Cooking doesn’t have to be difficult. While celebrity chefs on TikTok have taken the world by storm by making cheese from scratch, crafting multi-course dinners for their children, and exploring keto and Mediterranean diets, home cooking for the average person looks a little different. In the Hudson Valley and Berkshires, fresh produce and easy access to local farms up the quality of home cooking and open endless possibilities. These four new cookbooks from local chefs tackle seasonal farm-to-table cooking, quick and easy weeknight dinners, exciting brunches and dinner parties, and a step-by-step guide on how to grow your produce at home.
The Cook’s Garden
Kevin West
August 26, 2025, $45
In The Cook’s Garden, Kevin West epitomizes everything that Berkshire cooking represents. West opens the book with a quote from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” paying homage to the bounty of fresh food the Earth offers up. Gardening and cooking become harmonious in the chapters that follow, as West teaches readers the value that growing food with their own two hands can have on flavor profile, nutrition, and quality control. “It is a book about how to become a better cook by stepping into the garden,” West writes. Pulling on his childhood growing up amid self-proclaimed Smoky Mountain hillbillies, he leans into the growing seasons of the Berkshires while honoring the role that nature plays in the human food cycle. The book follows an easy, logical sequence, as he introduces the basics needed to create a thriving vegetable garden, before jumping into the knowledge needed to utilize homegrown veggies to their maximum capacity. In chapter 12, West gives an educational lesson on the lost beans of Blount County, describes how many bean seeds to plant per 10-foot row, and offers up a recipe for a green bean gratin. Because the book’s recipes are pretty simple, they can only be made successfully in conjunction with the freshest of produce. Through making simple cucumber salad, watermelon-herb salad, and carrot ribbons, West shows that great, homegrown, organic produce doesn’t need to be cooked to death: it just needs to be shown a little love and care in the kitchen to make it shine. Showered through his recipes are vibrant photos of veggies and aesthetic dinner dishes, as well as vegetable facts, educational tidbits, and meditations on the spirituality inherent in growing and preparing food all by oneself.
The Catskills Farm to Table Cookbook, Revised Edition
Courtney Wade
June 17, 2025, $25
Courtney Wade grew up deep in the western Catskill Mountains, in a place where less than .5 percent of the land was considered developed. “Calling the Catskills home means leading a life guided by the seasons,” cook, recipe developer, and cookbook author Alexis Deboschnek writes in the book’s introduction. The original version of this book was published in 2020 with over 75 recipes. However, as farm-to-table cooking becomes more and more dominant, Wade has revises the book to include local businesses succeeding in creating menus around local produce and new, updated recipes, all organized by season. In spring, Wade offers the reader recipes on how to make ramp and nettle pesto pasta with sausage using ramps, which signal the beginning of the growing season in the Catskills. To bring light to local businesses, she highlights Buck Hill Farm, a sustainable farm in Jefferson that is a model example of the farm-to-table method, and Barber’s Farm in Middleburgh, a 150-year-old family-owned institution. Wade follows a similar format for every season, ending in winter, with classic recipes for chicken stock and mashed winter squash, which is harvested in late fall but stored in a way that allows for many varieties to last until mid-winter. In her book, Wade captures the heart of the Catskills: good food, good produce, good meat and dairy, made into dishes that are meant for sharing.
Nights and Weekends
Alexis deBoschnek
August 12, 2025, $35
Alexis deBoschnek, a Catskills-based recipe developer, cook, and video host, is known for her wacky video series “Chef Out of Water.” This series, developed in 2020, produced viral hits like “Can This Chef Make A 3-Course Meal In A Coffee Maker?” and “Can This Chef Make A 3-Course Meal With A Clothing Iron?” Now, deBoschnek is helping others feel less like fish out of water in the kitchen with her sophomore cookbook, Nights and Weekends. Her debut cookbook, To the Last Bite, offered chefs of all levels the insights needed to take whatever was around them and make a yummy meal. In her new book, she reflects on her limited time after being thrust into an all-consuming caretaking role, and how it changed the way that she approached cooking. The book is split into two sections: nights and weekends. The nights section covers cooking on busy weeknights, with each recipe meeting four criteria: they are quick, they require minimal effort, they rely on common, easy-to-find ingredients, and they require dirtying as few dishes as possible. The weekends section, on the other hand, provides recipes that require a bit more intentional time spent in the kitchen. Still relatively simple, the weekend dishes they lean more into the process of cooking and all of its meditative qualities that seem inaccessible on a frantic Tuesday night. With her one-pot gnocchi ragu, everything-bagel tomato panzanella, and chile crisp salmon with quick pickle salad, deBoschnek helps readers put easy, delicious meals down on the table in record time. Then, she helps those same readers expand upon their skills and palates on the weekends with dishes like cacio e pepe popovers, crepes with mushrooms and gremolata, and tahini chocolate cheesecake bars.
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Italianish
Danny Freeman
August 26, 2025, $35
Beacon chef Danny Freeman has made a name for himself in the world of Italian Cooking through his debut cookbook, Danny Loves Pasta, and his TikTok @Dannylovespasta, where he has gained 1.5 million followers making lasagna soup and Peppa Pig-shaped ravioli. Freeman left his job after the birth of his first daughter, where, during nap time, he spent endless time in the kitchen dreaming up his next elaborate pasta recipe. However, when baby number two arrived with severe colic, his nap time cooking extravaganzas were put on hold. In that period, the idea for Italianish was born: a book that would honor his Italian heritage, while also helping people with limited time and energy to put into cooking get their feet wet. In Italianish, Freeman walks readers through a collection of fast meals, weeknight favorites, 60-minute meals, and weekend favorites. From fusion dishes like fried rice carbonara and pearl couscous and chickpea cacio e pepe to fan favorites like lasagna soup and stovetop four-cheese mac and cheese, Freeman’s book transcends traditional Italian cooking. At the same time, it also pays homage to the classic red sauce and bowls of pastina of his childhood. Freeman writes that the most authentic part of the book is the emphasis on getting food on the table to feed his kids. “This is what has always been done,” he writes. Italianish offers busy parents a fun and easy way to cook for their kids, while also offering up simple recipes for people looking to get into the kitchen. The book also contains bright images, bold orange font, and simple ingredient lists to make the cooking process, from shopping to chopping, convenient and fun.
