Homekeeper's Library: Autumn Cookbooks

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At the fall equinox, we achieve perfect balance between summer and winter, as on the midpoint between those two solstices, autumn arrives. We have reached Mabon as the Wheel of the Year turns, the second of the three harvest celebrations, honoring the harvest of fruits and the making of wine. Autumn décor appears in modern answer to the ancient impulse to adorn the altar with the bounty of the season. Gourds spill across mantle- and tabletop, nestled in autumn leaves in tones of scarlet, russet, gold. Pumpkins appear on porch and balcony to join the sheafs of wheat from Lammas, both anticipating the jack o’lanterns and scarecrows of Samhain. In our urban home, we uncrate our collection of autumn buildings to be placed on the credenza, illuminated from within by candlelight.

On the mantel above the cookbook shelves, ceramic foxes pose against bottles of Armagnac and coffee liqueur. From those shelves, I take down cookbooks that have waited patiently through spring and summer. Something about autumn calls us to the kitchen, for fall baking to perfume the air with warming spice, for soups and stews to simmer all day on the stovetop, for hearty Sunday suppers to cap a weekend of antiquing, scrimmage games, switching out closets for the season.

Like autumn itself, as I page through these cookbooks, anticipation is as rewarding as the cooking itself. It is time to stock the pantry, plan menus for autumn meals, make autumn treats savory and sweet. Here is my selection of autumn cookbooks. Slice a piece of coffee cake, make a cup of pumpkin coffee, and join me in anticipating autumn’s pleasures as they enfold us, cozy as a quilt just taken from warm months spent in camphor, making memories that will stretch through autumns yet to come.

Autumn Cookbooks

As always, this list is based on my ongoing experience as a homekeeper and lifestyle author, and none of these is a compensated endorsement. When choosing bookstores, please consider supporting your favorite independent bookstore - most of them provide mail order.

As you'd expect, America’s Test Kitchen’s The Complete Autumn and Winter Cookbook is a definitive volume regarding the autumn kitchen. From French Onion Soup to pumpkin bars, this cornucopia of recipes is inspired by chilly autumn nights that presage fireside at the Ski Lodge. Serve your favorite traditional fare or learn a new favorite from the cross-cultural encyclopedia of recipes. Hone your knives and your kitchen skills with sections on kitchen basics, party planning, equipment, and much more, for this authoritative book of, and for, the kitchen is meant to be put to good use.  

I’ve written before about the charming and useful A Harvest of Pumpkins and Squash. That was a mini column from the earliest days of Urban Home Blog, but this slim volume is anything but slight. Lou Siebert Pappas leads us through the story and glossary of squashes, then brings out the food. Try tortellini with butternut squash and artichoke hearts or pumpkin walnut cake. Pumpkins are the star squash of the harvest kitchen, but harvest also celebrates bounty from the orchard. Olwen Woodier's The Apple Cookbook is a classic devoted to the specialty, and specialness, of apples. If the history of apples and list of their varieties doesn't send you to the orchard on a crisp autumn day, such recipes as apple iced tea, sausage and apple omelet, and chicken and apple gyros will.

Whether you commemorate Harvest as Mabon or as wine country crush, grapes are sacred to the wine gods and goddesses. Seasons in the Wine Country by Cate Conniff for the Culinary Institute of America celebrates the rustic elegance of wine country cooking with recipes for its progressing seasons. Pair pumpkin sage polenta or Chicken in Calvados with California classic Pinot Noir or Chardonnay and toast wine-making season. Fiona Beckett’s The Wine Lover’s Kitchen came to me as a birthday present to myself, and though a winter baby, I always cook from it during autumn. Favorites in our urban home include a smoked duck salad with a dressing of reduced Pinot Noir, and a page-flagged, can’t-fail recipe for Coq au Vin.   

Tolling school bells remind us that autumn is a great time to learn something new. I am inspired by my love of Chinese cooking and rudimentary skill at preparing it to learn this cooking this autumn, and I could not have better teachers than Jeffrey and Kevin Pang. Their A Very Chinese Cookbook demystifies this great cuisine and renders it imminently doable while respecting its provenance. The recipe list is comprehensive and the instructions are clear and inspiring. I was thrilled to find a recipe for Soy Sauce Chicken, my favorite NYC Chinese restaurant lunch, and with the Pangs guiding me, I will learn to prepare it myself.

Scott Clark and Betsy Andrews’ Coastal is a lesson in another love of mine: California cooking. This beautiful, educational tome is told from the viewpoint that the people of the Pacific Coast are the spirit of California cooking, and the cooking itself is the soul. I don’t know if I’ll ever find myself on a fishing vessel on Monterey Bay, but yes, as a matter of fact, I would like to go mushroom foraging on the peninsula. Back at home, Clark’s recipe for the elusive health food classic hippie vinaigrette is already in rotation at our dinner table.

Finally, as autumn commences, it is not too soon to start thinking about – and planning for – one of its high points: Thanksgiving. While I maintain that the best Thanksgiving recipe collection is the one you have built over years from family and friends, it is understood that this doesn't apply to everyone. Williams Sonoma’s The Best of Thanksgiving is the proverbial trove of recipes from simple to involved and playbook to have a treasured Thanksgiving without exhausting yourself. If this volume is overwhelming, try the slimmer, easy to use Thanksgiving from their Kitchen Library.