Books for Cooks: The Best of 2001

Fans go back and forth about what makes a great cookbook. Is it the recipes? Is it the research or the writing? Is it the pretty pictures? In the end, the answer is incredibly simple: A great cookbook is one that makes you want to cook.

This year’s Los Angeles Times Top 10 Cookbooks are a varied lot--there are books on baking and one on vegetables. There are books exploring the cuisines of locations as diverse as Southeast Asia, Mexico, France and the American Midwest.

In the end, what they have in common--and probably the only thing they share--is a passion for cooking that leaps off the page. And in the end, that’s all that counts. These are books that not only send you into the kitchen, but beg to be taken along.