Five top cook books

Liz Crain is the author of Food Lover's Guide to Portland. A longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, her writing has appeared in Cooking Light, Budget Travel, VIA Magazine, The Sun Magazine, The Progressive, Portland Monthly, and Culinate. She is also an editor and publicity director at Hawthorne Books, an independent literary fiction and non-fiction house in Portland.

John Gorham is a four-time James Beard nominee. He is the chef and owner of Portland’s beloved Toro Bravo and Tasty N Sons.

Crain and Gorham are the authors of Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull.

One of their favorite cookbooks, as shared with The Daily Beast:

Tender
by Nigel Slater

My [Crain] small 5,000-square-foot lot in Portland produces a good deal of food—everything from kiwi, blueberries, grapes and plums to annual vegetables from the beds and mounds—and I love Nigel Slater’s Tender for focusing on super tasty seasonal recipes inspired by his home garden in London. I’ve been a fan of Slater’s writing in The Observer for years and I’ve cooked so many things from this book over the past several months. I love it. His memoir Toast is excellent as well. There’s a movie based on it with Helena Bonham Carter playing Slater’s not too sympathetic stepmother.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue