Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and more

In his first non-menu cookbook, the New York Times food columnist offers 100 utterly delicious recipes that epitomize comfort food, including nourishing dishes made from ingredients found in every pantry. Individually or in combination, they make perfect little meals that are elemental and accessible, yet totally surprising—and there’s something to learn on every page. Among the chapter titles there’s “Bread Makes a Meal,” which includes such alluring recipes as a ham and Gruyère bread pudding, spaghetti and bread crumbs, breaded eggplant cutlets, and David’s version of egg-in-a-hole. A chapter called “My Kind of Snack” includes quail eggs with flavored salt; speckled sushi rice with toasted nori; polenta pizza with crumbled sage; raw beet tartare; and mackerel rillettes. The recipes in “Vegetables to Envy” range from a South Indian dish of cabbage with black mustard seeds to French grandmother–style vegetables. “Strike While the Iron Is Hot” is all about searing and quick cooking in a cast-iron skillet. Another chapter highlights dishes you can eat from a bowl with a spoon. And so it goes, with one irrepressible chapter after another, one perfect food moment after another: this is a book with recipes to crave.

David Tanis has worked as a professional chef for over three decades, and is the author of several acclaimed cookbooks, including A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes, which was chosen as one of the 50 best cookbooks ever by the Guardian/Observer (U.K.) and Heart of the Artichoke, which was nominated for a James Beard Award. He spent many years as chef with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California; he ran the kitchen of the highly praised Café Escalera in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and he operated a successful private supper club in his 17th-century walk-up in Paris. He has written for a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian/Observer (U.K.), Cooking Light, Bon Appétit, Fine Cooking, and Saveur. Tanis lives in Manhattan and has been writing the weekly City Kitchen column for the Food section of the New York Times for nearly six years.