(Jaya Nicely / Los Angeles Times)
23 of the best new cookbooks for spring 2026
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This is the time of year when California hillsides explode with wildflowers — sometimes so dense that they’re visible from space. Spring cookbook season brings that kind of superbloom joy. The Los Angeles Times’ annual Festival of Books celebrates these cookbooks and both visiting and local authors this month. Join us at the L.A. Times Food and Now Serving booth at USC on April 18 and 19.
Here are 23 favorite cookbooks of the season.
If you purchase a book from a link, the L.A. Times may receive a commission.
Showing Books Books
‘Ammazza!’ by Hillary Sterling with Theresa Gambacorta
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
This cookbook lives up to its name. “Ammazza!” — Roman slang for “wow” — impresses with more than 100 recipes that lean Italian but are by no means limited to it, resulting in unique dishes from Ci Siamo’s executive chef. As an alum of restaurants from Danny Meyer, Missy Robbins and Bobby Flay, author Hillary Sterling drew from a career’s worth of experience for these recipes, many of which run the cultural gamut. There’s a Mexican-tinged Thanksgiving menu, her spin on Alpine-Italian kimchi and Passover-inspired brisket polpette as a nod to her Jewish heritage, along with traditional Italian dishes such as insalata di mare, rainbow cookies, porchetta and fresh pasta. This is a tome for leaning into traditionalism as much as it is off-roading from it.
‘Asian Smoke’ by Andrew Ho, Andrew Samia and Sean Wen
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(Quarto Group)
Each year it seems like dozens of grilling cookbooks hit the market before summer, but none in 2026 have arrived with quite the heat of “Asian Smoke.” The debut cookbook from the team behind San Antonio’s Curry Boys BBQ provides Texas-barbecue know-how done with Southeast Asian flavor. Most recipes call for a grill or smoker — such as brisket larb, smoked-chicken pho, red curry prime rib, and smoked-and-steamed dumplings — but others can be made without, such as curry queso, fish sauce-glazed cheddar bay biscuits, and a Vietnamese-Cajun garlic butter seafood boil. This colorful compendium also includes essential tips for wet and dry rubs, condiments and DIY curry pastes, plus dessert recipes like calamansi pie bars and smoked Vietnamese-coffee bread pudding. If you’re grilling out this summer, think beyond the basics with “Asian Smoke.”
‘The Butter Book’ by Anna Stockwell
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(Chronicle Books, LLC)
Anna Stockwell’s “The Butter Book” is an ode to butter and a one-stop butter handbook, with everything you might have ever wished to know about churned cream. The book is wrapped in paper to resemble an actual stick of butter, complete with a tablespoon measurement guide across the back cover. And with a width of about half an inch, it will likely be the slimmest cookbook on your kitchen counter. But she manages to pack a lot of butter into 112 pages, with information on what butter to buy, how to store it and what varieties work best for different types of cooking and baking. There’s a recipe for how to make your own butter and a dozen compound butters to try. Any slice of bread is infinitely better with a pad of Stockwell’s smoky garlic butter, miso-orange butter or puttanesca butter. Butter boards and butter sculptures? They’re included. The book ends with 10 favorite recipes that depend on butter. If you’re looking for the ultimate, classic chocolate chip cookie recipe, it’s in this book. And yes, it involves brown butter.
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‘The Caribbean Cookbook’ by Rawlston Williams
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Rawlston Williams — a native of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines who operated the Food Sermon, a restaurant in Brooklyn, for nearly a decade — embraced the task of compiling an encyclopedic tome (published by Phaidon) that whirlwinds through the 28 countries in the Caribbean. Haiti’s black rice, Cuba’s ropa vieja, Montserrat’s saltfish fritters, Trinidad and Tobago’s doubles and Jamaica’s rum punch don’t begin to cover the book’s 431 pages. Williams acknowledges individual cultures and the many hardships and outside forces that shape cuisines with every headnote, but he also strives to find unity. “Caribbean cooking is about feeling your way through,” he writes. “Watching how the oil moves in the pan. Listening to how the sugar bubbles when you are making browning. Sensing the shift when the aromatics hit the heat. Every element matters.”
‘Cocina Puerto Rico: Recipes from my Abuela’s Kitchen to Yours’ by Mia Castro
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(Hachette Book Group)
Chef Mia Castro’s debut cookbook is a love letter to her Puerto Rican roots and her grandmother’s cooking. From how to make a cup of cafecito to the traditional arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas), Castro guides readers through Boricuan cuisine and the food that reminds her of home. Castro was born in San Juan and raised in a small town on the island, growing up around tropical fruits and fresh ingredients harvested by her grandparents. Castro left the island in 2006 to pursue her passion for cooking at the Culinary Institute of America, relying on her abuela Sara’s recipes to bring a sense of familiarity during her time on the mainland. Castro goes into detail on ingredients and staples of Boricuan gastronomy, from viandas (starchy fruits, root vegetables, tubers and squash) to kitchen must-haves, including a caldero (cauldron) that makes the best pega’o (stuck-on rice crust). Her recipes cover everything from how to make her grandmother’s salsas and porridges to cauldron-style rice dishes, seafood plates, guisos (stews) and Puerto Rican desserts.
‘The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook’ by Sana Javeri Kadri and Asha Loupy
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sana Javeri Kadri founded the Diaspora Spice Co. in 2017 with a single spice. Now, the company works with more than 150 farms across Sri Lanka and India to source 30 single-origin spices, with many featured in Kadri’s first cookbook, “The Diaspora Spice Co. Cookbook.” With help from recipe developer Asha Loupy and photographer Melati Citrawireja, Kadri works to highlight the rich flavors and history of South Asian spices and the farms behind them, while recognizing that too often, and for centuries, these people and ingredients have been overshadowed by the economic effects of colonialism. There’s a primer on pantry essentials and building your masala dabba (round container filled with small tins of spices), then you’re ready to cook. The book includes 85 regional recipes from many of Kadri’s spice farm partners. Each partner, whether it be a family or community, is recognized and celebrated through sharing their story and recipes. The Narne Family in Vinjanampadu, India, shares recipes that highlight their Guntur sannam chilies, such as seasonal sambar and aloo masala. There are recipes for Kerala-style coconut turmeric fish curry, Thalassery fish biryani built around the Chacko Family’s Baraka cardamom from Udumbanchola. It’s a love letter to the people who bring spice and vibrant color to so many of the foods we love to eat.
‘A Feather and a Fork’ by Crystal Wahpepah
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(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
At her Oakland restaurant Wahpepah’s Kitchen, chef and owner Crystal Wahpepah, a registered member of the Kickapoo Nation of Oklahoma, honors Indigenous wisdom and champions restoring connection to the environment with local, seasonal foods, many sourced from Indigenous farmers and land stewards. Wahpepah’s first cookbook, “A Feather and a Fork” (published by Penguin Random House), furthers this mission with 125 intertribal recipes that uplift ingredients foundational to Native American cuisine and by encouraging readers to seek out seasonal ingredients sourced from Native American producers, or even by foraging themselves. The recipes are approachable and carefully crafted to let the flavors of each ingredient shine. The Three Sisters chapter celebrates recipes that center beans, squash and corn, three items that represent the backbone of Native American foodways, and features the same veggie bowl that you’ll find on her restaurant menu, with helpful tips on how to adapt it to the seasons. Through vibrant storytelling and photos, Wahpepah asserts how traditions dating back hundreds of years can be woven into how we approach cooking today — and how necessary a shift is in order to preserve our planet. In addition to a glossary with Kickapoo terms, the cookbook also includes resources with Indigenous food growers and producers.
‘Hello, Home Cooking: Do-able Dishes for Every Day’ by Ham El-Waylly
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
For years, New York City-based chef Ham El-Waylly rarely cooked outside of work. When he did, it was usually elaborate dishes and extremely large portions — he once made “enough lentil soup for the entire building.” After the pandemic closed his restaurant, however, El-Waylly found himself revisiting his Bolivian mother’s recipes and embracing the art of home-cooked meals. Born to Egyptian-Bolivian parents and raised in Qatar and New Jersey, El-Waylly boasts that he has “half the world’s cuisines baked into his DNA.” His debut cookbook features modified versions of the comfort foods he grew up with, including cheesy Bolivian rice and a shishito-pistachio dip mimicking a traditional Levantine muhammara. From a “lazy hummus” and a quick date smoothie to slow-roasted brisket and a tahini-roasted swordfish that he swears will convert any fish-hater, the book contains a recipe for every home cook.
‘La Copine’ by Claire Wadsworth and Nikki Hill with Ben Mims
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Nikki Hill and Claire Wadsworth didn’t plan on drawing thousands of guests to the California desert each year, but with their all-day cafe La Copine — French for “the girlfriend” — they created one of Yucca Valley’s favorite destinations and what they call “a joyful queer oasis.” Now the Angelenos-turned-desert dwellers have penned a cookbook along with former L.A. Times cooking columnist Ben Mims, and they’re sharing the seasonal, critically adored restaurant’s recipes: their signature fried chicken; the beignets with coffee sugar; produce-loaded lavash; a range of aiolis, marmalades and hot sauces; whiskey-tinged brisket; and a salad so good Olivia Wilde immediately ordered and ate a second one. If you can’t make the trek to La Copine, now you can bring the desert home.
‘Lebanon’ by Anissa Helou
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
To know Lebanese cooking only through restaurant menus — the same hummus, baba ghanouj, tabbouleh, falafel, kebabs and shawarma standards repeated over and over — is to have only the narrowest glimpse into the soul of one of the world’s great cuisines. Beirut native Anissa Helou, a defining authority on Arabic foodways, spent two years researching through her tiny home country (its land area in square miles is nearly equal to Los Angeles County) to document, and preserve, a breadth of regional recipe variations she hadn’t previously realized existed. In a few gripping pages, her introduction to “Lebanon” (Ecco) manages to illuminate the country’s complex social structure, and how relentless colonialist incursions have shaped its modern plights. Californians will appreciate the compatible growing seasons: kibbeh balls of ground lamb, cooked in a citrusy tahini sauce made using several types of winter oranges, segue to herby springtime salads and summer’s garlicky green beans simmered with chopped fresh tomatoes.
‘The Lion Dance Cookbook’ by Chun Ying Chia and Shane Stanbridge
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The theme of “authentic, not traditional” is at the heart of Chun Ying Chia and Shane Stanbridge’s debut, self-published cookbook. The two started hosting an on-again, off-again weekly vegan pop-up in Oakland more than a decade ago, gaining critical acclaim with recognition from local media and a James Beard Foundation nomination. They brought together their combined Teochew and Italian family recipes to create a singular style of cooking. Chia and Stanbridge halted the Oakland pop-up and now reside in Singapore, but their recently released cookbook is a way for home cooks to attempt the flavors and dishes that made the pop-up a runaway success. The “LDC” staples alone are reason enough to buy the book. These are essential oils, sauces and condiments that you can use to spruce up anything that comes out of your kitchen. I could eat two scoops of the Fresno chile sambal on white rice and call it lunch. And that’s just the beginning. Wonderfully crunchy and addictive tiger skin potatoes! A take on cacio e pepe called “kojio e pepe” made with creamy soy milk shio koji sauce and a shiitake mushroom chili crisp! Decadent pandan butter nian gao! All of the recipes in this book, including the condiments and the desserts, are giving main course energy.
‘Madaq’ by Nargisse Benkabbou
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In “Madaq” (published by Knopf; the title is the Arabic word for “flavor”), chef Nargisse Benkabbou presents a kaleidoscope of angles by which to draw cooks into her Moroccan cooking. For pure pragmatism, the book opens with recipe lists divided into themes like “weekday dinners,” “ready in 60 minutes or less,” “tagine and soups: one-pot wonders” and “weekend projects.” Her repertoire includes traditional street foods like tayb o’hari — a salad of tuna, egg and chickpeas spiked with olives and cumin — that transport her to Fez, where her parents grew up. But she’s relaxed about interweaving her personal innovations, reimagining artichoke and pea tagine into a pasta dish finished with Parmesan, or bringing Moroccan overtones to kid-friendly chicken tenders, crusted with cornflakes and oven-baked, with a sweet chermoula dipping sauce. Exceptionally gorgeous photography from Jinane Ennasri and Issy Croker accentuate Benkabbou’s multifaceted approach.
‘Maxi's Kitchen: Easy Go-To Recipes to Make Again and Again’ by Maxine Sharf
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
In her debut cookbook, writer and food content creator Maxine Sharf meal plans based on days of the week. The chapters are organized by how ambitious you might feel on a particular day. For instance, the Monday chapter offers quick and easy recipes for dishes like Vietnamese caramel chicken thighs and honey-mustard salmon with pistachios and dill. Tuesday recipes require just one pan, pot or wok. As readers make their way through the book and the days of the week, the recipes shift from less ingredients and prep to more ambitious projects. In the Thursday chapter, there’s Sharf’s mother’s Benihana chicken fried rice and four-cheese mac and cheese. Chinese hand-pulled noodles are reserved for Saturday. Many of the recipes, like Sharf’s grandmother’s wontons, draw from her diverse heritage, with a Jewish-Eastern European father and a Korean-Chinese mother. Included are 75 new recipes plus a crop of her most viral signature dishes. Even if you’re not already familiar with Sharf’s social media accounts, you can appreciate her laid-back confidence and warmth from the very first pages of the book. Whatever she’s making, you can do it too.
‘Morning Baker’ by Roxana Jullapat with Ari Smolin
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pastry chef, baker and champion of whole grains Roxana Jullapat opened Friends & Family in East Hollywood nine years ago, a forerunner among a new wave of artisanal bakeries in Los Angeles. Her first book, “Mother Grains,” served as an introduction to baking with freshly milled ancient grains such as rye, barley, buckwheat, corn, oat, rice, sorghum and local wheat. Her follow-up cookbook, “Morning Baker,” centers the same whole grains with an emphasis on incorporating them into easy, everyday bakes and weekend projects, from muffins and scones to viennoiserie and naturally leavened and yeasted breads, along with French toast, pancakes, waffles, doughnuts and quiche. With the first book, “I didn’t anticipate that people were so ready and hungry for cooking and baking with grains,” she said recently. “They were ingredients they already had in their kitchen.” The follow-up book is also a snapshot of Friends & Family’s morning bake, the daily production of several dozen kinds of pastries that fill the pastry case to overflowing. There are recipes that are easy to jump into, and there is a chapter devoted to whole-grain croissants, made with spelt and whole wheat. A primer on her favorite flours and recommended millers is a vital resource.
‘My Jamaican Table’ by Andre Fowles
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(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The first cookbook from Andre Fowles, a three-time winner on the Bravo series “Chopped” and personal chef for Bruce Springsteen, is an ode to the vibrant flavors of his homeland Jamaica. Fowles fell in love with cooking thanks to his mother, who sold breakfast to make ends meet, and his grandmother Mama Cherry, who cared for Fowles and his siblings after their mother moved to England for work. With encouragement from Mama Cherry, Fowles pursued a career as a chef, working his way up through culinary training to cooking at some of the island’s most esteemed restaurants. “My Jamaican Table” translates this range of experiences into approachable recipes that illustrate Jamaica’s vast cultural influences, like old-school coconut milk, flaky beef patties and pepper pot. Other recipes reflect Fowles’ time in America while still championing Jamaican ingredients, like fluffy coconut-banana pancakes and sticky rum wings that I want to make for every tailgate party.
‘Obsessed with the Best’ by Ella Quittner
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Ella Quittner’s “Obsessed with the Best” is about our collective obsession with establishing the “best” anything and everything. She describes the book as “clickbait incarnate,” but it’s so much more. Her own obsession to find the best way to cook bacon, biscuits, pasta, etc. lead her on a reporting journey that took her to the Black Belt of Alabama and dueling ramen festivals in Tokyo. Mining all that research, she presents recipes she created by pitting methods, tools and ingredients against each other to determine maximum flavor with minimal technique. For instance, a section of the book titled “crispy-chewy bacon” includes a stated mission of “bacon with clearly perceptible stretches of chew and crispy edges” and the elements she tested (bacon thickness, cooking methods and coatings). From there, you are treated to a “mother” recipe for bacon, then subsequent recipes that expand on the mother. It enables the reader to go down a potential rabbit hole for everything from bacon to shrimp and meatballs. It’s an incredibly informative way to structure a cookbook, and a joy to read. As a bonus, Quittner includes reported essays from her travels, like the one chronicling her all-you-can-eat experiences on the Las Vegas Strip. Immensely entertaining.
‘Que Vive el Pulque!’ by Juan Escalona
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
This beautifully bound volume is a totally bilingual introduction to pulque, the singular and polemical agave ferment of ancient Mexico. Its viscous texture, funky flavor and ephemeral natural characteristics make the drink difficult to love for many. Pulque is literally alive, brimming with beneficial microorganisms and a good amount of ethanol to create a unique buzz. For these reasons precisely, pulque has also become an esoteric obsession for many, rooted in the growing impulse of pre-Hispanic reclamation currently taking place in Mexico. Upstart culinary publisher Novo turns to Juan Escalona, a former cook at Pujol and Máximo Bistrot, and biologist César Iván Ojeda as co-author to produce a manual-like volume on how to approach pulque, from its chemical and physical composition to sprinkled-in recipes. These include easy uses like pico de gallo in pulque (simply add a spoonful to a glass, as they do in the town of Zumpango), and barbacoa with pulque. In pre-colonial Mesoamerica and for centuries since, cooks have employed this ingredient, usually in stews and braises. If you’re a fan of foggy rice wines or other Mexican ferments like tepache or tejuino, the draw of pulque is undeniable — when you can find it in drinkable quality. That’s the core issue for us north of the border. Canned and bottled pulques, imported through conventional means, fail in capturing the original’s ephemeral notes and textures. Still, as an object and compendium, “Que Viva el Pulque!” is worth adding to any cooking library that is indigenous-minded.
‘Simply Donabe’ by Naoko Takei Moore
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Among all of the avid cooks I know in Los Angeles, almost everyone owns a donabe — the Japanese clay pot appreciated for its wabi-sabi looks and its ability to retain and evenly distribute heat. And most of them probably were introduced to this cult earthenware by Naoko Takei Moore. The Tokyo native previously co-wrote “Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Cooking,” published in 2015, and opened a store in West Hollywood in 2017. “Simply Donabe” continues the chronicles of her “happy donabe life.” “Donabe is so much more than just a cooking vessel,” she writes, “it’s a way of life that extends beyond recipes.” You don’t need a donabe to cook these recipes (a heavy pot will do), but because of the gradual building of temperature and the slow cooling process of the traditional donabe, made with Iga clay, it helps develop layers of flavor. These are one-pot recipes, but some call for specialty ingredients, which can be found at most Asian grocery stores. Among Takei Moore’s creative, vegetable-forward rice dishes, soups and stews are: miso butter hotpot with salmon, scallops and chrysanthemum leaves; roasted purple sweet potato in sesame almond butter sauce; and sardine and pickled plum rice.
‘Soomaaliya’ by Ifrah Ahmed
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(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Ifrah Ahmed was in her second year of law school last decade when she decided to refocus on a stronger calling: cooking the foods of her native Somalia as an act of service and preservation. After a 2018 trip with her mother to their home country, the first since the family fled civil war in 1996, Ahmed returned to Brooklyn and established a roving culinary pop-up called Milk & Myrhh. She prepared intricately spiced, vegetable-rich sautés called suqaar and, in Los Angeles, incredible riffs on breakfast burritos I was lucky enough to savor, bundled in canjeero (plush-textured fermented pancakes). Ahmed flows all her selves into “Soomaaliya” (Hardie Grant): chef, historian, writer, activist, proud Somali. It is a masterful compilation of enticing recipes from a country poised at the Horn of Africa, long informed by global trade routes, and equally a collection of essays on chefs, farmers and artisans preserving traditions in the country and among the diaspora.
‘Spanglish’ by Monti Carlo
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Monti Carlo’s trajectory, not just as a cook but as a human, is made of the stuff we all need to hear from time to time whenever obstacles feel insurmountable. Her life turned upside down when she discovered her husband’s Ashley Madison account, plunging her into divorce and an escape to her heritage homeland of Puerto Rico. There, her tías cooked for her to soothe her pain, and in time, the newly single mother found herself surviving on a $10-a-day food budget and teaching herself how to cook. She submersed herself in her craft, eventually staring down chef Gordon Ramsay on MasterChef and launching a stellar career in cooking media. Carlo’s book Spanglish, a celebration of both Puerto Rico and her mainland childhood, begins fittingly with recipes for adobo and sazón, the ubiquitous seasoning that just screams “Puerto Rico” in any form. The boricua standards are all here, but readers might be most charmed by her bicultural American creations like morcilla Sloppy Joes, sorullo waffles, and stuffed BLT arepas de coco.
‘The Taste of Country Cooking’ by Edna Lewis
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
How important is the second of Edna Lewis’ four cookbooks? In honor of this 50th anniversary edition, its publisher, Knopf, ought to provide hotels across America with reading copies stashed in nightstands, like Bibles. “I grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a community of farming people,” Lewis begins. “The name was adopted because the first residents had all been freed from chattel slavery and they wanted to be known as a town of Free People.” Judith Jones, Julia Child’s legendary editor, shepherded Lewis toward a memoir-cookbook hybrid, an anomaly in 1976, opening windows into a vanished agrarian life cycle. Thankfully, her recipes remain. They organized chapters by seasonal menus: a breakfast of pan-fried shad (a now-disappearing indigenous fish species) with bacon, eggs and wild strawberry preserves; a harvest dinner of pork shoulder, chicken with cream gravy, corn pudding and blackberry cobbler. Lewis, who died in 2006, remains one of the clearest, strongest voices to codify Black contributions to American food. A new foreword by editor and author Toni Tipton-Martin, herself a national treasure, puts Lewis’ feat into fresh, vital perspective.
‘Veracruz All Natural’ by Reyna and Maritza Vazquez
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Reyna and Maritza Vazquez, a powerhouse of Mexican and Mexican American tacos in Texas, were teenagers in 1999 when they crossed the Río Grande and headed toward a new life in Austin. In the introduction to their new cookbook, the sisters describe harrowing scenes as they made their way through the dangerous migration networks on both sides of the border, a world away from their tranquil but financially underprivileged life in Veracruz. Their ancestral home is the lush and complex port state of Mexico’s Gulf coast, a culinary tropical paradise of distinct dishes, many deeply influenced by Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. The cookbook is a beautifully rendered compendium of staples from Veracruz including salsas, rice preparations, soups and, of course, seafood. Pescado a la veracruzana is probably the region’s chief export, a hearty dish of snapper fillets cooked quickly with olives, capers and white wine. The Vazquez sisters, though, made their name in the competitive taco terrain of Austin off the brilliance of their version of the local icon, the migas taco. I tried it at a Veracruz All Natural truck on a visit to Austin a few years ago and it made me go, “Oh, I get it now.” Make their migas taco at home by definitely frying your own tortilla chips, the sisters write. All of their Veracruz-style breakfast and egg dishes are worth a dive, including the “drowned eggs” in coconut sauce, a distinct jarocho delicacy.
‘Vitamina T’ by Jorge Gaviria and Fermín Nuñez
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The more time I spend with “Vitamina T,” the more I want to cook from this compendium of tostadas, tortas, tacos and tamales, written by Masienda founder Jorge Gaviria and Suerte chef and co-owner Fermín Nuñez. I started with the brisket suadero recipe because suadero’s a favorite taco choice. Rich and fatty, suadero is a thin cut of meat similar to brisket but smoother in texture, prepared confit in tallow or lard in a specialized pan called a choricera. I’m happy to take this version of suadero (made with brisket) straight out of my oven — tender, juicy and beefy — and serve it with any of the salsas in the Toques Finales chapter. To quote: “Un taco sin salsa no es taco.” Ultimately I’m keeping this book in my library because of useful, expert and straightforward recipes for everyday food I crave: flour tortillas, smoky refried beans, esquites, escabeche, carnitas. Among the many creative recipes too, I see sweet potato costra tacos and butternut squash in chile colorado tortas in my future. A plus: The photos by Jeni Afuso and Dylan Ho are as bright and vibrant as the book’s sazón.
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