10 (mostly) chef-driven cookbooks for your holiday gift-buying needs

Restaurant folks produce some of the most compelling cookbooks, and this year's bumper crop is no exception. Let the gift-giving begin, but don't overlook your own kitchen library.

Atlanta chef Todd Richards combines the traditional with the unexpected in "Soul: A Chef's Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes" (Oxmoor House, 370 pages, $35), introducing readers to soul-food standards — collards, cornbread, catfish — before using them as springboards for contemporary dishes.

Richards is a natural writer ("Once you familiarize yourself with the nuances of the wide variety of onions, you realize that their unique flavors and textures tell you how to use them" is a tiny example) and his emphasis on produce — corn, tomatoes, melons, berries and stone fruits — makes this celebration of Southern cooking an ideal summer-in-Minnesota resource.

There can never be too many Italian cookbooks, right? Another to add to the pile is "Bestia" (Ten Speed Press, 328 pages, $35), which showcases the rustic Italian fare at this wildly popular Los Angeles restaurant. Co-author Ori Menashe starts the book with a how-to guide to creating some of his tried-and-true, flavor-boosting add-ons, the ones that so frequently separate restaurant cooking from home cooking (parsley breadcrumbs, ricotta, fish sauce vinaigrette) before moving on to a greatest-hits list of dishes. Co-author Genevieve Gergis, the restaurant's pastry chef, shares ideas that cry out to be baked: chocolate budino tarts, roasted banana ice cream, maple-ricotta fritters. So good, right?

The cooking-for-one cookbook is often just a few sad-sack steps away from a "Cathy" anthology fortified with recipes. Enter New York City chef Anita Lo. In "Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One" (Alfred A. Knopf, 240 pages, $28.95), the chef/owner of the former Annisa combines humor ("I put the 'Lo' in 'solo,' " she writes), a well-stamped passport and an instinctual distaste for waste into a global roster of uncomplicated, chef-driven dishes that are a far cry from microwaved frozen dinners.

It's a small book packed with big ideas, from linguine with mussels and saffron to make-ahead pork-and-garlic dumplings. "Sure, making your own dumplings is time-consuming," she writes. "You'll be rewarded with a well-balanced, home-cooked meal in a plump little package that can be ready in minutes for upcoming nights when you don't feel like cooking." That philosophy works for non-singles, too.

What's fascinating about "Levant: New Middle Eastern Cooking from Tanoreen" (Kyle Books, 224 pages, $34.95) is how a chef celebrates the flavors of her homeland (in this case, Palestine) while allowing the culinary melting pot that is Brooklyn to advance her notions regarding time-honored Middle Eastern fare.

A favorite new title isn't a cookbook, but it's immersed in a near-universally popular food subject: pizza. When in need of an insider's guide to Chicago, forget about Yelp, TripAdvisor — or, for those going old school, Fodor's or Lonely Planet — and use "Pizza City, USA" (Northwestern University Press, 166 pages, $24.95).

Author Steve Dolinsky — his pizza baptism was at Shakey's in St. Cloud, Minn. — dined through a staggering number of Windy City destinations to compile this opinionated survey of what he convincingly argues is the nation's most compelling pizzeria landscape. Deep-dish? Sure, but the research dives headlong into the deep end, revealing a hunger-inducing kaleidoscope of tavern-style, Neapolitan, stuffed, Sicilian, thin, artisan and Roman formats.

On the subject of pizza, noted Philadelphia chef Marc Vetri has teamed up with writer David Joachim to create "Mastering Pizza" (Ten Speed Press, 262 pages, $29.99), a serious — witness a chapter devoted entirely to flours — and highly useful exploration of the doughs that go into creating pizza, calzone and focaccia. The how-to photos (by Ed Anderson) are helpful visual guides, and Vetri fashions detailed recipes that leave nothing to the imagination, using equipment available to home cooks, including ovens, grills and a stovetop formula for a Neapolitan pizza that closely mimics its wood-burning oven counterpart.

Philadelphians are also behind a second must-have book. In "Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 386 pages, $35), Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook — they're the authors of "Zahav," which won the James Beard Foundation's 2016 Book of the Year honors and chronicles the food at their Philly restaurant of the same name — treat readers to a vivid culinary Israeli travelogue. Colorful and highly readable, it introduces the country's United Nations-like range of flavors — and the people behind them — through well-observed storytelling and concise, uncomplicated recipes.

An Israeli chef, this time by way of London, is continuing his track record of turning out gotta-have cookbooks. In "Ottolenghi Simple" (Ten Speed Press, 308 pages, $35), Yotam Ottolenghi (he of "Plenty," "Sweet," "Jerusalem" and more) channels his considerable talents to suit the needs of time-pressed home cooks, creating a volume of easy-to-prepare recipes that will brighten any weeknight dinner or weekend dinner party. Most follow 10-or-fewer-ingredients and 30-minutes-or-less rules, and are imbued with Ottolenghi's modern Middle Eastern sensibilities. Expect to encounter lamb and feta meatballs, roasted eggplant with curried yogurt, scrambled harissa tofu, spinach- and Gorgonzola-stuffed baked potatoes and other appealing ideas. Another bonus: Jonathan Lovekin's clear-eyed photography.

Back to Israel, by way of New Orleans. In "Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel" (Alfred A. Knopf, 414 pages, $35), Alon Shaya — with writer Tina Antolini — beautifully recounts the fascinating, peripatetic journey that led to his development as a chef. This cookbook-meets-memoir moves from his native Israel to Philadelphia, Emilia-Romagna, Tel Aviv and then New Orleans, a polyglot experience that makes for both riveting reading and inspiring cooking, with dozens of highly appealing recipes — date pancakes with rose tahini, curried sweet potato-leek pie, kale-andouille jambalaya — that illuminate Shaya's singular career path. Buy two copies: one for the kitchen, the other for your nightstand.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757