Required Reading: A Preview of Fall Cookbooks from Seattle-Area Authors

Welcome to the Eater Seattle's fall cookbook and food book preview, calling out seven new titles releasing this autumn by Seattle-area chefs and writers that are worth adding to your collection.

See something missing from the list? Hit up the comments.

A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus: Menus and Stories
Renee Erickson with Jess Thomson
Chef Renee Erickson long ago won over diners with her trio of Seattle restaurants (Boat Street Cafe, The Walrus & The Carpenter, and The Whale Wins). Now, with her first cookbook, she shares recipes for some of her most popular dishes, including the twice baked zucchini bread from The Whale Wins, and Boat Street Cafe's chicken liver pate and bread pudding. In the headnotes of each recipe, Erickson shares a story about how this dish came to appear at one of her restaurants, or the inspiration behind its creation. The book is divided into chapters by season, with menus within each chapter. There's a wintry brunch menu with recipes for smoked salmon, spicy pork crepinettes, and molasses spice cake, plus a section on making refrigerator pickles at home. Sasquatch Books, Sept 30. Pre-order at Book Larder.

Pie School: Lessons in Fruit, Flour, and Butter
Kate Lebo
In this book, poet and baker Kate Lebo, owner of a roving pastry academy, has combined her passion for pie with her penchant for prose. The introductory chapter includes the "Art and Science of Pie," with tips for making flavorful and flaky pie crust, how to choose the best and most flavorful fruits, and tricks such as making a lattice crust. Descriptions of dishes like peach bourbon pie are as mouth-watering as the pie, of which each bite "is like a long talk on a summer porch, crackling with sugar, spinning with alcohol." There are recipes for gluten-free pies, cheese crust pies, galettes, and combinations such as three pear and gouda, blueberry lemon verbena, banana cream, lemon chiffon, whiskey maple pecan, and more. Sasquatch Books, Sept 30. Pre-order at Amazon.

Shroom: Mind-Bendingly Good Recipes for Cultivated and Wild Mushrooms
Becky Selengut
Chef, author, and cooking instructor Becky Selengut explores 15 different species of mushrooms in her latest cookbook, and shares 75 recipes for the best ways to use each. Each chapter is dedicated to a different species, with an introduction to each that gives tips on buying, cleaning, and preserving, plus nerdy factoids. Recipes are inspired by Japanese, Thai, French, Italian, and Vietnamese cuisines, with dishes like shiitake-noodle salad with nuoc cham and herbs, and acquacotta soup with chanterelles. There are five recipes for each species, ranging from simple, such as pasta with morels, leeks, and oven-roasted tomatoes, to advanced, like maitake tikka masala. Andrews McMeel, Sept 9. Buy at Book Larder.

DeLaurenti Cookbook
Pat McCarthy & Matt Snyder
An Italian cookbook from Seattle's favorite Italian specialty market. DeLaurenti has been a Pike Place Market staple for over 60 years. In this cookbook, chapters cover courses such pastas, entrees, soups & salads, antipasti, and dessert, with a guide to cheese and charcuterie in the beginning of the book, and a primer on wine at the end. Recipes include Italian classics such as risotto, spaghetti bolognese, and polenta, but there are also recipes for making homemade burrata, ancho chicken pozole, tuna carpaccio, and black truffle potato leek soup. This book gives you even more reasons to head to DeLaurenti, for items like thinly sliced prosciutto for the prosciutto-wrapped pork tenderloin, and corona beans for the marinated corona beans antipasto. Documentary Media, Sept 2. Buy at DeLaurenti.

World Spice at Home: New Flavors for 75 Favorite Dishes
Amanda Bevill & Julie Kramis Hearne
Good spices and seasoning can take a dish from blah to bomb - and no one knows that better than Amanda Bevill, owner of World Spice, located at Pike Place Market. Bevill teamed up with chef Julie Kramis Hearne to educate home cooks about out of the ordinary spices, and introduce spices used regularly in other parts of the world, but less common in U.S. kitchens. There are recipes for spice mixtures such as berbere, ras al hanout, and za'atar, plus recipes for dishes that make the best use of spices, like Chinese five spice chicken wings, halibut poached in olive oil with saffron, baked chicken with tikka masala sauce. And there are recipes for spicing up desserts, like a nectarine upside-down cake with cardamom custard and carrot cake with kashmiri garam masala. Sasquatch Books, Sept 30. Pre-order at Amazon.

Fresh & Fermented: 85 Delicious Ways to Make Fermented Carrots, Kraut, and Kimchi Part of Every Meal
Julie O'Brien & Richard J. Climenhage
O'Brien and Climenhage's Firefly Kitchens has made a name for itself around Seattle with fans of kimchi and other fermented foods. With this, their first cookbook, they share their recipes for several different flavors of krauts, kimchi, plus fermented carrots. The book's introduction provides guidance for people wanting to improve their gastrointestinal health, by introducing probiotics into their diet. There are over 80 recipes for adding fermented food into dishes - many in unexpected ways. There's a smoked salmon reuben sandwich and kimchi fried rice, but also chocolate pudding, kimchi'd mac and cheese, a cardamom chia breakfast bowl, and several smoothies, all with the added kick of kraut or kimchi. Sasquatch Books, Oct 28. Pre-order at Amazon.

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food & Love from an American Midwest Family
Kathleen Flinn
The third book from Seattle author Kathleen Flinn is a memoir mixed with stories of Flinn's Irish-Swedish family, that criss-crosses the country from Michigan to San Francisco and Florida. There are tales of restaurant work, farm life, and plenty of good - if sometimes humble - eating. Each vignette concludes with a recipe or two - Midwest staples like chicken & biscuits, pan-fried lake fish, bread & butter pickles, and venison stew. Flinn's family has had the ups and downs typical to many American families over the last century. Through births, deaths, recession, love, marriage, war, and work, like many—they often found comfort through food. Life can be hard, but also delicious.
Viking Adult, Aug 14. Buy at Amazon.
—Sonja Groset