5 of the best L.A. cookbooks for spring

Recently I’ve been exploring Los Angeles through its cookbooks. Spring always means a new crop of books, and several L.A. chefs and authors have released (or are about to release) new titles. From “The SalviSoul Cookbook” to “Rhett & Link Present: The Mythical Cookbook,” the city they reflect through food and the way we cook and eat is as moving and wondrous and weird and delicious as you’d expect.

You can dive into some of the L.A. Times Food section’s latest favorite titles in our ode to the joy of cookbooks with many of the authors set to appear at the paper’s Festival of Books April 20 and 21.

We keep adding to our respective cookbook collections (I’m sure I have hundreds) at least partly because each one sheds a different light on how to cook, and I can’t help but think that cooking better must also mean living better. Even if it’s just by adding one recipe to your back pocket of what-to-cook.

Off the top of my head, a few of my go-to recipes are chicken ginger rice from Naoko Takei Moore’s “Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking”; yogurt panna cotta from “Bäco: Vivid Recipes From the Heart of Los Angeles” (full disclosure, I co-wrote that book); and the Sicilian-esque currant and pine nut relish from Nancy Silverton’s “The Mozza Cookbook: Recipes From Los Angeles’ Favorite Italian Restaurant and Pizzeria.” All of these also happen to be L.A. cookbooks.

For this spring, here are five new Los Angeles cookbooks to put on your radar. Below you’ll also find some recipes — for your back pocket.

Health Nut: A Feel-Good Cookbook by Jess Damuck (Abrams)

Jess Damuck is an ace L.A.-based cookbook writer and recipe developer who formerly worked as an editor for Martha Stewart Living magazine. Prior to that she cooked plenty of lunches as an intern for Stewart. “Everything needed to feel ‘light, fresh and truly delicious,’ which generally translated into lots of greens, nuts for texture, proteins and healthy fats like avocado and wild salmon,” writes Damuck. That experience sparked in her cooking “a new version of what clean eating could look like.” So, “Health Nut” (her follow-up to “Salad Freak”) includes recipes for granolas, grains, eggs for breakfast, a pasta dish or soup served with salad for a heartier meal, and veg-heavy main dishes for a “sun-drenched city where everyone seems to glow a bit brighter.”

The Cook Book of All Time: Recipes, Stories and Cooking Advice From a Neighborhood Restaurant by Ashley Bernee Wells and Tyler Jeremy Wells (Harvest)

All Time is the Los Feliz restaurant on Hillhurst with a laid-back patio; great coffee and pastries; a witty wine list from Ashley Bernee Wells; and the “California backyard” cooking of her husband, Tyler J. Wells. Together the Wellses wrote a transportive but also down-to-earth cookbook that puts us at the heart of the restaurant and in the spirit of what it means to make and serve food. “Cooking and eating and feeding and serving are really just loving,” Ashley writes. “That’s yours to roast, to shape, to stir, to bake, to discover.” What you’ll find in “The Cook Book of All Time” are approachable, share-with-friends dishes: steaks with piles of pickled peppers, celery and greens; whole roasted fish; corn salad; cobbler with whipped crème fraîche. There’s plenty of heart behind the recipes, while Tyler’s motto is: “We’re just cooking!”

The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them by Karla Tatiana Vasquez (Ten Speed Press)

This week, Food reporter Cindy Carcamo dives into why the first Salvadoran cookbook to be released from a major publisher took so long. Karla Tatiana Vasquez’s “The SalviSoul Cookbook” is the first-ever Salvadoran cookbook to appear on a Big Five imprint. It was a nearly decade-long journey, but one that also stretches back to her childhood, listening to stories at the dinner table that fueled a desire to get to know herself and her country of origin. “El Salvador is a small little corner in the world, but it has been the biggest question of my life,” Vasquez said. So she gathered recipes and stories from women “who survived, who loved, who laughed and who made fortifying soul food.”

Rhett & Link Present: The Mythical Cookbook: 10 Simple Rules for Cooking Deliciously, Eating Happily and Living Mythically by Josh Scherer and Noah Galuten (Harvest)

Wild, just wild. Food’s Stephanie Breijo writes about the first cookbook from the Rhett & Link team, of “Mythical Good Morning “ and “Mythical Kitchen” fame, with Josh Scherer at the helm. Scherer pulls off Milk Chocolate-Dipped Bacon Ice Cream Sandwiches, pumpkin spice pig’s foot, and peanut butter and jelly fried chicken sandwiches. But at the same time, he’s demystifying a lot of cooking techniques (how to prevent a cheese sauce from breaking, say, or the benefits of resting breaded chicken before it’s fried). “Sometimes you want to wrap a pill in Jell-O, so to speak.” he said.

Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes by Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson (Clarkson Potter)

I immediately fell in love with the Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner Soup from “Kismet.” It was eye-opening because though I love miso soup and soupy rice porridge for breakfast (and all kinds of soup in general), I hadn’t really ever thought about vegetable soup for breakfast. This one has an egg stirred in (think egg-drop meets minestrone meets avgolemono). Now it’s all I want (for breakfast — and lunch and dinner, obviously). As I write in my feature on the cookbook for Sunday’s Weekend section, authors Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson, the chefs of Kismet in Los Feliz, have an affinity for vegetables, and they’ve managed to make them shine in the most efficient ways (the soup takes 30 minutes to make), with endlessly creative combinations and twists. Another favorite is the Marinated Feta With Spice-Roasted Tomatoes and Grapefruit. Use the marinated feta (see the recipe below) for all kinds of salads or for schmearing on bread. “We’ve riffed on it no fewer than a hundred ways over the years.”

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Kismet’s Marinated Feta

This creamy, tangy marinated feta was inspired by those jars of delicious oil-packed cheese from Australian producer Meredith Dairy. Kismet cookbook authors Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer show you how to make their version, with a marinade of oil infused with garlic, lemon zest, coriander, bay leaf and black pepper.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour (including marinating time). Makes about 1 cup.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

Breakfast-Lunch-Dinner Soup

This is the soup I love to make in all kinds of ways. The Kismet cookbook calls for leeks, squash and spinach. I also made it with garlic, chopped broccolini and thinly sliced new potatoes. I’ve added cooked rice, and another time it was fregola sarda. Squeeze in regular lemon, or Meyer lemon. The recipe calls for stirring in eggs. I’ve also cracked in whole eggs to gently poach in the broth. It’s great with or even without the Parm rind dropped in.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 30 minutes. Serves 4.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

Salpicón De Res (Salvadoran Minced Beef Salad)

A fresh, herby, crunchy, meaty salad that’s delicious on its own or served with rice and beans. “There is some variety in which vegetables to use or how fine the minced meat and vegetables should be,” “The SalviSoul Cookbook” author Karla Tatiana Vasquez writes, “but for the most part, it should have mint and it should have lime. Its flavors are fresh, like a Saturday morning, and everyone feels pretty good after eating it.”
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 55 minutes. Serves 4 to 6.

(Katrina Frederick / For The Times)

French Onion Ramen

We watched “The Mythical Cookbook” author Josh Scherer make this in the kitchen at the L.A. Times, tasted it and were hooked. What’s not to love about caramelized onions plus ramen? The seasoning packet of instant ramen plus jammy onions makes a convincing French-onion-esque soup.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 55 minutes. Serves 1.

(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)