Peak Season Picks: Best Cookbooks for Summer


Make the most of summer with our recommended cookbooks featuring hundreds of delicious recipes for all of the favored occasions of the season: park picnics, beach days, backyard barbecues, potlucks, cookouts, and 4th of July celebrations!

 

Taste the PNW

Shellfish
By Cynthia Nims

Enjoying the bounty of the sea has never been easier with these 50 delicious and approachable recipes. From shrimp and crab, mussels, and clams to scallops and oysters, this cookbook is perfect for busy home cooks wanting to make simple, nourishing meals. Recipes include Crab and Endive Gratin, Fried Shrimp, Mini Pizzas with Clams, and many more.

 

 

 

A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus
By Renee Erickson and Jess Thomson

This iconic cookbook is James Beard Award-winning chef Renee Erickson’s love letter to the fresh, seasonal fare that defines the Pacific Northwest. Filled with seasonal, personal menus—a Fourth of July Crab Feast, Wild Foods Dinner, and a fall pickling party—it’s the ideal cookbook for anyone with an appreciation for casual, beautiful, and delicious food.

 

 

 

Pike Place Market Recipes
By Jess Thomson

The Pike Place Market not only sits at the center of downtown Seattle, but at the center of Seattle’s food scene. This collection of recipes celebrates the best of the Market—Le Pichet’s Salade Verte, Etta’s Mini Dungeness Crab Cakes by Tom Douglas, and the Pink Door’s Linguine alla Vongole—and its seven acres of wonderful ingredients and inspiration for home cooks. It’s the ultimate Seattle cookbook.

 

 

 

Good Fish
By Becky Selengut

Food that’s good for you and the planet meet in this guide to sustainable Pacific coast seafood. Featuring 100 recipes with wine pairings from Seattle sommelier April Pogue, you’ll learn to shop for and prepare clams, mussels, oysters, Dungeness crab, shrimp, scallops, wild salmon, Pacific halibut, black cod, lingcod, rainbow trout, albacore tuna, Pacific cod, Arctic char, mahimahi, wahoo, sardines, herring, squid, and caviar.

 

 

 

Southern Summer Flavors

Super Soul Food with Cousin Rosie
By Rosie Mayes

I Heart Recipes’ Rosie Mayes is at her best with this cookbook full of satisfying, soulful spins on classic southern and creole dishes. Over one hundred amped-up, super soul food recipes are guaranteed to bring you joy all summer long. With fan favorites like Southern Baked Macaroni and Cheese Casserole, Seafood Boil with Creole Garlic Sauce, and Red Velvet Biscuits, your dish will be the hit of the backyard barbecue, potluck, cookout, or 4th of July celebration.

 

 

 

Big Food Big Love
By Heather L. Earnhardt

Enjoy a little Southern comfort with 130 recipes served up alongside Heather Earnhardt’s stories of her childhood in the South. It’s “a celebration of Southern hospitality, local ingredients and good cooking” (Chef Emeril Lagasse) and sure to satisfy. Good and unfussy food—like biscuits, homemade jam, friend chicken, bread-and-butter pickles, and country ham—that’s meant to be eaten with family and friends.

 

 

 

Peak Season Eats

Simple Fruit
By Laurie Pfalzer

Whip up over fifty fruit-forward recipes that are “pear-fect” for any occasion. This cookbook includes preparation tips, vibrant photos, equipment recommendations, and seasonal desserts for you to enjoy fruit at its best, whether you’re making the Vanilla-Roasted Rhubarb, Strawberry Pavlova, Cherry Hand Pies, or the Grilled Apricots with Brown Butter and Maple-Tamari Glaze.

 

 

 

Plant Power Bowls
By Sapana Chandra

Build your perfect bowl with healthy, seasonal ingredients. These seventy nourishing, plant-based recipes from Real + Vibrant’s Sapana Chandra will energize and fuel your body naturally. Summer favorites include Sumac Falafel Bowl with Roasted Red Pepper Hummus Sauce, Blueberry Mango Chia Breakfast Bowl, plus an entire chapter on ice cream!

 

 

 

A Hearty Book of Veggie Sandwiches
By Jackie Freeman

Enjoy a picnic in the park with plant-based sandwiches that are fresh, tasty, filling, and easy to prepare. This book offers delicious recipes with easy-to-find ingredients that won’t break the bank. Inside you’ll find open-faced crostini, bruschetta, tartine, along with burritos, paninis, and wraps. Plus, delicious sides like cashew ricotta, quick pickles, and homemade tapenade. Everything you need to fill your basket.