this book!); pickled fruits, syrups and shrubs; and pairings. I’m most enamored of the last two sections, as they have given me so many great ideas.
Written by Chef Paul Virant of Chicago’s Vie and co-authored by Kate Leahy, The Preservation Kitchen is an incredible book for canners who want to expand their preservation habit beyond their traditional jams and pickles. One of the best things about this book is that it takes a very scientific approach to the formatting of the recipes, listing the ingredients in volume, ounces, grams and percentages. This makes it easier to scale the recipes up or down, which is so useful when you need to work with the produce you have and not an exact, recipe-prescribed amount.
Particular gems in this book include chapters on Bittersweet Preserves (this includes aigre-doux and mostardas – both incredible with cheeses) and Pressure Canning. The pressure canning section is only three recipes deep, but all are winners, particularly the garlic conserva (detailed here by Hank Shaw) which allows you to have shelf stable, oil-packed, tender garlic.
My favorite is actually the tomato jam from this site! It’s unique to me and my friends. Great with peanut butter toast, cream cheese on a bagel, or locally made cheese on crackers.
I’d love a copy of this book. One of our family’s favorite canned treats is Dilled Carrots, recipe from The Ball Complete Book of Canning. They are tart, garlicy and spicy. We love them sliced up on sandwiches, in wraps and on salads.
Don’t know if this puts me on the board to win a book but so far this year your, oven roasted tomato jam was the bomb! Wish I had made many more jars!! Thanks!!!!
I am particularly attracted to a lemon honey jelly from Well Preserved by Mary Anne Dragan. I love me some lemon!
My grandmother’s freezer strawberry jam. So yummy. One of these years I’ll finish putting her recipes together into a cookbook for the family.
I love the apricot chutney you taught at your demonstration in Hollywood. With goat cheese on a baguette slice, it was delicious, especially served warm.
My favorite recipe is from your cookbook “Food in Jars”; Spiced Pear butter. I can’t get enough of it! I am not sucking up, either!
I no longer remember the source but I suspect it’s from Putting Food By-my first preservation book
Right now, my favorite came from YOU… Slow cooker blueberry butter! As a teacher, my berries come ripe right when my life gets super-busy, so it’s nice to have a low-maintenance way to relieve the crowded freezer. I have to admit, though, the recipe I come back to most frequently is the cranberry sauce on the back of the Ocean Spray cranberry bag. It just pairs so nicely with homemade yogurt from the cows next door!
Peach Jalapeno jam from Homesick Texan…I’m tellin’ ya.
My favorite recipe is a sweet pickle relish recipe that my uncle’s mother used to make. She got the recipe ages ago (in the 50’s or 60’s) from a newspaper in Kansas. It’s the best!
My favorite recipes this year are apple butter from the Ball cookbook and Pepper onion relish from your cookbook. We eat that on everything. I would love this book, it is on my Christmas list.
One of my favorite preserves is the Asian Plum Sauce from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. My husband loves it and it tastes great on chicken, turkey and pork.
My favorite jam is Roasted Vanilla Rhubarb Jam. I don’t if I can really call it a jam but it is an adaptation from Jess Thompson’s blog. It has many plusses.. it makes the house smell wonderful as it’s cooking, it has little work needed and it just tastes YUMMY.
Ripe and The Preservation Kitchen have been on my want list for a while. I would love to be paging through The Preservation Kitchen with my winter CSA share at the table!
Sassy Radish’es apple butter with rum and burnt sugar is delicious.
A house favorite is my great grandmother’s recipe for olive oil pickles. So tasty!
I haven’t a clue as to what my favorite preserve is. Applesauce is what I have most in my pantry as we eat it so frequently. I made 21 pints this year. I have a feeling it might be overtaken in quantity by pressure canned sweet potatoes soon (I’m still letting the sweeten up). I had a good harvest and most of them are slightly damaged so I don’t want to store them over the winter in the basement. So canned it is. I love playing with different recipes and another book would be fabulous.
My favorite preserve is Peach bourbon vanilla. It is so scrumptious. Everyone I give it to raves about it. It’s from Sassy Radish site.
Lovely books! My favorite preserve recipe is just a classic strawberry jam. We live 5 miles from a PYO strawberry farm and there is nothing better than a beautiful spring day, picking the perfect berries with the kids.
As for a cookware quest, last year I spent months hunting down a wood handle Le Crueset skillet to replace the 50+ year one that had finally bitten the dust.
It’s that time of the year to start making Ball’s cranberry ketchup; I really love that one for sweet potato fries and as a tartar sauce base!
Great books! My favorite recipes are my very own, but lately I’ve been playing with a couple of chutney recipes from Steven Dowdney’s book, Putting Up.
Your blog is my favorite resource and without a doubt strawberry vanilla jam is my absolute favorite!
My favorite preserve recipe is a tomato chutney from my high school advisor, who also officiated our wedding!
Preservation Kitchen looks like an awesome cookbook and resource, especially for those somewhat new to canning but not total beginners, such as myself. My favorite preserving recipe (this year anyway) is a peach salsa recipe that I found online somewhere. It’s good stuff!
I just put this on my wishlist for Christmas! Oh… would I ever love to win this! Favorite Source? I always go back to my Ball Jar book for Home Preservation.
My favourite recipe is a salsa from Canadian Living magazine. The books all sound great.
This is not to suck up but I think your site is pretty darn good for info and recipes. I don’t have lots of time to can but when I do I seek out something yummy and special.
There are 2 favorites: crab apple jelly and green tomato mincemeat which is a vegetarian mincemeat. Both are from a version of the Ball Book that I bought back in the 70s. So delicious. The jelly is the only one I will eat in peanut butter sandwiches.
Mine would have to be either my grandmothers apple butter or elderberry jam. We still enjoy them every year… and the smells take me back to her kitchen.
I’m new to canning, so I’m just breaking out beyond the basics. My favorite recipes have come from my favorite online bloggers : foodinjars.com, smittenkitchen.com, simplyrecipes.com, ….
great grandma’s cinnamon pickles…need to make some for Christmas giving…such a great red color!
love good cookbooks…always on the look out!
Blushing peach jam, recipe from a wonderful work friend. Would love to have a pressure cooker, and of course a lesson on how to use it.
The roasted tomato-garlic salsa from Williams-Sonoma’s preserving cookbook was a lot of work, but so. good.
My favorite preserve recipe was my grandmother’s applesauce: not because it tasted best or was super fancy, but it’s hers. And I miss her.
My favorite preserve is for my aunt’s pear ginger butter. If I visited in the fall, we would make this and I got to carry it home so proudly to my mom when all I think I ever did was point out what jars were prettiest. Now I make it myself and send it to her!
Still new to canning n would luv to win even one of these books!
I loved the apple butter in Canning for a New Generation. Slow cooker made it easy and it was delicious with apple essence yummy goodness.
Still new to canning. The canning I have done has been with family, so it has been their recipes. Would love a copy of this book!
I want a copy of Preservation Kitchen! I made a version of the book’s saffron peach jam at a friend’s recommendation and it was pretty amazing. I only flipped through the rest of the book, but the recipes looked unique and tasty and it’s on my bookstore list. My FAVORITE recent preserve, though, would have to be the tomato jam from your own Food in Jars Cookbook. 🙂
My favorite preserves recipe is Cranberry Sauce from “Fancy Pantry,” my very favorite cook book.
My favorite recipe is for Quince Jelly from Well Preserved (Mary Anne Dragan). I just spotted a quince tree loaded with fruit on my walk to work and have been knocking at their door to no avail (yet!).
garlic conserva sounds like the perfect recipe to finally break in the pressure canner…
My favorite preserves recipe is the Oma Jane’s Green Tomato Relish from Pickled, by Lucy Norris. And speaking of, it’s that time of year again! Tomorrow, then!
Strawberry-Black Pepper Jam from the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook
The books all sound lovely! My favourite preserve recipe comes from my Granny – pickled carrots with dill, garlic optional. She also did mixed vegetable pickles that I wasn’t nearly as fond of as the carrots when I was young.
Hmm.. my quest. Well as a newbie canner, just stocking the kitchen with jars and lids and pectin and lifters is fun and exciting. However, having a multitude of books from which to experiment from tried and true (and sometimes way outside the box!) recipes is what makes the experience. It’s like having your mom look over your shoulder to correct you if you go too far in one direction or not far enough in the other. You’re like that for me Marisa. You and Alana specifically. That’s my book collection. And it’s been an AMAZING summer! So I would say that more books and my very own Creuset (blue) or Staub (any colour at all!)
Pacific Northwest Blackberry Jelly from the old standard Ball Blue Canning Book; my go to book.
learning to pressure can has been awesome. I can make a stock, pressure can it, and not lose it in the depths of my freezer
My favorite preserve recipe was strawberry margarita preserves Strawberries, lime, tequila and Cointreau!
My cookware quest is to find a stove-top baking pot. A very rare thing! I want to send it to my friend who is doing a year long camping trip across the US with her family; they crave a chow down on some fresh baked brownies, but only have a camp stove! 🙂
My favorite preserve is one whose recipe is lost in the passages of time. My grandmother and aunts used to can large jars of whole (I think… I was about 4 at the time) pickled crab apples. They were phenomenal. I haven’t tasted them for almost thirty years (gods that makes me feel old) but I can still remember the feeling they gave me.