Sprout Award Voting Begins!

For the last four years the folks at Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks in Vancouver have put together a list of their favourite cookbooks of the year and let their customers vote for their choice. At stake is the store's People's Choice silver Sprouts Award. (There is also a Judge's Choice award.)

This year has some great contenders, including a number of books from restaurants that focus on local, sustainably-sourced ingredients like Araxi and C Restaurant in British Columbia, Paley's Place in Oregon, and The Kitchen in Scotland. I'm really excited to see places like these put out their own cookbooks and share their philosophies on food and cooking. It's even more exciting to see them on short lists for awards!

Here is a complete list of the nominees Sprouts Cookbook Awards. You can find some quick reviews of the books themselves, as well as link to the voting page, on the shop's blog: Cooks with Books.

1. How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis (Little, Brown & Company)
2. Tender by Nigel Slater (HarperCollins)
3. The Tastes of Sonora Resort by Matthew Stowe (Sonora Resort)
4. Araxi by James Walt (D&M)
5. Momofuku by David Chang (Clarkson Potter)
6. The Paley's Place Cookbook by Vitaly Paley and Kimberly Paley with Robert Reynolds (Ten Speed Press)
7. From Nature to Plate by Tom Kitchin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
8. C Food by Robert Clark and Harry Kambolis (Whitecap)
9. Ad Hoc At Home by Thomas Keller (Artisan)
10. French Taste by Laura Calder (HarperCollins)

As usual, if you are considering buying one of these books, please support your local independent bookseller like Barbara-Jo's Books to Cooks in Vancouver or Appetite for Books in Montreal.

Have a great local foodie or independent bookseller in your region? Let us know!

Top Five in Five #1: Recipe Books

With only five weeks left until Christmas and other holiday gift giving days, I thought it was time to offer up some gift suggestions for the amateurs chefs, entertainers and foodies on our lists.

Over the next five weeks, I plan to offer a weekly post with five ideas along a specific theme. To kick-off my new series, here are my top five recipe book gift ideas. In the spirit of buying local, if one of these books looks interesting, please consider buying it from an independent book-seller (like Appetite for Books in Montreal) close to home before ordering it on-line.

1. Farmers in Chef Hats by Linda Arsenault is a bilingual book featuring recipes and products from Île d’Orléans near Quebec City, where most of the farms are still family run. This book won the Gourmand World Cookbook for best local cookery book in 2007, and is a wonderful showcase for Quebec local foods.
   
2. Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by slow-food pioneer Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann is a stunning collection of recipes and articles organized by season. Many of the recipes come from the Ancaster Old Mill restaurant near Toronto, where Crump is executive chef and Schormann is the pastry chef. This book is equally at home on the cofee table as it is on the cookbook shelf.
   
3. Along a similar vein, Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics, is also divided by season, but then it is also divided by vegetable. The goal here is to help folks cook with the produce from their CSA (or farm-share) baskets. Although Angelic Organics is near Chicago, almost all of the veggies have appeared in my local CSA basket. The book is also peppered with anecdotes and offers insight into biodynamic farming.
   
4. In Fish, UK's Michelin-starred restauranteur and 'green chippie' pioneer Tom Aikens teaches us how to cook-up great seafood while keeping our impact on the oceans to a minimum. It contains over 200 recipes, as well as cooking and buying tips. Since this is a British book, a drawback for cooks on this side of the pond is that some species common to and sustainable in the U.K., may not be over here. It's nothing that a local seafood guide can't overcome though.
   
5. Finally, for the baker or health-conscious foodie on your list, consider the Whole Grain Baking book by the folk at the King Arthur Flour company. Based in Vermont, King Arthur Flour is 'America's oldest flour company." It is also an employee-owned company that eschews GMO wheat and advocates sustainability.

Do you have a gift suggestion or did I miss one of your favourite books? Drop me a comment or a tweet and let me know!