Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes, and Stories

Lawson (At My Table) combines offerings that put a spin on recipes from restaurants, friends, and family, with an insightful take on the importance of cooking in her own life, in this delightful outing. On the food front, she provides a medley of dishes such as cherry and almond crumble; a gluten-free banana bread with chocolate and walnuts (the result of a friend asking for a gluten-free version of her standard recipe); a spaghetti with chard, chiles, and anchovies adapted from the Fitzroy restaurant in Cornwall, England; and the “headily intense” short rib stew she makes at home and spices up with chiles, shallots, and ginger. Perceptive essays appear throughout, among them “A Is for Anchovy,” an ode to what Lawson calls “the bacon of the sea”; “A Loving Defence of Brown Food,” in which she muses on how, “to the naked eye, brown food is beautiful: rich, warm, and full of depth and subtle variegation”; and “Christmas Comforts,” a heartwarming tale of a Covid Christmas (“Some things cannot change: I will never renounce my traditional Christmas lunch menu”). The prose leans toward the formal, but the recipes are cheerful, straightforward, and easy to follow. Lawson’s fans are in for a treat. (Apr.)