(article, Culinate staff)
The critics' picks are coming in for the best cookbooks of the year. In the New York Times, William Grimes dubbed Mollie Katzen's The Heart of the Plate one of his faves, along with the belated American edition of Ottolenghi and Pok Pok, from Portland's own Andy Ricker. Hometown paper the Oregonian naturally picked Ricker's Thai-food tome again, along with the Toro Bravo cookbook. The Huffington Post also dug Ricker, Madison, and the Ottolenghi guys, while on Mother Jones, Tom Philpott endorsed Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy as well as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg and Nigel Slater's Notes from the Larder. The Washington Post arranged a lengthy list by category, from vegetarian (Isa Chandra Moskowitz puts in an appearance, plus Madison) to nonfiction (including Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork and the huge, gorgeous, weirdly fascinating coffee-table book [%amazonProductLink asin=0982761023 "The Photography of Modernist Cuisine"]). Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles Times,_ Russ Parsons took the long view, assembling a list of his dozen favorite cookbooks written by chefs for home cooks, including Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Café Cookbook, Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican, Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts, Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty, and Deborah Madison's The Greens Cookbook.