Summer Foods

Rodney Scott's world of BBQ: Every Day is a Good Day

Rodney Scott

Memoir and collection of recipes by James Beard Award-winning barbecue specialist. Topics include Scott beginning work at his family barbecue joint as a child, South Carolinian foodways and traditions, and his journey to expand his experiences beyond Charleston. Includes supplemental material. Contains some strong language. Commercial audiobook. 2021.

Bobby Flay's Grill it!

Bobby Flay

    Fire up the best backyard bashes with 150 simple and delicious recipes from grilling guru Flay in his first full-color grilling book--a selection of inventive ideas for easy meals that are fresh, flavorful, and fun to cook. 2008. Unrated.

La Grotta: Ice Creams and Sorbets

Kitty Travers

La Grotta Ices is a London-based brand that is changing our expectations when it comes to ice cream by using fruit-focused ingredients and unexpected herbs and mix-ins to create eye-opening flavors like Rhubarb and Angelica, Guava and Lemon Leaf, and White Grapefruit and Pale Ale. With 85 stunning photographs, the recipes in La Grotta will inspire home cooks to explore homemade ice cream in delightful new ways.

Momofuku Milk Bar

Christina Tosi

Momofuku Milk Bar shares the recipes for Christina Tosi's fantastic desserts--the now-legendary riffs on childhood flavors and down-home classics (all essentially derived from ten mother recipes)--along with the compelling narrative of the unlikely beginnings of this quirky bakery's success. It all started one day when Momofuku founder David Chang asked Christina to make a dessert for dinner that night. Just like that, the pastry program at Momofuku began. Christina's playful desserts, including the compost cookie, a chunky chocolate-chip cookie studded with crunchy salty pretzels and coffee grounds; the crack pie, a sugary-buttery confection as craveable as the name implies; the cereal milk ice cream, made from everyone's favorite part of a nutritious breakfast--the milk at the bottom of a bowl of cereal; and the easy layer cakes that forgo fancy frosting in favor of unfinished edges that hint at the yumminess inside helped the restaurants earn praise from the New York Times and the Michelin Guide and led to the opening of Milk Bar, which now draws fans from around the country and the world. With all the recipes for the bakery's most beloved desserts--along with ones for savory baked goods that take a page from Chang's Asian-flavored cuisine, such as Kimchi Croissants with Blue Cheese--and 100 color photographs, Momofuku Milk Bar makes baking irresistible off-beat treats at home both foolproof and fun.

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs

Jamie Loftus

Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They're high culture, they're low culture, they're sports food, they're kids' food, they're hangover food, and they're deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can't avoid the great American hot dog. Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelog documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they're served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It's a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest. So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven.

Blue Bell Ice Cream: A Century at the Little Creamery in Brenham, Texas, 1907-2007

Dorothy McLeod MacInerney