Ana Ros: Sun and Rain

In this exquisitely illustrated, if challenging, cookbook, Slovenian chef Ros, who was featured on Chef’s Table, shares recipes from her restaurant located in a village near the Italian border. In elegiac prose accompanied by arresting photos, Ros and other contributors describe local landscapes or celebrations, including bees in hives that “look like small Russian dachas” as well cake decorated with butterflies purchased last-minute from a Trieste pastry shop for the 80th birthday of Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, who was visiting the area. A fairy tale quality is established in an essay from Italian food critic Andrea Petrini, who first “discovered” Ros (“Once upon a time there was a little girl,” he begins). Recipes are bunched at the end, far from the photographs of them spread throughout the narrative. Dishes are complex, and intricately designed and balanced: a dish of beef tongue contains eight different components, including oyster mayonnaise and pickled purslane; a popcorn dish features beer gel, cheese ice cream, and wild hops. Clearly, items like cuttlefish lard—made by brining cuttlefish, then cooking them sous-vide, then roasting them, and finally pressing them together and freezing them—are not going to make the regular rotation on home tables. The dreamy affect that pervades this entire book—and Ros’s cooking—are transporting, even if the recipes themselves are mostly aspirational. (Mar.)