This Is the One Book Club Worth Joining

If you’re a sucker for variety, snap this up immediately. The more than 700 recipes offer multiple ways to make a single dish. Let’s put it this way: Bittman has written 13 variations on a “tiny pancakes” recipe.

First of all, any book with a trailer this hilarious (and--heads up--NSFW) gets props from us. So we’re pretty stoked about this follow-up to the Thug Kitchen Cookbook, which focuses on vegan party snacks. You bet we’re bringing potato-leek cakes with dipping sauce to the season’s first Hanukkah bash.

Chef April Bloomfield gives lots of love to veggies in the pages of this new cookbook. But she doesn’t shy away from a few omnivore’s embellishments. Happily (for us non-vegans), Bloomfield prepares ramps with butter and fried eggs.  

This Phaidon book--which is Read It and Eat’s November book-club selection--offers 100 recipes that each can be made in less than 30 minutes. When we prep something that fast, it usually means we’re reheating leftovers. But these recipes run the gamut from Spaghettini with Clams to Milanese Risotto.

Food photographer Erin Gleeson recently took up residence in the California woods. Can you imagine the spreads she’s whipping up? Luckily, you don’t have to. Her first, gorgeously illustrated cookbook has vegetarian recipes for what the wood nymphs must eat--think dipped strawberries, apple matchstick salad and cucumber spritzers.  

Read It and Eat, 2142 N. Halsted St.; 773-661-6158 or readitandeatstore.com