A Holiday Library for Cooks

Our selection of the most interesting new cookbooks

“Gardener’s Community Handbook” by Smith & Hawken (Workman, $19.95).

Lots of people submitted recipes for this cookbook. Some are identified as restaurant people; some as caterers, cooking teachers or cookbook authors. Others must just be avid gardeners sharing ways in which they use the garden’s bounty.

Victoria Wise of Oakland compiled and wrote the book, which includes gardening tips as well as recipes. The chatty commentaries that accompany each dish make for good reading. Better yet, the recipes, collected from throughout the United States, are unpretentious and workable. You’ll be glad to have them on hand when next year’s zucchini and tomatoes start to overpower the kitchen.

“An Apple Harvest: Recipes and Orchard Lore” by Frank Browning and Sharon Silva (Ten Speed Press; $17.95).

An apple a day is a wiser indulgence than the heavily caloric sweets that prevail at this time of year. Not that apple consumption isn’t a great pleasure too.

Browning is co-owner of an apple orchard in Kentucky. Silva grew up in Sonoma farm country. Along with a photo gallery of apple varieties, they provide tips on choosing, using and storing apples, accompanied by many attractive recipes. Some just might be candidates for Christmas dinner. For the main course, consider chicken breasts with cider, spices and caramelized apples; turkey breast tagine with apples, or pork loin stuffed with fresh and dried apples. Then wind up with Bourbon apple pie, spiced tarte tatin with honey and ginger or an apple, pecan and cranberry crisp.

“Tea Basics” by Wendy Rasmussen and Ric Rhinehart (John Wiley, $16.95).

Getting to know tea means learning such terms as “flush” (the picking cycles for Darjeeling teas), “tippy” (the presence of the whole leaf bud) and “the agony of the leaves,” which sounds painful but is simply the reaction of tea leaves as they encounter water.

This handy softcover book, by executives of the Los Alamitos-based American Premium Tea Institute, is an excellent guide to such lore. It is informal and fun to read rather than pedantic, although a great deal of technical information is covered.

Topics include tea history, tea-producing regions, how tea is processed and how to taste tea like a professional. Of course, one learns how to brew tea properly, and even how to make a bright glass of iced tea, as well as how to behave when drinking tea.

A chapter on tea and health takes up the question of which beverage has more caffeine, coffee or tea. There’s no simple answer, because so many factors are involved, among them the temperature of the water used and the length of time the tea is steeped. The issue becomes moot if one follows the authors’ method for partially decaffeinating tea. It’s an easy technique for those occasions when one wants to enjoy a late-night cup of tea without remaining awake until dawn.