With the holidays fast approaching and cookbook season in full swing, Amazon has released its list of best cookbooks of 2012, giving top nods to the Barefoot Contessa for her ‘foolproof recipes.’
The online bookstore has made it a little easier for consumers looking for gift ideas for the foodie gourmands in their lives with its annual Best Books 2012 list.
Topping this year’s round-up is Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust.
Known to TV audiences as the doyenne and resident matriarch of the Hamptons — the posh, seaside resort area in New York State frequented by the well-heeled and jet set — the Barefoot Contessa is known for her classic, hearty recipes and flair for entertaining.
Recipes in her latest cookery book include dishes such as lobster and potato salad; tomato soup with grilled cheese croutons; slow-roasted filet of beef with basil Parmesan mayonnaise; sticky toffee date cake with Bourbon glaze and salted caramel brownies.
Meanwhile, a cookbook written by a food blogger with no formal training — she’s never even been a waitress much less a chef — is Amazon’s pick as the second best cookery book of 2012.
Deb Perelman is the incarnation of the food blogger’s dream come true, parlaying her site The Smitten Kitchen into a cookbook of the same name. The Smitten Kitchen’s premise? Comfort foods prepared in her small Manhattan galley kitchen with little tolerance for “fussiness and pretentious ingredients” like truffle oil or Himalayan pink salt, she says.
The cookbook, meanwhile, includes recipes such as asparagus pizza, ratatouille sandwiches, and cauliflower pesto, mushroom Bourguignon and chocolate hazelnut crepe cake.
Here are Amazon’s top cookbooks of 2012, ranked by sales:
1. Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust by Ina Garten
2. The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman
3. Modernist Cuisine at Home by Nathan Myhrvold
4. Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller
5. Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
6. Practical Paleo: A Customized Approach to Health and a Whole-Foods Lifestyle by Diane Sanfilippo, Bill Staley and Robb Wolf
7. True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure by Andrew Weil, Sam Fox and Michael Stebner
8. The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Griffith Day and Cheryl Day
9. Burma: Rivers of Flavor by Naomi Duguid
10. Whole Larder Love: Grow Gather Hunt Cook by Rohan Anderson