A season of glorious, gorgeous substance

After all the flashy offerings from TV chefs and pseudo-chefs and naked chefs that have taken up valuable space on bookstore shelves for the past couple of years, this holiday season looks blessedly different. This month, the cookbook aisle is positively crowded with books that will be coveted both by serious cooks and devoted diners -- those who might not cook, but love to get a glimpse inside an interesting kitchen.

Three of the most celebrated chefs in America -- David Bouley, Christian Delouvrier and Marcus Samuelsson -- have released their very first books. Respected veterans including Paula Wolfert and Diana Kennedy have produced long-awaited tomes. Even the most fringe element in the food world -- the raw movement -- gets its big moment, with a serious, glorious volume co-written by Charlie Trotter.

The range is broad, but deep too: Each of these books documents its subject with passion, intelligence and beauty.

According to those in the publishing business, part of the reason for the high caliber this year may be that recent celebrity-driven cookbooks haven’t sold well enough to cover the celebrity-sized advances their authors received. They also say several energetic publishers new to the cookbook game have raised the bar in general. Wiley, which previously had been known for professional cooking textbooks, is now the biggest cookbook publisher. This season Wiley has brought out Christian Delouvrier’s “Mastering Simplicity” and Wolfert’s “The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen,” among others.

But part of it is just timing: A number of high-profile books that have been years in the making (“East of Paris,” by Bouley, Mario Lohninger and Melissa Clark; “Aquavit,” by Samuelsson) all happened to be ready for publication this year.

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East of Paris

Ecco, $34.95

A paean to Austrian cuisine, this may be the most exciting chef book to come along in several years. (For better or worse, Austrian, it seems, is in.) David Bouley is one of New York City’s most influential chefs; this book draws from his Tribeca restaurant, Danube, where the Salzburg-born Lohninger is executive chef. Bouley himself became passionately interested in Austrian cuisine in the late ‘90s, traveling widely in Austria before opening Danube in 1999.

The book feels like the restaurant itself: baroquely elegant, very Gustav Klimt, decidedly un-Schwarzenegger. Danube’s signature dishes are included -- an elderflower Champagne cocktail; oxtail consomme with bone marrow dumplings; squab with foie gras mousse, parsley and schupfnudeln -- along with traditional dishes like liptauer, a spread made with quark cheese.

Even if you don’t want to make John Dory in a parsley cloud with caviar sauce, it’s fascinating to see how Bouley does it, piping a leek-scallop-parsley mousse onto both sides of filets laid on parchment, covering them with more parchment then steaming. Sliced to reveal the white center and thick bright green outline of mousse, it’s gorgeous. Read a recipe and by osmosis you’ll get a mini-lesson from a master.

Many of the recipes involve several labor-intensive components. Wine-braised beef cheeks, for instance, include chanterelle goulash, carrots in carrot sauce, glazed baby turnips and scallions with chive paste. The beef cheeks we made were meltingly tender, and the vanilla-bean-flecked turnips were amazing. And simple: Boil them in their skins in water salted until it tastes like seawater (a good thing to do in general), then slip off their skins. Scrape a vanilla bean into warm water, add a touch of sugar, whisk in lots of cubes of butter (two sticks!) and add the turnips. Altogether, the dish is stunning.

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The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen

Wiley, $34.95

Don’t be scared off by the title of Paula Wolfert’s new cookbook. This is slow in the sense that things cook for a long time, not in the Bouley sense of needing hours in the kitchen to replicate the work of a dozen prep cooks.

Wolfert is one of the most respected food writers in the country; her beat is all the cuisines of the Mediterranean, from Morocco to Sicily to Greece. A new book by Wolfert is always cause for celebration in the food world, and this one is no exception. It seems as if everyone I know is cooking from it.

In these pages, Wolfert celebrates simmering, braising, stewing, slow-roasting -- just flipping through makes a cook feel like hanging out in the kitchen. “I find something very earthy and ‘connecting’ when I execute slow-cooked dishes,” she writes in the introduction. The recipes all depend on “the slow transformation of taste over time.” Spanish manchego cheese marinates in olive oil with herbs and olives, gathering amazing flavor and beguiling texture over the course of a week. Garlic-crowned leg of lamb roasts in a 200-degree oven for six or seven hours.

Even a recipe for duck breast that cooks just a bit more than 15 minutes is actually slow compared to the quick sear magret usually gets. Wolfert’s pan-grilled version with chanterelles, dried apricots and almonds turns out miraculously perfect by cooking it fat-side down, on low heat, without turning, for 15 minutes. Tunisian Maghrebi veal meatballs, enlivened with Le Tabil spice mix (coriander, caraway, cayenne, fennel seed, cumin, pepper, turmeric and cloves), are simmered with chopped spinach and chickpeas. They’re fabulously flavorful. Wolfert is so sure-handed that one feels certain everything in the book will be just as delicious.

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Ready When You Are

Potter, $32.50

Martha Rose Shulman’s latest offering also uses time to the cook’s advantage. Subtitled “A Compendium of Comforting One-Dish Meals,” the book is designed for the busy cook. Shulman is known for light Mediterranean cooking, but these dishes feel homey and rich and rustic. And they’re not only from the Mediterranean, they’re from around the world.

Instead of dreary “quick ‘n’ easy” dishes, Shulman breaks her recipes down handily into do-ahead steps. Soak cannellini beans overnight for white bean and chard ragout. In the morning, chop up onions and garlic, toss them in and let them cook while you’re getting ready for work. When you get home, stir in some chopped tomatoes and, a few minutes before serving, add the chard. The result is wonderful, and it doesn’t feel like you spent much time.

“Immodestly, I will tell you this is the best moussaka I’ve ever eaten,” Shulman writes of her Balkan-style rendition. I felt the same way. The eggplant gets sliced fairly thin and roasted before it’s layered with cinnamon-spiced meat-tomato filling. Rather than a heavy bechamel, this one’s topped with an ethereal mixture of yogurt and eggs.

Cioppino is also terrific (leave it to a California author to include it -- Shulman lives here in L.A.), especially now, at the height of Dungeness crab season.

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Bistro Cooking at Home

Broadway Books, $35

Gordon Hamersley’s book isn’t expensively photographed, but it is filled with classic bistro fare -- dozens of dishes that beg to be added to one’s repertoire. Gratin of potatoes and caramelized onions. Trout with lemon, brown butter and parsley. Pot-roasted pork with prunes, Armagnac and walnuts. It also offers cunning bistro tricks like spreading a quick chicken liver pate on croutons that instantly dress up a simple salad.

Hamersley, who trained with Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison, spent a year in Nice, and then opened the much-lauded Hamersley’s Bistro in Boston in 1987, knows how to get maximum flavor with minimum hassle. For coq au vin, chicken legs are browned on the stove, mushrooms are tossed in raw and the whole thing simmers in red wine in the oven with excellent results. Skirt steak, flavorful and often overlooked, is quickly pan-seared, thinly sliced and topped with a compound butter enriched with Roquefort and sharpened with shallots. It takes about 10 minutes start-to-finish, and tastes like something that came out of a very good bistro. Finally, there are two gorgeous books that are great for armchair gourmands.

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Aquavit

Houghton Mifflin, $45

Wth its beautiful ice-blue cover, Marcus Samuelsson’s book induces delicious dreams of Swedish winter. The introduction is a great read, as Ethiopia-born Samuelsson tells of being adopted by Swedish parents when he was 3 and growing up on the southwestern coast of Sweden. He learned much from his grandmother in Skane, which he describes as Sweden’s Provence; there they foraged for mushrooms and berries. Summers were spent in a fishing village, catching everything they cooked and ate. Like Bouley’s book, Samuelsson’s is a mix of elaborate, innovative, chef recipes and homey, traditional dishes.

Unfortunately, with the recipes I tried, the results didn’t justify the considerable work involved. And some were just plain weird (arugula salad with walnut pesto, very sweet pickled asparagus, goat cheese, balsamic vinegar and prosciutto).

However, the book is gorgeous enough that just flipping through will make you feel as if you’ve taken a gastronomic trip to Sweden.

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Raw

Ten Speed Press, $35

Written by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein, this is a must-get for any raw-foodist who happens to be on your list. Spectacularly photographed by Tim Turner, it’s filled with pictures of food that certainly looks great, even to a skeptic.

Most of the recipes depend on at least one difficult-to-find ingredient (Thai basil, yuzu juice, pullas, chilhuacles, longans), or equipment you probably don’t have unless you’re a professional chef or raw-foodist (dehydrator). Or they involve so many labor-intensive steps that most people simply wouldn’t attempt them. But for food as art, “Raw” is a most striking tome.