Cookbook Watch: Christmas Gifts

Some of the books that has come out this fall would make excellent christmas gifts! I've saved two of my favorites for a separate post - coming soon.

For the parents:



The Gastrokid cookbook, by two food writers, would be perfect for those wanting to raise an adventurous eater. No guarantees, but the book is full of useful tips and recipes - and for food you want to eat, too. For more, go to the Gastrokid website.



Hungry Monkey is written by a food writer as well - Matthew Amster-Burton, and it's an amusing book about his daughter Iris. Again, very helpful for a parent thinking about how to feed his or her kids, and it has excellent recipes as well despite being not just a cookbook. For more on this, go to the Hungry Monkey website.

For busy families:



Martha Stewart's Dinner At Home is full of suggestions for fast and easy dinners that still look delicious and are nutritious and good for you. Typically Martha, the book is also beautiful.



Tomas Tengby is well known in Swedish television and radio, and has written and co-authored several cookbooks before, but his latest, Välkommen på middag! ("Welcome to dinner" - available in Swedish only) is the one I like best so far. It has a lot of rough sketches rather than full on recipes, and since that is really the way I cook, it suits me just fine. He gives a lot of tips on how to build a meal, and reminds us that cooking doesn't have to be difficult or complicated.

For fairly ambitious cooks:



Melker Andersson owns several restaurants in Stockholm and has now written a book about homecooking. Hemma Hos Melker ("At home with Melker" - available in Swedish only) is divided into three parts depending on how long the recipes take to cook. Nothing looks too difficult, and those things I've tried have been delicious. If you want to achieve great flavor and get some tips from one of the most succesful Swedish chefs - this is your book.



Fredagskocken by Mattias Larsson is an excellent book! Mattias is pretty well known in Sweden from his participation on Mix Megapol, a radio station. He's part of the morning show every Friday, and cooks live on the air. His passion for food really shines through, and this book has 23 three-course menus from the radio show. I was lucky enough to meet Mattias a while ago, and his recipes are excellent. They're very approachable, and don't contain a whole lot of strange ingredients - you can get just about all of them at a regular grocery store, which certainly is a bonus. This is a book I know I'll use a lot this coming year! (Mattias website: here.)

For someone about to live on their own:



Basic Kokboken (Swedish only) is not just a basic cookbook (as the name would imply) but it's also quite inspiring. It has the usual, to be expected recipes, but it also has more than that and I wish I had had this when I first moved out!



And if you don't think a whole lot of cooking is going to take place when the kid goes off to college (or wherever), maybe Vodka med Smak ("Vodka with Flavor" - available in Swedish only) is a good alternative. It's a second book from Swedish bar Café Opera, and it's all vodka-based drinks.

For foragers:



Svamplycka ("Mushroom Luck" - available in Swedish only) by Jens Linder is a wonderful book if you like to trawl through the forests for those 'shrooms. It covers many different types, and has lots of recipes for each kind of mushroom. Jens Linder also blogs, in Swedish, here.