Tasting Rome Fresh flavors & forgotten recipes from an ancient city

IF DUSTING OFF THE GRILL, dining al fresco and finally scoring a pint of tiny, jewel-like strawberries hasn't gotten you pumped enough for warm-weather eating, this season's cookbook lineup should seal the deal. Chefs, celebrities and the usual crop of vegetable evangelists weigh in with ideas for optimizing our spring awakenings, whether your idea of home cooking is preparing simple, fresh meals inspired by the local farmers' market or experimenting with the regional cuisines of faraway kitchens. (P.S. Wherever you end up, be sure to get some cabbage. There will be kimchi.) Anyone in need of a crash course on food that is Very Right Now will find it in IT'S ALL EASY: Delicious Weekday Recipes for the Super-Busy Home Cook (Goop Press/Grand Central, $35), by Gwyneth Paltrow with Thea Baumann. All the Instagram superstars are here - socca pizzas, açai bowls, avocado toasts, spiralized zucchini, ramen, cauliflower and kimchi "fried rice" - and they're enlisted to help address the age-old dilemma: How do we find the time to prepare healthy, wholesome food for our families? This is Paltrow's third cookbook, but the first to be published by Goop, her lifestyle-website-turned-empire, where Baumann is the food editor. Unlike Paltrow's last book, "It's All Good," which asked us to eschew all sorts of allergens and dietary evils (including tomatoes and yogurt), this one is grounded back on planet Earth. A good percentage of the recipes deliver on the fast part of the fast-and-fresh promise, and what makes them so appealing is the way Paltrow and Baumann elevate a simple dish without scaring anyone off. Most of the time this is achieved with the addition of a hashtag-ready ingredient, like za'atar spices on the carrots or miso in the clam's steaming broth. Sometimes it's done with a twist on technique: Falafel is baked rather than fried; a chicken won ton soup skips the fussy dumpling assembly, calling instead for noodles and ginger-and-scallion-spiked chicken meatballs. Whatever joke you want to make about an Oscar-winning actress weighing in on a you-and-me problem - too busy to cook - save it for after supper. Also in the Instagram-ready category is THE LOVE & LEMONS COOKBOOK: An Apple-to-Zucchini Celebration of Impromptu Cooking (Avery, $35), by Jeanine Donofrio and her photographer husband, Jack Mathews, the Austin-based pair behind the book's eponymous blog. You have to look pretty hard to find the moment where the author actually identifies the book as vegetarian, the assumption being that today's evolved home cook, whether vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free or, to use Donofrio's term, "meat-on-the-side-ian," will be intrigued by plant-based meals and the prospect of experimenting with alternative ingredients to avoid animal products. (Chocolate mousse is made with avocados and almond milk; a creamy fettuccine sauce with white miso paste and cashews.) Anyone familiar with Donofrio's blog knows her philosophy, and will feel right at home in the book's bright, sunshine-flooded pages, where it seems as if happiness itself is tossed into every bowl of twirled asparagus shavings and seasonal salads. It's very difficult to cook recipes like the coconut rice with brussels sprouts and the artichoke crostini with mint pesto and not make dramatic declarations along the lines of: Why don't I eat like this every day? Donofrio will tell you that you can, as long as your pantry is stocked with the new basics (spelt flour, coconut oil, raw cashews) and as long as you have access to a farm market or a C.S.A. that will point you in the right direction if you just pay close enough attention. A new argument? No. One you'll fall for anyway? Yes. What if you want to eat like Donofrio every day, but no one else at your house does? VEGAN, VEGETARIAN, OMNIVORE: Dinner for Everyone at the Table (Norton, $35), by Anna Thomas, addresses the very real issue of catering to the increasingly disparate needs of whoever happens to be joining you for a meal. Unlike Donofrio's carefully curated recipes, Thomas's collection feels encyclopedic, reminiscent of Deborah Madison's "The Greens Cookbook," a reference that provides valuable advice for all seasons. Thomas's "The Vegetarian Epicure," published in 1972, was one of the first books to make the case that vegetarian food could be enjoyed as opposed to endured, and though, more than four decades later, we need no convincing on that front, she's still hammering the point home with inspired recipes like sweet-and-sour glazed beets or smoky, spicy, limey tortilla soup with black beans and avocados. But the agenda this time around is less romantic, more strategic: How to make one meal fit all. We've heard this promise before, but with 150 recipes and menu plans for holidays big and small, it's not an empty one. In spite of the book's breadth, Thomas doesn't overthink things, and her solutions have the rare quality of being both obvious and brilliant. Easy fish soup begins as easy vegetable soup, with flaky fillets and shrimp added only in the last five minutes, after the vegans have been served. The recipe for a quinoa salad tossed with smoked Gouda, cranberries and walnuts suggests topping individual servings with caramelized sausage coins to satisfy the omnivores. A mezze spread for guests (in a section entitled "No One Eats Mezze Alone") includes a plate of baked kibbe alongside the traditional spread of grilled vegetables, tabbouleh and muhammara. Nothing there is tweaked or adjusted, a kind of serving that's ultimately Madison's most effective strategy - that is, start with foods the whole table loves without condition. "Everyone eats the watermelon at the picnic," she writes in her introduction. "It's not the vegan watermelon, it's just the watermelon." Given our current food culture, where cross-sectioned cauliflower "steaks" seem to get more attention than the rib-eyes they're imitating, it was only a matter of time before THE VEGETABLE BUTCHER: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice, and Masterfully Cook Vegetables From Artichokes to Zucchini (Workman, $29.95) came along. Its author, Cara Mangini, who runs the restaurant Little Eater in Columbus, Ohio, hails from a long line of traditional Italian butchers but found her calling as "vegetable butcher" after working at Mario Batali's Eataly in New York. In her information-jammed book, 10 years in the making, she wields her Japanese cleaver to chiffonade leafy greens and slices unsuspecting sunchokes into submission with a mandoline. She outlines selection and storage information, and itemizes what each vegetable's ideal pairings might be. It's not the sexiest of this spring's crop, but for a certain kind of reader Mangini's enthusiasm for the obscure and unsung can be addictive. Ever found yourself at a late fall market intrigued by crosnes? (Pronounced "crones," you might be happy to know.) Or stumped by yet another kohlrabi in your C.S.A. delivery box? Or wondering how to slice the base of a puntarelle into edible one-eighth-inch matchsticks? Mangini enlightens. There are conventional step-by-step recipes - all vegetarian - but her instructions for basic techniques (steaming, braising, roasting and so on) and "from the hip" recipe suggestions (without ingredient lists) are where the book's value lies. Especially if your idea of a successful cookbook is one that teaches you lessons you can apply elsewhere, long after you've filed the book on the kitchen shelf. There are two notable entries in the ever popular When Chefs Cook at Home category. Floyd Cardoz, the author, with Marah Stetts, of FLAVORWALLA (Artisan, $29.95), sees it as his mission to introduce spice, dimension, heat and boldness into everything we cook in our family kitchens. Especially when those family kitchens include kids. Cardoz was nicknamed Spicy Man and Spice King in the various New York institutions where he worked the line and made his name (Lespinasse, Tabla, North End Grill), but the title he prefers is Flavorwalla. (The suffix "walla" in his native India indicates "expert.") Though there's a subtle Indian accent to many of his dishes, Cardoz's international influences are multiple, and his recipes run the gamut from throw-together-after-work meals (stir-fried ground lamb and eggs; shrimp curry with cauliflower) to more project-oriented showstoppers (an osso buco braised with warming spices; killer pork carnitas with orange and chipotle that he developed for his El Verano taco stand at Citi Field). But it's the tactical side of his chef brain that will resonate with the everyday home cook. When faced with feeding his two young sons, instead of caving to their preference for simple food, Cardoz decides to keep the protein bland and be adventurous with the flavoring of side dishes. (A straightforward sautéed spinach is boosted with ginger; broccoli is pan-roasted and spiked with lime, honey and chile flakes; corn is slathered with mayo and cotija cheese for his version of elote, a taqueria favorite.) He prizes efficiency, throwing tomorrow's vegetables into the oven with tonight's roast and swearing that the secret to fast weeknight meals is a gas grill (no pot to clean up) and a pressure-cooker, capable of yielding stews in under 30 minutes. The 30-minute mandate isn't a top priority for Claus Meyer, author Of THE NORDIC KITCHEN: One Year of Family Cooking (Mitchell Beazley, $29.95), but he's not apologizing. "The level of deliciousness" that these recipes represent "justifies the little bit of extra work," he writes in his introduction. Though that "little bit of extra work" occasionally has you smoking homemade curd cheese, roughly a two-day project, to produce a single ingredient for a different recipe, you won't mind once you sign on. Shortcuts have never been the point for Meyer. The Danish food activist, perhaps best-known for cofounding Copenhagen's Noma with René Redzepi, has set about redefining Nordic cuisine, believing that food is central to social change and to fixing his country's lost connectedness with nature. (To New Yorkers, though, he's probably better known for Grand Central Terminal's new Nordic market.) Here he teaches us how to produce the smoky, pickled, intensely fresh flavors we now take for granted as Scandinavian signatures. Think raw salmon with lime, horseradish and garlic mustard; lightly salted sea trout with cucumber and dill in (yes) smoked curd cheese dressing; pan-fried mackerel with pickled tomatoes and rye bread toast. Two new books aim to demystify Korean food for the American interested in exploring the cuisine beyond bibimbap. Both succeed, if in radically different ways. In KOREATOWN (Clarkson Potter, $30), Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard gain accessibility by staying firmly grounded as they eat their way through the Korean neighborhoods of major cities across the country, interviewing chefs and photographing the clientele. Recipes and dishes, shot in situ, are interspersed with stories from the everyday enthusiast. The overall effect? You don't have to have grown up with an emo (literally, "auntie") in order to create or appreciate authentic Korean food in your own home. "We didn't want to write a book narrated by a whispering woman dressed in silks," the authors write, and in case that point isn't made clear, Rodbard starts off with an essay called "How a White Boy Jew From Kalamazoo Fell Hard for Korean Food." He's a food writer who discovered his obsession by way of a 2012 guidebook assignment, and his enthusiasm might remind you of that friend from college who could persuade you to do anything, no matter how many midterms you had to study for. Hong brings the kitchen chops, having studied at the Culinary Institute of America and worked with luminaries like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and David Chang. In spite of that pedigree, this bookis about as un-chef-y achef book as you can get. Sure, many of the recipes require a trip to the Asian specialty store to track down bean pastes and various sauces, but once you're stocked, you're set. A favorite, dubu jorim (soy-braised tofu), is written in only two steps; crispy-chewy kimchi jeon (kimchi pancakes) blessedly calls for pre-made Korean pancake mix, since almost all Korean restaurants apparently use it too. It's serendipitous when authenticity and simplicity overlap. COOK KOREAN! A Comic Book With Recipes (Ten Speed, paper, $19.99; available in early July), by Robin Ha, comes at Korean food from a different angle - from, wait for it, that of a woman named Dengki, dressed in silks. (Or, more accurately, in a traditional Korean hanbok.) Dengki is this culinary comic book's fictional heroine - gently reminding us to put on gloves before we mix our kimchi or discussing the finer points of anchovy broth. We learn in three quick panels that Ha had never been the beneficiary of this kind of methodical teaching. She was too busy drawing comics to figure out how her mom's authentic cooking found its way to the table every night: "She just waved her hands and the food magically appeared." As a young adult, absent a wand, Ha found herself broke in Brooklyn, a long subway ride from Manhattan's Koreatown and missing her mother's food, so she began cooking for her friends, writing and drawing what she made. Ta-da: "Cook Korean!" Though Ha isn't the first to experiment with the culinary comic book angle, she's certainly among the first, and part of the fun here is watching her play around with conventions. Beyond the innovation of the approach, it's also supremely practical. You can actually see the particular cut of beef you need; or how to peel and cut a daikon radish; or what the gochujang container looks like. (Anyone who has found herself in an H Mart aisle, staring blankly at the floor-to-ceiling tubs of pastes labeled only in Korean, knows the value in this service.) Besides, it's hard not to laugh every time Ha employs the classic comic book device "Meanwhile" in loopy letters. You're half expecting to see "Back at the Bat Cave" instead of "Let's Make Ongsimi!" For that alone, her book earns its place on the kitchen shelf. Cooks who value history and context as crucial ingredients in their recipes will treasure TASTING ROME: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes From an Ancient City (Clarkson Potter, $30), by Katie Parla and Kristina Gill. Both authors are American transplants in the Italian capital - Gill, a photographer and writer, arrived in 1999; Parla, a journalist and food historian, in 2003 - and one of the book's many strengths is its ability to translate several thousand years of the city's cuisine for today's reader and home cook. Whatever you do, though, don't mistake this book for one more love letter to the flour-covered nonna making amatriciana and cacio e pepe in the corner trattoria. (Though both recipes are represented deliciously.) Parla and Gill include the romanticized dishes you'd expect, but the fun here lies in their exploration of the city's less-trodden paths, both journalistically and gastronomic ally. "We enjoyed ... breaking down the stereotype that Roman food must be hyper-traditional in order to be authentic," they write, delighting in updated versions of Roman comfort food standbys: Spaghetti with anchovies and butter is reimagined as crostini; hand-held trapizzinos, a tramezzino and pizza mash-up, invented within the last decade, is Rome's answer to pizza-by-the-slice. The authors cover some major territory here, culling the best of Rome from peripheral neighborhoods and downloading kitchen wisdom from both the city's more innovative restaurants and generations-old institutions. A third-generation norcino (pork butcher) walks us through porchetta; the renowned restaurateur Arcangelo Dandini shares secrets for achieving light, pillowy gnocchi (the potatoes must be the driest available); and, in a fascinating chapter devoted to the culinary history of the Roman Jewish ghetto, the authors include a recipe for almond and cinnamon biscotti, sold by the "endearingly grumpy ladies" in a "crowded spartan bakery." Making them in your American kitchen is never going to be exactly the same, but this takes you about as close as you're going to get. ONLINE Don't mind the heat and can't bear to get out of the kitchen? For a quick look at 15 more cookbooks, visit nytimes.com/books. JENNY ROSENSTRACH is the author of "Dinner: A Love Story," inspired by her blog of the same name. Her next book, "How to Celebrate Everything," will be published in September.

The kitchens of Rome come alive in this cookbook celebrating classic and contemporary dishes from today's Roman table. In more than 85 recipes, food and travel journalists Parla (parlafood.com) and Gill (designsponge.com) bring their city's characteristic cuisine to the home cook. Recipes reflect "the spirit of Roman flavors" found in neighborhoods where traditional dishes are community-specific and historically inspired. Jewish ghetto cuisine features a sauced cumin-spiced fish dish, and honey-soaked pizarelle (matzo fritters) are Roman Passover classics. From the Quinto Quarto's Testaccio district come offal-based "fringe foods" such as braised oxtail and tripe in tomato sauce with mint and pecorino. A section on traditional Roman pasta dishes showcases cacio e pepe, amatriciana, and two methods for preparing pasta alla carbonara. There are multiple twists on bread and pizza, and the vegetable section champions local favorites such as artichokes, fava beans, and greens. Recipes for drinks from Rome's evolving cocktail culture, gelato, and pastries, and an inventory of key ingredients and tools in the Roman kitchen, round out this solid introduction to Roman cooking. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.