Souvenir shops don’t tempt me: in the era of traveling light, who has the luggage space for T-shirts and trinkets? Yet I avidly collect another kind of keepsake. My most prized mementos of journeys past are the recipes I bring back to my home kitchen.
That’s because I know that preparing dishes discovered during travel — like an
herb-strewn, brightly acidic piyaz salad from Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, or the almond macarons I gobbled while road-tripping across southwest France — can evoke the far-flung places where I first tasted them.
Some of my favorite cookbooks, meanwhile, read like culinary travelogues. And recent years have brought a bumper crop of travel-inspired cookbooks, their recipes spanning Mexico City taquerias, a Korean monastery and the produce-filled home kitchens of countries in the Caucasus like Armenia and Georgia. Flipping through their pages captures the sheer sensory joy of travel, from the aroma of crushed lime leaves in Vietnam to the bustle and glare of Nigerian markets.
Maybe you’re already planning your next culinary vacation. Or maybe you’re eager to explore new-to-you foods without leaving home. Either way, these cookbooks are an invitation for armchair explorers to discover the world’s great cuisines — bite by bite.
Photography Courtesy of the Featured Cookbooks
‘Green Mountains: Walking in the Caucasus with Recipes’
‘Green Mountains: Walking in the Caucasus with Recipes’
by Caroline Eden
Few things sharpen the appetite like a long walk outside, so British travel writer and cook Caroline Eden researched her latest cookbook while taking a series of strolls through the verdant peaks of the southern Caucasus. In “Green Mountains,” she invites readers to follow her into the lush valleys of Armenia, through apricot orchards heavy with fruit, and into Georgian kitchens doling out hefty servings of hospitality and pirozhki. Eden’s book stands out for its thoughtful narrative passages meditating on art and landscapes, as well as approachable recipes like the nut brittle gozinaki — the perfect food to slip into your pocket when setting out on a hike — or kubdari, meat-stuffed flatbreads aromatic with fenugreek, coriander and sweet paprika.
‘Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings from a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey’
‘Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings from a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey’
by Nina Compton
The St. Lucian chef behind New Orleans restaurant Compère Lapin takes readers on a culinary odyssey from the island to Jamaica, Florida and
Louisiana — a sentimental education, with recipes. From the green fig and saltfish that’s St. Lucia’s national dish to Creole potato salad served at New Orleans cookouts, Compton sees clearly the way that food bridges geography and time. That gives her room to play. Alongside those mainstays are mashups like the tempura shrimp sandwich, a melding of Italian po’boys, fresh banh mi fixings and the Caribbean zest of Compton’s own pickled pineapple tartar sauce.
‘Vietnam: The Cookbook’
‘Vietnam: The Cookbook’
by Anaïs Ca Dao van Manen
Brilliant images of market scenes foreshadow this book’s evocative renditions of Vietnamese cuisine, with a focus on regional cooking in one of the world’s best places to eat. Chef Anaïs Ca Dao van Manen’s childhood, split between France and Vietnam, means she brings both local insight and an outsider’s keen eye to the Southeast Asian nation's culinary traditions. Recipes include dishes that are relatively familiar, like summer rolls whose fresh shrimp and herbs are encased in translucent rice wrappers, but lesser-known pleasures abound. Cooks with access to Vietnamese markets can try green fig salad with pork and prawns, or make van Manen’s fermented fish noodle soup from the Mekong Delta.
‘CDMX: The Food of Mexico City’
‘CDMX: The Food of Mexico City’
By Rosa Cienfuegos
Mexico’s whirling capital is a place apart, a city that synthesizes the country’s varied cuisines into a single inimitable scene. In this boldly hued book, Mexico City–born restaurateur Rosa Cienfuegos touches on dishes both traditional and not so much. She lavishes equal praise on Yucatecan cochinita pibil — pork infused with achiote and classically cooked in an earthen
oven — and dorilocos, the saucy Doritos snack mix doused with Valentina hot sauce and munched on street corners. It’s a tour that’s both lighthearted and stylish, blending childhood nostalgia and a traveling chef’s worldly palate. Cienfuegos, who now lives in Sydney, makes regular trips back to Mexico to revisit the cuisine that shaped her. This book is a chance for home cooks to travel along with her.
‘Bahari: Recipes From an Omani Kitchen and Beyond’
‘Bahari: Recipes From an Omani Kitchen and Beyond’
by Dina Macki
Following the Omani diaspora from the Arabian Peninsula to Zanzibar and the coastal U.K. town of Portsmouth, chef Dina Macki traces personal and culinary heritage in this ocean-spanning book. It all begins in the Omani capital of Muscat, where dishes like salmon, eggplant and tamarind curry read like love letters from a city where desert heat collides with sea air. In between the recipes are Macki’s meditations on the culture of Oman, as well as ingredients — dried limes, cardamom — that no Omani kitchen can do without.
‘Korean Temple Cooking: Lessons on Life and Buddhism, with Recipes, the Life and Work of Jeongkwan Snim’
‘Korean Temple Cooking: Lessons on Life and Buddhism, with Recipes, the Life and Work of Jeongkwan Snim’
by Hoo Nam Seelmann
Philosophy and seasonal cuisine combine in a book that summons the rhythms of life in Korean Buddhist temples, where meals are prepared with a care and devotion inseparable from spirituality. Author Hoo Nam Seelmann, a journalist who is originally from South Korea, sets traditional teachings alongside conversations with Jeongkwan Snim, a Zen Buddhist nun and cook who appeared in Season 3 of the Netflix series “Chef’s Table.”
Serene images of Snim cooking, whether stirring steaming cauldrons or slicing lotus root into lacy rounds, conjure the atmosphere in the Chunjinam hermitage of the Baekyangsa Temple, about 169 miles south of Seoul. Snim’s seasonally driven approach to cooking comes through vividly in vegan dishes like brothy kal-guksu noodles and an inky black sesame porridge made with short-grained rice.
‘Pakistan’
‘Pakistan’
by Maryam Jillani
If the foods of Pakistan aren’t already on your culinary bucket list, this ambitious book by Islamabad-born food writer Maryam Jillani might change that. In between traditional cookbook chapters on vegetables, meat and sweets, Jillani spotlights regions from the river-threaded Punjab to the coastal city of Karachi and the frontier-hugging Khyber.
Recipes like dahi baray, lentil fritters with yogurt, and crepe-like, mulberry-topped giyaling from the mountainous Hunza Valley, honor not only Pakistani flavors but also a way of life shaped by gathering at the table. Jillani is generous with recipes and memories alike, with notes featuring stories from her grandmother’s kitchen and colorful bazaars where food stalls serve kheer (creamy rice pudding) in clay vessels.
‘My Everyday Lagos’
‘My Everyday Lagos’
by Yewande Komolafe
In the opening pages of her kaleidoscopic volume of Nigerian cuisine in Lagos and beyond, New York Times staff writer and recipe developer Yewande Komolafe offers a short glossary of Yoruba terms that telegraph the riches to come. There’s dawadawa, a spice made from ground and fermented locust beans, and the water yam fritter ojojo. Between those vibrant ingredients and snapshots of Lagosian markets and meals, Komolafe captures the city’s buzz, hustle and brilliant hues. Her recipes, meanwhile, are a culinary immersion. If you can find peppersoup spice made from grains of paradise, uda pods and uziza seeds, use it to make Komolafe’s peppersoup with short ribs, which layers chiles and lemongrass for a dish of heady complexity.
‘The Spanish Mediterranean Islands Cookbook’
‘The Spanish Mediterranean Islands Cookbook’
by Jeff Koehler
Cooking and eating his way across the Balearic Islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera, James Beard Award–winning author Jeff Koehler celebrates the rich traditional foods of an archipelago better known for cutting-edge club scenes. Koehler begins at a 700-year-old market in the Menorca village where he lives part-time, setting the scene for a book that's as devoted to recounting Balearic culture as it is to doling out cooking tips.
Some recipes, like the arròs a la marinera, which is rich with mussels, prawns and cuttlefish, take careful preparation. But, as even a casual island visitor knows, all you need for a great Balearic meal are beautiful ingredients, simply arranged. A prime example is the Mallorcan snack pa amb oli, or bread with oil, the thick slices from a country loaf absorbing the sublimely concise combination of tomato, oil and salt.
‘Colombiana: A Rediscovery of Recipes and Rituals from the Soul of Colombia’
‘Colombiana: A Rediscovery of Recipes and Rituals from the Soul of Colombia’
by Mariana Velásquez
Rich chiaroscuro photography illustrates this volume of 100 Colombian recipes from food stylist and chef Mariana Velásquez. A native of Bogotá, Velásquez has a reverence for the gastronomic soul of the country’s women cooks, and many of her recipes are tributes to them. There’s her Tía Lilita’s coconut custard, with mounds of fresh coconut infused into cream, or plátanos en tentación, a homey dish of ripe plantains stewed in gently spiced and sweetened coconut milk, a recipe she adapted from iconic Colombian cookbook writer Teresita Román de Zurek.