9 must-read cookbooks for your summer cooking, including ‘Backcountry Cocktails’ and ‘Tenderheart’

When summer comes around, a cooking slump tends to take over. Whether it’s seasonal fatigue from having too much fun (road trips! kids are home! oppressive heat!) or hot ovens you’d rather keep dormant, spending hours fiddling with ingredients doesn’t seem as fun.

Enter this batch of seasonally appropriate cookbooks from authors who know how to bring back some playfulness to your kitchen, while keeping recipes easy, breezy, and light.

Start with Sheela Prakash, who offers insight on getting creative with salads, while Adam Erace and Steven Grasse help you rough it out in the great outdoors with low-ABV mojito twists and foresty gin and tonics. Somehow convincing us that the Instant Pot is a must-have kitchen workhorse is Jules Sherred, whose new book helps to make the kitchen a much more accessible place for people with disabilities. Whether you love summer entertaining or avoid the kitchen when temps get high, these books will help you make the most of the season’s flavor and produce.

Jules Sherred, Touchwood Editions, $27.90, bookshop.org

Jules Sherred, author of website Disabled Kitchen and Garden, recipe developer, and disability/trans rights advocate, asks an important question: Why don’t we respect our body cues? His answer is a cookbook explaining it all with recipes and ridiculously useful tips on how to make your kitchen work for you. Organized by effort level, it’s a guide for disabled and neurodivergent home cooks sick of ableist cookbooks that don’t take into account mobility issues and cognition barriers. “The kitchen is the worst room in the house if you are disabled. I’m about to change that and make life easier for everyone,” he writes. From pantry prepping to meal planning, you’ll quickly learn that the Instant Pot and air fryers are your best friends.

Rahanna Bisseret Martinez, $27.89, 4 Color Books, bookshop.org

Be curious and keep your eyes and heart open — that’s been 19-year-old Rahanna Bisseret Martinez’s approach to cooking. The farmers market-obsessed Top Chef Jr. finalist’s debut cookbook embodies her enthusiastic exploration for culinary inclusiveness, from pan-frying cornmeal-coated fish, making Caribbean-influenced curry cabbage steaks, and more. Expand your palate with headnotes featuring the “Rahanna-interrogation-treatment” (you’ll learn about the dish’s origins, evolution, and techniques) and celebrate sustainable veggies, seafood, and meats with techniques drawn from a variety of cultures.

Steven Grasse and Adam Erace, Running Press Adult, $26.04, bookshop.org

No matter where you fall on the outdoorsiness spectrum, Food & Wine’s 2023 tastemaker Steven Grasse and local food/travel writer Adam Erace will help you find a drink for cocooning in a cabin or roughing it off the grid. Their 192-page book, Backcountry Cocktails, invites you to engage deeper with nature while simultaneously making things more fun with recipes for drinks like the Hiker’s Lament, a boozy green juice. Alternating between foraging-focused cocktails and wilderness tips, the book features 48 seasonal recipes purpose-built for camping, outdoor living, and traveling that are packable, foraging-forward but substitution friendly, flexible, and fun, with tips from experts, like Philly’s Jamaar Julal of JamBrü Ferments and Honeysuckle Projects.

Sheela Prakash, Rizzoli International Publications, $34.88, bookshop.org

Sheela Prakash, senior contributing editor at cooking website Kitchn, argues salad can be enjoyed year-round, with a focus on seasoning and flavor. “A salad isn’t meant to be a complicated endeavor,” she writes. “At its most basic, it’s a bowl of greens. Arugula dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, flaky salt, and a few grinds of black pepper is a no-fail salad solution in our house. That’s just the start, though.” Her cookbook invites you to go beyond the vinaigrette and question the seasoning we put in our salads. Split into side, star, and sweet sections, you’ll understand the basics of flavorful salads that lean into seasonal produce to star on your table any day of the year.

Hetty Lui McKinnon, Knopf Publishing Group, $37.20, bookshop.org

As a child, Hetty Lui McKinnon didn’t see living amongst crates of produce as unusual. Her father’s job at the Sydney Markets filled their home with mangoes, daikon, cabbage, eggplant, and apricots. He was the “generous fruit and vegetable guy” — a memory she has carried close to her heart her entire adult life. In the pretty pages of Tenderheart, McKinnon weaves her love story for vegetables with playful, assertive recipes that honor her late father and explore the gentleness of love, human resilience, and unbreakable family bonds.

Ayesha Erkin, Ayesha Erkin, $27.41, bookshop.org

“Third culture kid doing things in food, travel, and architecture” Ayesha Erkin knows a thing or two about dates — she’s got over 30 to share in her debut cookbook.

What began as a bit of pandemic fun during Ramadan 2020 turned into a collection of recipes that’s bonded her family. Reading an Instagram post that shared the Prophet’s tradition of breaking his fast with dates and cucumbers, Erkin decided to try it and fell in love with the crunchy, sweet treat. Soon, she was experimenting with all kinds of ingredients, leading to her viral #DateOfTheDay social media series.

Colored with mouthwatering photos, Erkin’s cookbook demonstrates her approach to appreciating ingredients with wondrous date combinations like pineapple Tajin, corn dog, coconut pakora, and chicken and waffles that’ll confuse and excite.

Anna Hezel, Chronicle Books, $23.20, bookshop.org

Canned fish has evolved from a form of convenience to a lifestyle. Enter the world of tinned fish with Anna Hezel, senior editor at cooking publication Epicurious. While it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the variety that has flooded the market (including local shops Herman’s Coffee and Rainbow Tomatoes Garden in East Greenville, both known for their world-spanning stock of tins), her cheerful cookbook for fancy snacking helps you navigate the waters of brined fish. Crack open a can, flip through cute illustrations, and enjoy everything from tuna melt to savory anchovy and tarragon shortbread.

Danny Trejo, Clarkson Potter Publishers, $26.04, bookshop.org

Everyone’s favorite movie “bad guy” turned Hollywood restaurateur, Danny Trejo’s second cookbook dives into the Mexican food “Angelenos like me eat everyday.” It’s chock-full off easy, fun recipes from taquitos to the bacon-wrapped jalapeño-spiked hot dogs found outside Dodger Stadium. Learn how to stock your pantry and bring the cantina vibes — with and without alcohol — to your kitchen from the sober ex-convict who loves hugs. “And that’s what this book is: a big bada— Trejo hug.”

Giselle Kennedy Lord and David S. Shields, Voracious, $32.55, bookshop.org

Did you know there are more than 10,000 tomato varieties? Slow Food USA introduces you to ones you won’t find in your grocery aisle, including the Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, and Livingston Globe. The nonprofit catalogs the joy and justice of biodiversity in our foodways in this 300-page book. As food systems continue to be industrialized and colonized, the varieties of produce and crops dwindle. The cookbook is a grassroots effort to raise awareness with farmer profiles, recipes, and stories of foods facing extinction.