Every dream kitchen starts with inspiration and a little guidance. Enter the cookbook: part teacher, part storyteller, and one of the most valuable tools a home cook can own.
British Columbia’s food culture is as diverse as its landscapes, stretching from orchard-lined valleys and coastal waters to vibrant multicultural communities. Reflecting that richness, locally published cookbooks share expertise, preserve traditions, and encourage readers to discover new flavours and techniques.
Follow these eight steps, from stocking your bar cart and upgrading your pantry to mastering essential skills, exploring global cuisines, and creating a more accessible cooking space, to build your dream kitchen with some of B.C.’s best cookbook authors as your guides.
Step 1: Stock Your Bar
The Five-Bottle Bar: A Simple Guide to Stylish Cocktails by Jessica Schacht (TouchWood Editions)
Written by Jessica Schacht, co-founder of Ampersand Distilling Company in Duncan, B.C., The Five-Bottle Bar simplifies the art of cocktail-making with an approachable, minimalist philosophy.
Built around just five essential bottles (gin, whiskey, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, and Campari) this beautifully photographed collection provides everything you need to master the fundamentals, develop your own bartending style, and lean into your creative side. Featuring beloved classics such as the Gin & Tonic, Old Fashioned, Martini, and Negroni, alongside collections of sours, punches, and contemporary originals, Schacht demonstrates how to create a thoughtfully stocked bar in an accessible, practical, and inspiring way. Determined to be for everyone, the book also embraces the growing world of mocktails inspired by innovative zero-proof spirits.
Step 2: Upgrade Your Pantry
The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook by Emily Lycopolus (TouchWood Editions)
We know olive oil and vinegar are straightforward pantry must-haves, but how exactly do we use them, and how can they deliberately elevate the flavour of our cooking?
The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook teaches us there’s a world of discovery beyond the basics: there’s Rosemary and Herb de Provence infused olive oil, Blood Orange fused olive oil, Apricot white balsamic, flavoured white vinegar, endless specialty items that can take a meal in new directions. In this gorgeously photographed book, Emily Lycopolus provides recipes that use 50 of the most popular and widely available specialty olive oil and vinegar products that enhance appetizers, salads, soups, main dishes, baked goods, and desserts. Expand your culinary repertoire by learning the basics of flavour pairing and discover an abundance of ways to use your new favourite products.
Step 3: Master the Basics
Babette’s Bread: Stories, Recipes, and the Fundamental Techniques of Artisan Bread by Babette Kourelos (TouchWood Editions)
Bread is both a basic and a mastered skill, filled with love, soul, and history, passed down generation to generation. From crusty baguettes to bubbly focaccias and robust sourdoughs, Babette’s Bread is a comprehensive and unpretentious guide to bread-making, with useful advice on how to make fresh homemade bread fit into even the busiest of schedules.
An accessible primer dedicated to demystifying and simplifying this nourishing staple skill, the book provides guidance through each stage of the bread-making process, from sourcing quality ingredients to fermentation, shaping, baking, and storing. Chapters tackle everything from straight dough breads, pre-fermented, cold fermented, sourdough, sweet and enriched, rye, whole grain, steamed, and quick breads.
With her simple, unpretentious approach, Babette provides newbie and seasoned bakers everything they need to take back this affordable, soulful domestic practice. From a basic white sandwich loaf to pizza dough, koulouri, challah, hot cross buns, stollen, beer bread, cornbread, pitas, bagels, pretzels, and buttermilk rusks, Babette’s Bread takes inspiration from around the world and offers a range of mouth-watering breads to try. More than 60 recipes accompanied by photos of delectable loaves and sun-filled work spaces, this is a complete guide to falling in love with bread-making.
Step 4: Cook Like a Chef
The Dirty Apron Cookbook by David Robertson (Figure 1 Publishing)
If you already have a thoughtfully curated pantry and mastered the basics, but your passion for cooking is only ever-growing, you might be on your way to becoming a real kitchen buff. David Robertson has been in the cooking business for over 30 years and teaches 8,000 students each year at Vancouver’s acclaimed Dirty Apron Cooking School.
Lavishly illustrated with full-page food photos and instructional sequences, loaded with chefs’ notes and tricks of the trade, and written with the home cook in mind, The Dirty Apron Cookbook is like your own private cooking class, a reference to return to time and time again. It features a collection of Robertson’s best tried-and-true recipes with more than 80 of the school’s signature dishes. From quick-and-easy starters to seasonal soups, sandwiches, entrées, and desserts, this book is filled with dishes that taste and look like you’re in a high-end restaurant, but they’re in fact so easy to make in the comfort of your home.
Step 5: Celebrate Local Flavours
The Okanagan Table: The Art of Everyday Home Cooking by Rod Butters (Figure 1 Publishing)
A love of food begins close to home, in the kitchen, around the dinner table, in backyard gardens, and at local farmers’ markets where everyday cooks connect with the flavours and traditions of their communities. In British Columbia, few regions express that connection more vividly than the Okanagan Valley, where generations of farmers have shaped a rich culinary landscape. The region explodes with apricots, peaches, sweet cherries, pears, plums, nectarines, grapes, and apples. Its abundant harvests, regional ingredients, and deep agricultural roots have influenced how we cook, gather, and celebrate food, earning a well-deserved place in the spotlight.
The Okanagan Table is a cookbook celebrating these local flavours: creating exceptional meals by connecting with the freshest, highest quality food. Featuring more than 80 illustrated recipes, the book is structured in the order in which we enjoy our meals: sunrise, midday, sunset, and twilight, and showcases a collection of classic and signature recipes from Oat-Crusted Arctic Char and Root Vegetable Torte to Crab Cappuccino and Double Chocolate Mashed Potato Brioche. The recipes are simple and yet frequently decadent. And like most good things in life, they appear complex but are unabashedly straightforward. And finally, many of the recipes include pairings with the best wines and drinks in the region. Designed for sharing with friends and family, these recipes prove there’s no place like home.
Step 6: Travel Through Taste
Mad Love: Big Flavors Made to Share, from South Asia to the West Indies–A Cookbook by Devan Rajkumar (Figure 1 Publishing)
There is a world of flavours to discover, inspire, and delight. In Mad Love, Rajkumar invites readers on a vibrant culinary journey through the dishes, ingredients, and stories that have defined his life. Featuring more than 100 inventive recipes that reimagine traditional East and West Indian favourites while encouraging cooks to expand their palates, the book celebrates the power of food to connect people, cultures, and generations.
A reflection of his personal and professional journey, Mad Love is filled with flavour-forward, easy-to-follow recipes ranging from comforting curries and stews to warm, pillowy breads, bright salads, satisfying street foods, and spectacular dishes designed for sharing. Rich with personal stories and cultural insights, it is both a cookbook and a heartfelt tribute to heritage, identity, family, and community.
Bursting with Caribbean sunshine and bold, unforgettable flavours, Mad Love is an unapologetic celebration of cooking from the heart and an inspiring collection for home cooks of every skill level.
Step 7: Finish on a Sweet Note
Thyme for Dessert by DL Acken (TouchWood Editions)
Make sure to leave room for dessert. This decadent book of dessert recipes embraces the varied flavours of the West Coast, drawing from its abundant wild and cultivated plants and from its rich medley of cultures to create mouthwatering local recipes. Covering cookies, bars, breads, cakes, pies, pastries, and frozen desserts, you’ll find treats for sugar-lovers and savoury dessert fans alike in this small but mighty cookbook perfectly sized for everyday kitchen use. With ample suggestions for substitutions and a section on preserving, the home chef will find these recipes practical enough to incorporate into daily life and unique enough to impress on special occasions.
Thyme for Dessert includes every type of West Coast ingredient: from local plants like spruce tips and haskaps, and abundant introduced vegetation like blackberries and zucchinis, as well as iconic staples from vibrant local immigrant communities such as garam masala and truffles. DL Acken’s latest cookbook is a gorgeous tribute to the rich flavours of her home region that showcases delicious sweets that will entice locals and visitors alike.
Step 8: Make the Kitchen Work for Everyone
Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook by Jules Sherred (TouchWood Editions)
