5 spring cookbooks to freshen up your cooking in 2024

Sunshine and spring weather are finally here, and this year’s flurry of glossy springtime-release cookbooks are full of satisfying and healthful ideas for meals that bring brightness and joy to your daily routine.

Here are five new cookbooks to help you transform fresh ingredients into delightful meals, each offering a different approach to making kitchen magic.

Cook Simply, Live Fully: Flexible, Flavorful Recipes for Any Mood by Yasmin Fahr

Ever flip through a cookbook wishing that the author understood that you’re on the verge of ordering takeout and just want something easy that tastes good? Yasmin Fahr, a New York Times recipe contributor and author, has you covered. Her new cookbook (Harper Press, $36) divides recipes into three categories: lap dinners (for when you’re dead tired but still want to eat something flavorful); coffee table dinners (for when you feel like putting in a bit more effort but it’s still a weeknight); and dinner table meals (for when you’ve got a little more energy for cooking something exciting).

You’ll find recipes for dishes like scorched feta with corn and broccolini, coconut-braised salmon with vegetables, sheet pan citrus-ginger chicken with stone fruits, crispy lemony-yogurt chicken for a crowd and lime-ginger roasted radishes.

The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them By Karla Tatiana Vasquez

This bright, vivid cookbook is the product of author Karla Vasquez’s efforts to learn about Salvadoran food and document the stories behind it. She was born in El Salvador, but when war broke out when she was only three months old, her family fled, and they landed in Los Angeles. As an adult, she tried to learn more about the history of Salvadoran cuisine at the Los Angeles Public Library, but when those efforts fell flat, she traveled to her birth country to continue learning. In 2015, she started SalviSoul, a cookbook and storytelling project aimed at documenting the stories of women throughout the Salvadoran diaspora.

The Salvisoul Cookbook (Ten Speed Press, $35, available April 30) offers heartfelt stories alongside recipes for a wide range of dishes, from curtido and pupusas to soups like sopa de espinaca con huevos— spinach-and-egg soup — as well as recipes from contributors, like gallo en chicha, or rooster cooked in a fermented pineapple beverage that’s not unlike coq au vin.

Kismet by Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson

Inspired by the food at Los Angeles’ Kismet and Kismet Rotisserie restaurants, this cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $35, available May 7) by chef-owners Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson brims with recipes adapted for home cooks that highlight California and Mediterranean flavors. Kismet opened in 2017 and earned James Beard nominations for best new restaurant and restaurant design. Its Jeweled Crispy Rice was named LA Magazine’s Dish of the Year in 2017.

Among the innovative recipes: Little Gem salad with grape-leaf vinaigrette, marinated feta with dates and rose water onions, tahini with honeyed kumquat and cardamom, blistered shishitos and shrimp flavored with rose and sage, and lamb skewers with carob molasses.

Meet the authors at San Francisco’s Omnivore Books on Food at 6:30 p.m. June 10 for a free book talk.

The California Farm Table Cookbook: 100 Recipes from the Golden State by Lori Rice

The farms of the Bay Area, Central Coast and Central Valley take center stage in this book that food writer Lori Rice calls “a dream project.” The cookbook (Countryman Press, $25, available June 4) is divided by ingredients that come “from the soil,” for example, and “from the trees.” And sprinkled throughout are profiles of leaders in local food systems, such as Ron Silberstein from Alameda’s Admiral Maltings, artichoke grower Sean Pezzini from Castroville’s Pezzini Farms and pear cidermaker Sarah Hemly from Courtland’s Hemly Cider.

The cookbook covers a wide array of mouthwatering dishes inspired by California produce: Think dishes like tangerine chicken lettuce wraps, tamari-soaked eggs with hibiscus sea salt, Dungeness crab sandwiches and goat cheese ice cream sandwiches with brown butter cookies.

Meet the author at San Francisco’s Omnivore Books on Food at 3 p.m. June 8 for a free talk and book signing.

Greekish by Georgina Hayden

London food writer Georgina Hayden spent 12 years working on Jamie Oliver’s food team, but she grew up above her grandparents’ Greek Cypriot taverna and grew to love cooking and storytelling from the family recipes passed on to her. Hayden’s new cookbook (Bloomsbury, $35, available June 11) honors that delicious legacy with 120 Greek-inspired recipes that are low-effort and high-reward and aimed at feeding loved ones with minimal stress.

You’ll find recipes for both savory and sweet breakfast items like meatballs in chili tomatoes and baklava French toast and dishes ranging from filo-wrapped feta with spiced honey to mussels in saffron yogurt. There’s a grilled foods section dubbed  “Things on Sticks” — think spiced chili and coriander chicken or lamb and halloumi kofta. And for dessert, look for the how-tos for Greek coffee-walnut layer cake, a golden filo custard pie and baklava buns.