Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Bacon Cookbook, James Villas (Wiley, $35) The former food editor of Town & Country reports in his introduction that U.S. bacon consumption has increased 40 percent over the past five years, so I’m amazed that the market hasn’t been throughly glutted by cookbooks focusing on the gateway meat. Not everyone has the strength to resist bacon’s dark side, an inexorable force that can pull one into a spiral of overindulgence or inspire ill-conceived creations (bacontini, anyone?). But Villas, a longtime champion of classic American cuisine, can handle his bacon. His 168 recipes show restraint, good taste, and worldwide influence, from Irish colcannon, Brazilian feijoada, and German fennel-and-bacon soup to bacon-wrapped figs stuffed with almonds in port and an entire chapter on bacon breads.
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison (Broadway, $40) Judging a book by its cover, I think I avoided this now classic collection for years because the author and founder of San Francisco’s Greens restaurant looks the very picture of prim, self-satisfied plant eating. But though Madison’s book, in its tenth anniversary edition, is widely regarded as the Vegetarian Bible, its utility for omnivores is endless, with 1,400 recipes over 721 pages.
