If you’re looking to rev up your food game this spring, with food that’s delicious and healthy pick up a few of this year’s crop of stellar cookbooks. From vegan to to comfort to cocktails you’ll find your new favorite go-to in the mix.
1. Chloe Flavor: Saucy Crispy Spicy Vegan by Chloe Coscarelli
The fourth cookbook from the celebrity vegan chef (and founder and former partner of By Chloe restaurants) is filled with easy-to-make meatless dishes that are bold on flavor. Start your day with a blend of frozen banana, blueberry, and almond butter topped with fresh berries, chia seeds, and shredded coconut. Lunch on coconut falafel sliders with mango salsa and serve up a vegetable Panang curry for dinner. Chloe was the only vegan chef to ever win the top prize on The Food Network’s Cupcake Wars so not surprisingly the dessert section doesn’t disappoint. Pistachio ice cream anyone?
2. Food for Life: Delicious Healthy Comfort Food From My Table to Yours by Laila Ali
Four-time undefeated boxing world champion Laila Ali’s first cookbook features healthy recipes are made for a busy life with make-ahead main dishes, on-the-go snacks, and kid-pleasing foods. Laila brings her perspective as a mom and athlete each of the 100 comfort food recipes.
3. Saladish: A Crunchier, Grainier, Herbier Heartier, Tastier Way with Vegetables by Ilene Rosen with Donna Gelb
Ready to up your salad game? Ilene Rosen’s creative approach involves playing with contrasting textures and flavors, mixing sweet with spicy, salty with sharp, crunchy and hefty. Her salads always add an element of surprise — a spoonful of kimchi, a sprinkle of nigella seeds, a handful of goji berries. The book features over 80 salads with helpful illustrations demonstrating how to easily do more complicated prep techniques like a pro.
4. Sweet Potato Soul: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes for the Southern Flavors of Smoke, Sugar, Spice, and Soul by Jenné Claiborne
Sweet Potato Soul pays tribute to Southern and soul food, with classics cleverly re-imagined without animal products and dairy. Jenné went vegan in 2011 for ethical and environmental reasons, but soon saw firsthand the healing benefits of eating a plant-based, dairy and meat-free diet. Recipes like coconut collard salad, New Orleans-style red beans and rice, and spicy fried cauliflower “chicken” are the perfect combination of healthy and mouthwatering.
5. Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power by Lisa Mosconi, PhD
Dr. Mosconi is the Associate Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan and both an integrative nutritionist and neuroscientist. The book examines the compelling evidence that diet, gut health, and brain health are linked. While this isn’t a straight cookbook, Dr. Mosconi provides a comprehensive plan for a healthy brain that includes directives on what nutrients and foods to add (and to avoid) along with brain-boosting recipes.
6. The One-Bottle Cocktail: More than 80 Recipes With Fresh Ingredients and a Single Spirit by Maggie Hoffman
The trend in cocktails is to pair several different types of spirits together resulting in complicated concoctions that are difficult to make (and hangover inducing). Cocktail expert Maggie Hoffman comes to the rescue with vibrant cocktails based around one spirit. Chapters are divided by the type of liquor, so whether you are partial to tequila (that’s you Bobbi) or whisky, you will find a few new favorite options.
7. Great Tastes: Cooking (and Eating) from Morning to Midnight by Sisters Danielle & Laura Kosann
The founders of The New Potato website have profiled a parade of tastemakers and bold-faced names including Karlie Kloss, Kris Jenner, Jessica Alba and Martha Stewart to get their recipes, opinions, and food-related secrets. Their gorgeous new book, with stunning photographs by Aubrie Pick, includes behind-the-scenes essays and an enticing array of recipes from orecchiette with sausage, broccoli rabe, and ricotta to quick Moroccan beef stew.