Food & Cooking

A guide to ramen for the home cook, from the chef behind the beloved shop Otaku Ramen.

Sarah Gavigan is otaku. Loosely translated, she’s a ramen geek. During her twenty years working in film production and as a music executive in L.A., Gavigan ate her way through the local ramen spots, but upon moving back to her native Nashville, she found she missed the steaming bowls of ramen she used to devour. So she dedicated herself to mastering the oft-secretive but always delicious art of ramen-making and opened her own shop within a few years.

An Italian American born and raised in the South, Gavigan is an unlikely otaku. While her knowledge of ramen is rooted in tradition, her methods and philosophies are modern. Though ramen is often shrouded in mystery, Gavigan’s 40+ recipes are accessible to the home cook who wants to learn about the cuisine but would sometimes rather make a quick stock in a pressure cooker than labor over a vat of liquid for twenty-four hours.

Ramen Otaku strips the mystique from ramen while embracing its history, magic, and rightful place in the American home kitchen.

Celebrated cook and writer Zoe Adjonyoh passionately believes we are on the cusp of an African food revolution. First published to widespread acclaim in the United Kingdom, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen began as a pop-up restaurant in London featuring dishes such as Pan-Roasted Cod with Grains of Paradise, Nkruma (Okra) Tempura, Cubeb-Spiced Shortbread, and Coconut and Cassava Cake. Soon those dishes evolved into this tempting and celebratory cookbook, newly revised and updated for American cooks.

Join Zoe as she shares the beauty of Ghana’s markets, culture, and cuisine, and tells the evocative story of using these tastes and food traditions to navigate her own identity. Whether you are familiar with the delights of Ghanaian cuisine or new to the bold flavors of West Africa, this book contains inspiration for extraordinary home cooking, in dishes such as:

– Simple Fried Plantains
– Red Red Stew
– Red Snapper and Yam Croquettes
– Bofrot Doughnuts
– Nkatsenkwan (Peanut Butter Stew with Lamb)
– Jollof Fried Chicken
-Ghana-fied Caesar Salad
-and more

With flexible recipes for hearty salads, quick and wholesome dinners, flavorful feasts, and much more, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen brings truly exciting and flavor-packed dishes into your kitchen. This is contemporary African food for simply everyone.

Rodney Scott was born with barbecue in his blood. He cooked his first whole hog, a specialty of South Carolina barbecue, when he was just eleven years old. At the time, he was cooking at Scott’s Bar-B-Q, his family’s barbecue spot in Hemingway, South Carolina. Now, four decades later, he owns one of the country’s most awarded and talked-about barbecue joints, Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ in Charleston.

In this cookbook, co-written by award-winning writer Lolis Eric Elie, Rodney spills what makes his pit-smoked turkey, barbecued spare ribs, smoked chicken wings, hush puppies, Ella’s Banana Puddin’, and award-winning whole hog so special. Moreover, his recipes make it possible to achieve these special flavors yourself, whether you’re a barbecue pro or a novice. From the ins and outs of building your own pit to poignant essays on South Carolinian foodways and traditions, this stunningly photographed cookbook is the ultimate barbecue reference. It is also a powerful work of storytelling. In this modern American success story, Rodney details how he made his way from the small town where he worked for his father in the tobacco fields and in the smokehouse, to the sacrifices he made to grow his family’s business, and the tough decisions he made to venture out on his own in Charleston.

Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ is an uplifting story that speaks to how hope, hard work, and a whole lot of optimism built a rich celebration of his heritage—and of unforgettable barbecue.

Great cooking goes beyond following a recipe–it’s knowing how to season ingredients to coax the greatest possible flavor from them. Drawing on dozens of leading chefs’ combined experience in top restaurants across the country, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg present the definitive guide to creating “deliciousness” in any dish.

Thousands of ingredient entries, organized alphabetically and cross-referenced, provide a treasure trove of spectacular flavor combinations. Readers will learn to work more intuitively and effectively with ingredients; experiment with temperature and texture; excite the nose and palate with herbs, spices, and other seasonings; and balance the sensual, emotional, and spiritual elements of an extraordinary meal. Seasoned with tips, anecdotes, and signature dishes from America’s most imaginative chefs, The Flavor Bible is an essential reference for every kitchen.