Demolition Desserts

San Francisco has proved itself a hotbed of interesting pastry (link to SF Pastry LFE), the path to which was laid in part by Elizabeth Falkner, a spiky haired rebel of a pastry chef with a reputation for spiking her sweet with savory, and vice versa, and for cheeky dish titles (like “Waking Up in a City that Never Sleeps,” and “Battleship Potemkin,” named for the Sergei Eisenstein film which certainly made more of an impression on Falkner than on the thousands of Film Before WWII students that sit through it each year). Her desserts at Citizen Cake are famous in San Francisco, and (slowly but surely) beyond, and Demolition Desserts stays true to her character and her style, with illustrations, gothic lettering, and occasional playful layout. The prose is written for home cooks, and there are plenty of baking basics, but the stars of the book are Falkner’s playful and clever composed desserts, like “Tiramisushi” and “Lovelova,” and the beautiful full-page photographs of each dish.

River Cottage Meat Cookbook

This encyclopedia of meat was first published in 2004, and the re-release is a perfect excuse for us to point a laudatory finger at what is truly a carnivore’s bible. The photos are beautiful, and the comprehensive coverage of buying, breaking down, and cooking every four-legged and two-legged creature (and their offal) worth knowing is intelligent and incredible. The book teaches, muses, and inspires…inspires you to pick up a good piece of meat and do it justice. And “doing meat justice” isn’t just on the plate – Fearnley-Whittingstall makes a plea for the ethical serving and purchasing of meat, imploring cooks to be informed and serve the best possible product. For “once you are fully confident of your source, and the quality of your raw materials, the way you cook meat will enter a new phase.”