Eat a little better Great flavor, good health, better world

if you're a certain kind of cook, the ecstasy of a spring farmer's market, with its sweet sugar snap peas, bright peppery lettuces and juicy strawberries that are red all the way through, can easily give way to a sense of unease: the fear that you're not making the most of all that's on offer. (Perhaps you're still agonizing over missing those three minutes when ramps were available?) One way to fend off this very fortunate brand of anxiety is to check out some new cookbooks. Thankfully, just in time, there's the expected flood of vegetable-reverent titles, as well as books that will take you to all corners of the world and personal, nostalgic journeys inspiring the rediscovery of classics that feel just right for the season of rebirth. EAT A LITTLE BETTER: Great Flavor, Good Health, Better World (Clarkson Potter, $32.50), by Sam Kass, is about cooking for the Obamas when they were in the White House. Not designing menus for state dinners or assembling cookie platters for holiday parties but devising flavorful, nutritious everyday meals for Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha in their private residence, where 6:30 dinner was a command performance for every member of the family, including the president. "It was an inspiring sight," Kass writes, "the busiest man in the world carving out time for this daily ritual." Of course, the insider stories are irresistible - there's "POTUS's lucky pasta," which Obama credited with a triumphant presidential debate against Mitt Romney, and there's the barbecued roast chicken that was the first family's first dinner in the White House (it "had to serve as a comfort to four people whose lives were changing forever"). But the anecdotes are only part of the story. Kass, who trained at the Michelin-starred restaurant Moerwald in Vienna, where folding fist-size knobs of butter into a sauce was the norm, became determined to cook healthy, sustainable food that "occupied the place where good flavor overlaps with good-for-you." It was a mission that dovetailed nicely with Michelle Obama's vision for her family and eventually for the nation when she started her initiative to fight childhood obesity. Working with the first lady on the front lines of food politics gave Kass perspective and grounding. "If we only look to make dramatic change, we'll find ourselves standing still forever," he says. Instead, he suggests, eat a little better, a little at a time. Eat more vegetables and grains and less beef. Learn how to read a food label. Put grabbable fruits front-row center on the counter instead of cookies. Not only because it's healthy for you, but because it's better for the planet. The good-for-the-planet call to arms continues its crescendo from a wide range of vegan voices. There is VBQ: The Ultimate Vegan Barbecue Cookbook (The Experiment, paper, $19.95), by Nadine Horn and Jörg Mayer, addressing the particular vegan nightmare known as the American barbecue. Grilled onigiri (Japanese crispy rice balls) and bean burgers (made with walnuts, flaxseeds, wild rice and black beans) stand side by side with the more expected portobello mushroom panini and hyper-specific instructions to optimize tofu grilling. (This involves pressing, freezing, slicing, marinating and using plenty of oil. And it works.) In SWEET POTATO SOUL: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes for the Southern Flavors of Smoke, Sugar, Spice and Soul (Harmony, paper, $19.99), Jenné Claiborne makes the case that historically "soul food lies more in the nutrient-rich foods that blacks were able to cultivate themselves in slave gardens and later on their own land"; in other words, in dark leafy greens, beans, whole grains and starchy vegetables. Soul food, she argues, should be as much about vegetarian cooking as it is about barbecue, fried chicken and pork-spiked collard greens. In HOT FOR FOOD VEGAN COMFORT CLASSICS: 101 Recipes to Feed Your Face (Ten Speed, paper, $22) the Youftlbe SuperStar Lauren Toyota fends off skeptics with a lineup of indulgent-by-any-standards classics: Southern fried cauliflower, sweet potato gnocchi, spicy peanut noodles, fudgy brownies, apple fritters. Though many of her recipes contain subrecipes (a 12-ingredient ramen burger calls for either a homemade nine-ingredient Thousand Island dressing or a three-ingredient Sriracha aioli, along with an 11ingredient barbecue sauce), she understands better than anyone that multiple layers of flavor and texture are crucial when you're not allowed to fall back on butter and bacon fat. Linally, Chloe Coscarelli, chef and onetime "Cupcake Wars" champ, weighs in with CHLOE FLAVOR: Saucy, Crispy, Spicy, Vegan (Clarkson Potter, $27.99), a bright, innovative collection in which blended tofu stands in for ricotta while mac and cheese gets its mouthfeel from a whirl of butternut squash and cashews. Lor cooks who rely heavily on photography for inspiration, this is a winner. Meera Sodha, author Of FRESH INDIA: 130 Quick, Easy and Delicious Vegetarian Recipes for Every Day (Flatiron, $35), would argue that "vegetable-first" cooking, as she calls it, has roots in a movement that began approximately 2,200 years before Yotam Ottolenghi was winning over his legions with glamour shots of eggplant and pomegranate seeds. The year 269 B.C. to be exact, when Emperor Ashoka banned the slaughter of any living animal in the Sodha family's ancestral state of Gujarat. With her assembly of approachable vegetarian recipes, Sodha, a Londoner who grew up in a farming village in England, seeks to redefine Indian food, avoiding rich dishes "swimming in brown sauce" and opting for the way her family has cooked for generations: fresh, vibrant, seasonal. Though there are a few special-occasion showstoppers (clear the day to make her grand vegetable biryani or her mom's famous lentil fritters, which are actually four recipes in one), most of the dishes are geared toward the modern cook who isn't in it for the fuss. Lresh matar paneer showcases the best of spring and summer (snow peas, peas, tomatoes and green beans, and a slew of spices that anyone can locate in the nearest supermarket). Sodha advises making Punjabi corn roti with a cookie cutter instead of rolling them by hand in the traditional way - because it's quicker. We thank her for that. Tamar Adler is comfortable editorializing tradition, and the proof is in SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW: Classic Recipes Revised (Scribner, $27), her deep dive into the archives of our oldest cookbooks and restaurant menus, some dating as far back as the 17th century. Though the names of the recipes (Chicken Liver â la Toscane, Crab Louis Dashiell, Pâté D'oeuf, Potatoes Delmonico) can conjure images of anthropological treasures, Adler is determined to see the modern possibilities in these dishes. Initially drawn to the "poetry of lost specifics" in old recipes, Adler, a chef and a mom as well as an award-winning food writer, can't help seeing them through a 21st-century lens. "If a shortcut exists, I have found it," she writes. "Any technique that demanded too much seriousness has been unsentimentally removed." Sacrilege? No, she argues. It's "gratifying to keep the good things alive, and perhaps most gratifying of all to revive those things already gone." Like Adler's previous book "An Everlasting Meal," this one is as much about the writing as it is about the cooking. The Chicken Liver â la Toscane was a pâté she made for her brother's wedding, where the guests "spread it recklessly on cold fried chicken, an unintentional symbol of continuity and closed loops." Explaining one fancy term, she writes that "in life as it is lived, fricassee is also what anyone used to call a stew that possessed some culinary conviction." Sometimes it's hard to differentiate her prose from the lyrical recipe writing she's paying tribute to. Adler might be the only person in today's food world who can get away with using the word "hogwash." It's tempting to say that Ilene Rosen's saladish: a Crunchier, Grainier, Herbier, Heartier, Tastier Way With Vegetables (Artisan, $24.95), written with Donna Gelb, is so appealing because the recipes seem to reflect the way we all want to eat right now. Which is to say: globally informed, vegetable-forward and Instagram-ready. The only problem with this theory is that Rosen has been cooking like this for nearly two decades, as anyone who's visited her cultish salad bar at New York's City Bakery likely knows. This is her long-time-coming book version of that salad bar (think black rice with pea greens, Vietnamese-style tofu salad, a smoked trout and pumpernickel bread salad, essentially Jewish brunch in a bowl) and it ranks highest on the usability scale of any book this spring. "Everything could be made ahead and left to sit in the fridge and it would still be delicious," Rosen writes of her City Bakery philosophy. "It was a practical style of cooking and eating that stuck with me and became my M.O. as I raised my twin daughters." This is not to suggest that all her salads are a breeze to put together - you'll find yourself outside your comfort zone hunting down items like makrut lime leaves and Tianjin (Chinese preserved cabbage), but special wouldn't be special if it weren't a little hard to come by. And Rosen is a natural teacher, demystifying fancy-sounding ingredients, dispensing a few crucial laws of salad composition (you want a combo of toothsome, fluffy, hefty, crunchy and crisp) alongside menu suggestions not for special occasions and holidays but for real life, for a real dinner table. Diana Henry would appreciate this. "There is poetry in menus," she writes in HOW TO EAT A PEACH: Menus, Stories, and Places (Mitchell Beazley, $34.99). "They can transport you to the Breton coast, or to a Saturday night in Manhattan; they are short stories." From anyone else, this kind of sentiment might signal the earnest preciousness that rings food writing's death knell. Not from Henry, who's built her brand on what you might call poetic practicality. "How to Eat a Peach" is about her love of designing menus, a hobby that dates back to her teenage years, when she kept a giftwrapped journal of fantasy meals she wanted to cook and serve. As she got older, creating menus became a way for her to conjure memories and recreate her travels. Of her first trip to Mexico, where she journeyed after being dumped by a boyfriend: "It's a good place to mend a broken heart." In her headnote for crepes dentelles with sauteed apples and caramel: "I was taught to make these by my first French boyfriend. He was called Christophe. I was 15. So for me, this is more than just a recipe." Henry is unapologetically purist in her opinions about what she serves and enjoys, rightfully assuming that you will enjoy her taste memories right along with her. "I don't invite people over and then wonder what I'll cook," she writes. "I come up with a menu and then consider who would like to eat it." This authority is especially welcome when Henry lists her rules for "having people over" (note: not "entertaining," a word that reminds her of "hostess trolleys and instructions on how to plump up your cushions"). A few of these rules: "No more than two courses should be cooked at the last minute, otherwise you'll be stressed"; "cream should only appear in one course"; "it's not ideal to repeat ingredients"; "consider color, texture and temperature"; "eat seasonally." The recipes are beautifully photographed by Laura Edwards, propped with plates and linens in the fashionable palette best described as marble-and-potato-sack, and range from the stock-in-trade sophisticated and simple (Kir Breton cocktails made with creme de cassis and hard cider) to the indulgent (homemade pork rillettes and an amazing fideua, a paella made with noodles instead of rice). For those who enjoy their food even more when there's a story behind it, Anissa Helou's FEAST: Food of the Islamic World (Ecco/HarperCollins, $60) is the book of the spring. This 500-plus-page collection presents dishes from three of the great Muslim empires (Abbasid, Ottoman and Mughal). Organized by essential ingredients - bread; rice, grains, pasta and legumes; meat; spices; and so on - these chapters hop to a new region with almost every page. We learn in quick succession that one of Egypt's most beloved foods, koshari (a vermicelli and lentil dish topped with spicy tomatoes, chickpeas and crispy onions), is now known as the food of the revolution because it sustained protesters in Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring. Ttirn the page and you're in Zanzibar learning the finer points of cooking Wdli Wd Nazi, or simple coconut rice. Next: Afghani Reshta Piliau and Lebanese/Syrian vermicelli rice. In some cases, the recipe headnotes are longer than the recipes themselves, which doesn't mean you're getting a book of simple dishes. Quite the contrary: These are exhaustively researched foods, culled from history books, family lore, even celebrity chefs - the intensely good chickpea flour fritters that Helou describes as "essential iftar food" come from a Qatari TV food personality. Comprehensive category killers are all well and good, but sometimes what you prefer is a careful curation of a single person's recipes, especially when that person is the renowned writer-illustrator Maira Kalman. Maybe it's because a generation of young chefs are learning how to bake not from their grandmothers but from a steady stream of videos on tiny screens, or maybe it's just nice to think of a time when people sat down in the afternoon with a cup of tea and something sweet, but Kalman's CAKE (Penguin Press, $25) seems to hit just the right counterprogramming note. With an assist from the recipe developer Barbara Scott-Goodman, Kalman gives us a whimsical (some might say random) highlight reel of the baked goods that have played an important role in her life. The book is pretty to hold and leaf through - or just to keep on the kitchen counter as a reminder that baking a cake is "a simple pleasure that should not be taken lightly." The confections themselves represent a tight, satisfying arsenal, in spite of the fact that they're here because they're associated with someone else's memories. These cakes don't call for tahini or Froot Loops or candies spilling from the center, or any of the typical acrobatics today's clickbait bakers expect. The best cakes, Scott-Goodman argues, are the ones in which "the layers are a little lopsided and the frosting looks like the kids or grandkids were helping out in the kitchen... tea cakes, poundcakes and sheet cakes." As such, expect gingerbread, lemon poundcake, strawberry shortcake and a boozy olive oil cake. Lastly heed this instruction, which should say everything about the old-school perspective on display here: "Tread lightly and avoid major activity in the kitchen while cakes are baking." Also in the nostalgia department: Brittany Bennett's THE TAARTWORKS PIE COOKBOOK: Grandmother's Recipes, Granddaughter's Remix (Page Street, paper, $19.99). When Bennett waltzed downstairs one Thanksgiving morning holding an apple pie recipe she had printed from some soulless corner of the internet, her Dutch grandmother, or Oma, wouldn't have it. Instead she taught Bennett the family recipe for an appeltaart, the Dutch specialty that's similar to a pie but boasts a pressed-in shortbread-y crust. Armed with her Oma's generations-old dough recipe and a decidedly Brooklynized pantry, Bennett established her taart company. Its best recipes have been assembled in this innovative, scrapbook-feeling collection. Oma's dough recipe is simple and classic, and because what's old is new again, Bennett asks you to use only the best ingredients - the flour should be locally milled, the butter preferably from a neighborhood dairy farm (if you're not churning your own). What goes inside these crusts, though, is delightfully unexpected. (A white chocolate pie that gets its intense pink color from beets; strawberry-thyme balsamic pie with ricotta whip; sesame pumpkin pie with chocolate tahini swirl.) The book is not overly produced, making it feel as if you've inherited your favorite aunt's recipe box. "Perfection is bland," Bennett writes. "Let juices overflow and stain the crust." What does she like most about her taarts? They're "always constructed with the intent to be devoured by someone you care about." Amen. jenny rosenstrach writes the blog Dinner: A Love Story and is the author of four cookbooks, most recently "How to Celebrate Everything." online: Don't mind the heat and can't bear to get out of the kitchen? For a quick look at 10 more cookbooks, visit nytimes.com/books.