Maybe you just discovered celery root (a lumpy, softball-sized bulb), at the grocery store. Or perhaps you received watermelon radishes in a CSA package. Did a parsnip catch your eye at the farmers’ market? Even vegetables you think you know, like cabbage or brussels sprouts, will reveal next-level flavor with the right recipe. Becky Selengut has made it her mission to take less popular—or even outright scorned vegetables like beets and okra—and cook them into irresistible dishes. It’s all about knowing how to cook or serve them and what herbs and spices to incorporate. In Misunderstood Vegetables, Selengut highlights 25 vegetables, with recipes alongside history, step-by-step preparation, and storage tips. Organized by season, recipes include Feta and Citrus Salad, Charred Chard with Spicy Chile Oil, and Celery Root Gratin. A must-have for the plant-curious, this cookbook will have readers seeking out unusual and underused produce like never before.

Chef and cooking teacher Becky Selengut's Shroom feeds our enduring passion for foraged and wild foods by exploring 15 types of mushrooms, including detailed how-to's on everything home cooks need to know to create 75 inventive, internationally-flavoured mushroom dishes. The button mushroom better make room on the shelf. We're seeing a growing number of supermarkets displaying types of mushrooms that are leaving shoppers scratching their heads. Home cooks are buying previously obscure species from growers and gatherers at local farmers markets and adventurous cooks are collecting all manners of edible mushrooms in the woods. People are asking the question, "Now that I have it, what do I do with it?" Home cooks and chefs alike will need a book and an educated guide to walk them through the basics of cooking everything from portobellos and morels to chanterelles and the increasingly available, maitake, oyster, and beech mushrooms. Shroom is that book and Chef Becky Selengut is that tour guide. In a voice that's informed, but friendly and down-to-earth, Selengut's Shroom is a book for anyone looking to add mushrooms to their diet, find new ways to use mushrooms as part of a diet trending towards less meat, or diversify their repertoire with mushroom-accented recipes inspired from Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese cuisines, among others. Recipes include Maitake Tikka Masala, King Trumpet and Tomato Sandwiches with Spicy Mayo, and Hedgehog Mushrooms and Cheddar Grits with Fried eggs and Tabasco Honey. Written in a humorous voice, Becky Selengut guides the home cook through 15 species-specific chapters on mushroom cookery with the same levity and expertise she brought to the topic of sustainable seafood in her IACP-nominated 2011 book Good Fish. Selengut's wife and sommelier April Pogue once again teams up to provide wine pairings for each of the 75 recipes.

This engaging and approachable (and humorous!) guide to taste and flavor will make you a more skilled and confident home cook How to Taste outlines the underlying principles of taste, and then takes a deep dive into salt, acid, bitter, sweet, fat, umami, bite (heat), aromatics, and texture. You'll find out how temperature impacts your enjoyment of the dishes you make as does color, alcohol, and more. The handbook goes beyond telling home cooks what ingredients go well together or explaining cooking ratios. You'll learn how to adjust a dish that's too salty or too acidic and how to determine when something might be lacking. It also includes recipes and simple kitchen experiments that illustrate the importance of salt in a dish, or identifies whether you're a "supertaster" or not. Each recipe and experiment highlights the chapter's main lesson. How to Taste will ultimately help you feel confident about why and how various components of a dish are used to create balance, harmony, and deliciousness.