Books: On Food & Drink

There are three new books out that will refine your palette and make you appreciate drinks in a new way: Tasty Ultimate: How To Cook Basically Anything; House of Vinegar: The Power of Sour, with Recipes; and Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint.


Tasty Ultimate: How To Cook Basically Anything
By Tasty
Clarkson Potter; hardcover; $29.99

TASTY is the world's largest social food network, followed by more than 500 million people around the world with its signature fun, easy, and delicious video recipes. The brand is all about making cooking practical and accessible for beginners and experts alike.
From the cooking aficionados in BuzzFeed's test kitchen come 150 recipes in the new book Tasty Ultimate. Some of these recipes are brand new, as well as fan favorites, and will help you master the basics, learn hacks, and impress everyone you know.
The recipes are written and photographed in Tasty's trademark easy-to-follow, step-by-step style. This cookbook will teach you everything you need to know, including what tools and ingredients to invest in, techniques worth learning, and must-have cooking skills, and how to put it all together into actual meals.
There are Tasty's most popular features like meal prep (Weekday Meal-Prep Chicken Burrito Bowls) and the verses series (Fudgey vs. Cakey Brownies), and these fun, easy-to-do recipes highlight the fresh and inventive flavors that Tasty is know for.
In addition to vegetarian dishes, slow-cooker meals, and indulgent desserts, there are also large-scale recipes perfect for hosting Thanksgiving, Friendsgiving, Christmas, or Super Bowl Sunday. 
Tasty Ultimate is the must-have kitchen companion for home cooks of all skill levels, and there is no meal too big or too small to be cooked.

Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint
By John Holl
Basic Books; hardcover, 288 pages; $26.00

Beer is big at the moment in the United States, as there are more breweries currently operating that at any other time in the country's history. This has led brewers to experiment more than ever before with America's second-favorite drink (coffee still reigns supreme).
With more options than every, it can get pretty confusing, and that is where John Holl, the Senior Editor of Craft Beer and Brewing magazine, comes in.
Holl argues that beer is more than just a combination of ingredients in a pint glass - it's a whole orbit of other elements around that glass to acknowledge, appreciate, and become an expert in.
In his new book Drink Beer, Think Beer, Holl makes the assertion that drinking beer is easy. The difficult part is to think critically about beer. He draws upon history, economics, interviews with industry leaders, his own deep knowledge of beer to give a complete guide to beer today.
Holl encourages readers to examine and more fully enjoy this amazing beverage, and he does that by giving the story of beer in America from the beginning to the Prohibition era, and its renaissance after the passage of the 21st Amendment.
This is the best time to be a beer drinker, and Holl explores how beer and breweries are building communities, changing tastes, and shaping lives. 
Drink Beer, Think Beer will equip everyone, from casual enthusiasts to die-hard hopheads, with what they need to make informed choices and support the brewers and beers that matter to them in a straightforward, exciting manner.

House of Vinegar: The Power of Sour, with Recipes
By Jonathon Sawyer
Ten Speed Press; hardcover, 288 pages; $30

James Beard Award-winning chef Jonathon Sawyer gives a compelling take on how vinegar influences and elevates all aspects of cooking, and describes how to make vinegars at home in preparation for using them in vinaigrettes, sauces, marinades, braises, desserts, and even drinks.
In the new book, House of Vinegar, Sawyer has created a guide to unlocking the potential of every sweet, salty, sour, and savory bit in food. Acidic sour foods like vinegar have the ability to open the senses and make taste buds more sensitive to all the other tastes. Vinegar can also bring balance as well as tone down the intensity of overly bitter and fatty foods.
Vinegar is unleashed as a flavor booster with recipes for base vinegars like Apple Wine Vinegar, Craft Beer Vinegar, and Cucumber Vinegar. These building blocks are part of recipes that give new life to dishes like Monday-Night Pork Chops with Salsa Verde, Spicy Peach Confit Chicken Wings, Tofu Jerky, Ratatouille Nicoise, and Apple Tarte Tatin.
House of Vinegar will make you appreciate it more that ever, and illustrates why and how vinegar has become a cornerstone of cooking and is an indispensable part of any kitchen.