Two recent cookbooks demonstrate a trend that’s becoming more popular with those who have little time to cook, yet still want to put something fresh and delicious on the dinner table. They are “The Harvest Eating Cookbook” (Running Press, $29.95) by PBS chef Keith Snow and Giada at Home (Clarkson Potter, $35) by Food Network celebrity Giada De Laurentiis.

What they have in common is that they are both tie-ins to TV shows and feature plenty of pretty pictures of food. Yet neither has little writing in them to rob you of an extra second to spare.

So don’t look for a lot of technique here. Instead look for sound recipes that come together quickly. Snow even provides prep times as well as cooking time, so you can have Roasted Cauliflower on the table in no time. Snow says you should be able to prep the vegetable in two minutes and cook it in 15, so it’s ready in 17 minutes. Whip that up while you’re working on Sautéed Shrimp with Margarita Sauce, which takes 10 minutes of prep time and 25 minutes of cooking.

What is Harvest Eating? Snow answers in his brief introduction: “Harvest Eating is not a fad diet. Rather a lifestyle of cooking and eating using methods that have been practiced for centuries all over the globe. The method is simple: Buy foods that are fresh and in season; then prepare them using whole, natural ingredients produced by farmers, not chemists. If your second-grader can’t read it, you definitely don’t want to eat it.”

Snow breaks down his recipes into the seasons, using an icon to differentiate among the dishes. That doesn’t always work here in South Texas; the better advise would be to use whatever is freshest at the farmers market, mixing and matching what is available now, no matter what the rest of the country is eating.

If I prefer Snow’s work to De Laurentiis’, it could be because so many of the recipes and few tips that the Food Network star seem old hat. “Chimichurri is the A1 sauce of Argentina,” she writes as a preface to one recipe. “Italians love lentils and cook them in lots of creative ways,” she burbles in another. Some of her information is helpful, though: “Leftover caponata will keep, covered in the refrigerator, for up to a week. Toss with warm pasta, serve on top of meat, chicken or fish, or simply serve it with some toasted bread or crostini.”

Essentially, though, the usefulness of “Giada at Home” boils down to whether you like De Laurentiis’ Cal-Ital approach to cooking. After leafing through the book on several occasions, I came to the conclusion that I don’t. A few recipes were intriguing, but more often than not, I kept flipping pages hoping to find something I might make. For every Bibb, Basil and Mint Salad or Red Snapper with Fava Bean Purée, there were too many dishes like the sickly sweet sounding Honey-Balsamic Lamb Chops or the yawn-inducing turkey meatloaf.

No amount of photos of De Laurentiis in her kitchen or dining with friends could make up for the cavernous gastronomic pauses.

Your tastes could be wildly different. Just take the time to leaf through the both books before deciding.

Real Simple magazine’s “Easy, Delicious Meals” (Real Simple, $27.95) is a cookbook that’s guaranteed to draw you in, if only by its photographs.

There’s the red, white and blue of the Berry Shortcakes with strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream that make it a patriotic dream. The image of Easy Ice Cream Cake made with ice cream sandwiches, whipped cream and chopped chocolate chips practically had me drooling. Toasted coconut is showered all over the Apricot-Coconut Cake, a combination that makes me want to head for the kitchen.

And that’s just the dessert section.

The recipes throughout are, in fact, simple, whether you’re whipping up an appetizer of Rosemary Pecans or making a Simple Roast Chicken with onion and new potatoes. A spinach salad gets a boost from pan-fried salami. Spaghetti is dressed up in bacon and eggs. Sausages are paired with warm tomatoes and hash browns to create a meal that’s hearty, rustic and winning. Macaroni and cheese blends Gruyère and Cheddar with a kick of cayenne pepper. All come together in a matter of minutes, so dinner will get on the table in practically no time.

Dry-rubbed Baby Back Ribs go together in 10 minutes and take only 45 minutes to cook. Pork with Sautéed Granny Smith Apples takes 20 minutes prep time and only 30 to cook. The longest one of the recipes took was the hour that the pie crust needed to rest before rolling out.

If you’re avoiding carbs, this may not be the book for you. There’s an entire pasta section, followed by a vegetarian entrée section in which most of the dishes are made with rice, potatoes, gnocchi, bread, bread and more bread. Then the side dishes include Parsleyed Corn, New Potato and Watercress Salad, Cheddar and Scallion Grits, and Roasted Parsnips and Carrots with Sage. Then there are those desserts again.

In the end, Real Simple’s recipe editors Lygeia Grace and Kate Merker have put together a collection that lives up to the magazine’s theme. These dishes are simple to put together, yet the flavors are excellent and should have your family asking for seconds.

Bacon isn’t the only pork product that’s good in a spinach salad.

Spinach Salad with Warm Onions and Crispy Salami

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided use
1/4 pound hard salami, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
Kosher salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
1/2 red onion, sliced into rounds
2 bunches spinach, thick stems removed (about 8 cups)
4 hard-cooked eggs (optional)

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the salami and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.

Add the vinegar, mustard, honey, the remaining oil and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper to the skillet with the drippings. Whisk to combine.

Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to soften, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the salami.

Divide the spinach among plates and spoon the onion and salami over the top. Serve with the eggs, if using.

Total time: 15 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

Source: “Real Simple: Easy, Delicious Recipes,” edited by Lygeia Grace and Kate Merker

From recipes for Korea’s spicy grilled pork to real Moroccan shish kebab, barbecue king Steven Raichlen’s new book holds a feast of information on the worldwide art of barbecue.

Raichlen will share some of these secrets of his “live fire” cooking Monday, when he is in San Antonio for KLRN’s Chef Series.

Looking through the new “Planet Barbecue” (Workman Publishing, $22.95) is delicious enough that it will inspire the backyard cook to head for the grill.  As with all of Raichlen’s books on this subject there are recipes, of course, but so much more. Information is packaged in a logical, readable style, with clear instruction that has made Raichlen the country’s No. 1 teacher of the art.

The front of the book offers a timeline, beginning from the days of Homo erectus, or “upright man”  in Africa 1.9 million years ago.

“This manlike, if not fully human, ancestor of modern man invented barbecue.” he writes.  (This bit of information might be fun to impart to your own backyard fellow as he fumes over his fire.)

How did this man-animal figure out to use fire to cook? We have no historical record, but Raichlen poses that it probably was opportunistic. Think about this manimal returning to a burned out forest and finding a whole roasted auroch (an ancestral steer) or a hippidion (early horse) cooked to a turn. The real turning point, writes Raichlen, came about 1.8 million years ago when this same ancestral cousin to man began eating fire-cooked meat regularly.

Fire offered any number of social consequences.

“Fire meant protection against predators. Fire meant leaving the safety of sleeping in trees for encampments based on the ground. Fire meant the shared communal activities of cooking, eating, sitting and sleeping around a fire,” he writes. Fire also meant a division of labor, first between man and woman, then between hunters and gatherers, and eventually “between people who tended the home fires (literally and figuratively) and people who did their work in the world at large.”

Bringing the information up to current times, the author includes a section “Grilling with a Conscience: A Word About Ingredients and Shopping.” (Buy free range, support your farmers markets, buy fair trade, etc.)

Another page is devoted to “The Perfect Burger” with 20 tips. My favorite tip: “Make a slight depression in the center of each patty. Burgers shrink more at the edges than at the center, so the indentation will give you a patty of a more even thickness when the meat is cooked.” The best combination of beef cuts for burgers, he says, is brisket with chuck, in a ration of 45 to 55 percent. Fat content should be 22 percent fat.  You can cut your fat content elsewhere, he suggests.

The book travels the globe for tasty recipes, and is presented in the logical progression of a meal, from starters through dessert. If Serbian Bacon-Grilled Prunes doesn’t grab you, the recipe for Smoked Ice Cream at the end certainly should. Salads, vegetables and breads have their turn as well.

Sauces are paired with the appropriate grilled dishes, such as the Creamy Asian Peanut Sauce with the Chicken Satés from Malaysia. Sides are included, such as the Icicle Radish Salad that accompanies the German preparation, Onion-Stuffed, Spit-Roasted Pork Shoulder. This article also shows in clear photos how to prepare the pork shoulder for the rotisserie.

He presents the familiar-to-San Antonio recipe of Peruvian Beef Kebabs (Anticuchos), calling for beef rib-eye or sirloin, but also suggesting the traditional meat used in this dish, beef heart. The use of beef heart, he suggests might have originated with African slaves, brought to Peru to work the mines and plantations. They were likely to have been served the organs and innards of the cow. The traditional meat in Peru, though, was llama.

This is a book that any barbecue author would long to write, and Raichlen does it in great style. it is also a book that any barbecue lover should read.

Recipe: Grilled Veal Chops with Sweet and Sour Onions

Robert Irvine, a Food Network chef and star of “Dinner: Impossible,”  says he graduated from the Culinary School of Hard Knocks. He’s not lying.

Irvine describes himself as someone who, at age 11, was studying food photos and making up recipes either to cook, or just imagine. He started out cooking for Her Majesty’s Royal Navy (a very demanding clientele, that) and shipboard for captain’s tables, before working in taverns and pubs. Now he cooks on television.

“My soufflés rise, my sauces don’t break and on a good day I can smell a perfect sear or a tainted stock from 50 feet away,” Irvine says in his cookbook “Impossible to Easy” (Wm. Morrow, $29.99). That sounds like an expert to me.

After reading his introduction about his interest and experience in cooking, as well as his philosophy, I felt confident that this was no TV star that just made it on his good looks and cute personality.  Looking through the names of dishes he offers (111 recipes, total) made me hungry. I wanted to sit down at a restaurant and see each and every one of them on the menu.

So, for me, that put this cookbook off to a good start. Here are some more things I like about it. He has studied classical French technique and doesn’t hesitate to describe just how you can have sauces that don’t break and soufflés that rise. It’s not a huge book, at less than 300 pages, but it’s packed with real information that promises the home cook professional results.

Just for good measure, here are some of the recipe titles: Lobster Brie Quesadilla; Veal Chops with Roasted Figs and Caramelized Onion; Grilled Skirt Steak with Roast Corn Haricot Salad; Roasted Cornish Game Hen with Sweet Potato Gnocchi; Crispy Crab and Smoked Salmon Cakes with Baby Arugula and Mango Aioli. That list goes on and (deliciously) on.

I’m glad I have this book to add to my shelf — but I also plan to take it down more than a few times.

“Impossible to Easy” was co-authored with Brian O’Reilly.

On my first trip to New Orleans, I took a cooking class in which the instructor weighed in on one of the great questions of our time: The proper pronunciation of the nut is pa-KAWN, she said, because a PEE-can is something our ancestors kept under the bed in their time.

The authors of “Pecans From Soup to Nuts” (Pelican Publishing Co., $19.95) have a more diplomatic — and decidedly less humorous response: “It really doesn’t matter how you say the name of the nut,” they say, they just want you to enjoy this culinary delight, whether it’s roasted with butter and salt, tossed in salads or used to crust meats.

Do we ever.

When it comes to pecans, Texas is as much a part of the South as Georgia and Louisiana. The trees dot the landscape, from orchards to back yards, showering us each fall with rich treats that last us through the year.

That’s why this cookbook, from Keith Courrégé and Marcelle Bienvenu, is so welcome. The authors offer a great wealth of ideas that extend far beyond desserts. Sure, there’s a recipe for Olivia’s Perfect Pecan Pie, with molasses cutting the corn syrup; Macaroon Pie, with coconut added to the mix; and even a Pecan Martini, with vodka mixed with pecan liqueur and served in a chilled glass with pecan meal on the rim.

But there’s also recipes for Egg Salad With Bacon and Pecans, which gets a lively kick from horseradish in the dressing; Asparagus and Pecan Butter, a side dish that goes together in a snap; and Crabmeat Royale, in which lump crab is tossed with butter, lemon juice, parsley and chopped pecans. In fact, the majority of the book is made up of savory suggestions that left me truly hungry.

The authors,working under the aegis of the Louisiana pecan orchard, Cane River Pecan Company, also include some handy information about shelling and storing. (“Package shelled pecans in moisture/vapor-proof containers, such as plastic cartons, glass freezer jars, reusable cans, or plastic freezer bags,” they write. “Nuts can be thawed and refrozen without loss of quality.”)

Need a quick guide on making your own pecan meal? Just follow this simple rule: “Put pecan halves or pieces in a food processor or electric blender and pulse several times until very fine. Do not overprocess. Due to the high oil content, the meal can turn almost into butter if ground too quickly. One cup of pecan halves or pieces yields about one cup of meal. You can make a large batch of the meal and store it in airtight containers in the freezer for later use. ”

“Pecans From Soup to Nuts” is not exactly a new book. It started out in 1984 as a self-published book written by the late Courrégé, who was known as “the Crown Price of the Nut Kingdom.” Over the years, the book was reprinted and has now been revised and updated by Bienvenu. It should be welcome by anyone whose mouth waters at the mention of pecans, no matter how the word is pronounced.

At a recent cookbook swap, people were invited to bring up to five gently used cookbooks to trade. I quickly picked out five from my collection, including four diet cookbooks that I had never even looked at.

I was not alone in my thinking. Every other cookbook that people brought, save the tome on French cooking that I grabbed instantly, was a diet book of some sort. Most were low-fat or emphasized so-called “healthful” or “healthy” eating.

I can easily see Joy Bauer’s new “Slim and Scrumptious” (William Morrow, $24.99) in some future swap. It’s not because of the quality of the cookbook, but because a cookbook by itself, any cookbook, won’t cause anyone’s obesity to disappear. Exercise is vital. No book can make you do that. Yet we tend to blame the writer when the book fails to be the panacea we thought it would be.

So, what does that leave you with? Bauer, nutrition expert on NBC’s “Today” show, has crafted some recipes that sound truly delicious. Who could say no to Double Chocolate Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce? Or Herb-roasted Pork Tenderloin? Beef Tenderloin With Fig Reduction?

Ratatouille Lentil Stew is something I can see making regularly in summer, when the eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini are at their finest. And it doesn’t call for any Frankenfoods, aka the modified, processed additives you find in too many diet books. Brazilian Seafood Stew makes good use of scallops, shrimp and coconut milk. (Just don’t buy the light coconut milk suggested. Save some money and make your own light version by mixing one part water with one part coconut milk.)

As a dessert or a snack, Dark Cocoa Almonds are great and won’t make you think you’re eating diet food.

Bauer also includes a few Mexican-flavored dishes, perfect for San Antonians who want lighter versions of some of their favorite dishes. The Chipotle Chicken and the Spicy Pork Tacos With Sassy Slaw both look great, but I think I’d rather eat less guacamole than dip into Bauer’s version, which thins out the avocado with yogurt.

Each of the recipes comes with a nutritional analysis, which can be a big help given the variety of diets there are. Some are low carb, others low sodium and most are low calorie.

But that brings up what’s wrong with Bauer’s book and too many other diet books. How are we to know if this is the diet right for our individual bodies. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another. Plus, there are a growing number of studies questioning conventional wisdom on weight loss, such as the suggestion that some low-fat foods actually add weight to people. There’s nothing really new in that. It has long been known that if you want to add weight, the easiest way is to eat plenty of pasta, a fat-free food. Sugar is also fat-free and adds weight.

Then there are the health aspects of other low-fat foods that are being questioned, such as studies that say everything from infertility in women to prostate cancer in men can be related to the consumption of fat-free and reduced-fat dairy products.

So, don’t discount your doctor’s advice on what you should be eating. Listen to your body. Then take recipes likes Bauer’s and modify them to suit your dietary needs. I think most of us would love Buffalo Chicken Chili With Whipped Blue Cheese regardless of what type of cookbook the recipe is in.

PBS was not a mainstay in my home when I was growing up. Our reception was always scratchy, so unless the show was something special (“I, Claudius,” “Elizabeth R”), I didn’t watch it. As a result, I essentially missed the age of the great chefs on TV, including Julia Child and Jacques Pépin, separate and together. I don’t know if I would have watched them anyway, as I wasn’t interested in cooking as a child. Eating, yes. Cooking, no.

I was a little skeptical when a member of my book club chose Pépin’s “The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen” as our reading selection. This isn’t a foodie book group, though we did read Robb Walsh’s “Sex, Death & Oysters” last year, a choice that has had me hankering for those blessed little bivalves ever since. And I wasn’t familiar with his approach to food.

But once I cracked the spine, I was sorry for all I had missed. I couldn’t get enough of the book, which was originally released in 2003.

In the beginning, I savored most every sentence, slowly digesting the choice morsels Pépin served up of his early years. There were stories of extreme hardship because of the war, yet his mother managed to open a restaurant and make a go of it. There were stories of how hard it was to be separated from his family during the summers when children of his generation went off to work on farms. There were stories of working his way up through various kitchens until he became chef for Charles de Gaulle.

Some of the Gallic flavor in these pages was reminiscent of Ludwig Bemelmans’ charming memoirs, including “Hotel Bemelmans.” No matter the difficulty, Pépin seemed to move through each phase with a healthy attitude of accepting what life had to offer. He wasn’t happy about going into the military, for example, but he did, and he became a better chef for it.

I raced through the American half of the book, not because the anecdotes were any less interesting. There’s the story of how he had to chose between being chef for the Kennedys in the White House or working for Howard Johnson’s, and he opted for the latter. But this portion of the book fascinated me because I discovered that Pépin had lived for a number of years in the same county that I did in upstate New York, although not at the same time.

Greene County, just south of Albany, is home to two famous ski resorts, Hunter Mountain and Windham, and Pépin made great use of both during his residence there. I was more of an après-ski person myself and focused on warm toddies by a roaring fire, but I learned what he did: This corner of the world, lush and green in the summer, offered great produce, both wild and cultivated. If you know the area, you can just picture him and neighboring chefs, including Pierre Franey, cooking up some memorable dinners with what they could round up. A scene in which he buys rabbit is hilarious and shows the difference between the European and the American approach to food. (Though the restaurant scene in the county was meager, another famed chef, Thomas Keller of the French Laundry, got his big break there when he served as chef of a French restaurant called La Rive.)

By the time I finished the book, I didn’t want to let it go. So, I started making a couple of the recipes that Pépin features at the end of each chapter. they show his love of simple fare made with the best ingredients. The first was Les Oeufs Jeanette, a stuffed egg recipe that his mother developed and that has been a staple his entire life. I’ve made them twice now and will certainly serve them again.

“The Apprentice” made be seven years ago, which is a lifetime in the publishing business. Yet it has received some national attention in recent weeks when Saveur magazine included it on its annual 100 list. Here’s what reader Charlotte Belair of Vancouver, British Columbia had to say about the book:

“At the public library where I used to work, a lot of books crossed my desk, but something about ‘The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen,’ a memoir by the French chef Jacques Pepin, immediately spoke to me. I took it home, and by the next day, I was telling my co-workers that I thought I might be in love. Whether describing his training in the great restaurants of France or his career in the United States as a chef, television personality, author and teacher, Pepin has an engaging, low-key way of talking about his many accomplishments. His warmth, honesty and joie de vivre always shine through. Each chapter is punctuated with recipes that vividly evoke the period he’s recalling: his mother’s apple tart, with its unfailingly light and tender crust; the braised striped bass he prepared at the New York City restaurant Le Pavillon; the chicken salad he learned to make from the actor Danny Kaye, whose poaching technique he admired. Along the way, Pepin provides the kind of ingenious cooking tips that viewers of his television programs have always treasured. But it’s the example of the man himself, his obvious passion and his dedication to his craft, that I found the most inspiring of all.”

His title, “The Apprentice,” says it all. After more than 70 years, Pépin is still learning, and it is an inspiration for the rest of us to keep at it, too.

For cookbook fanatics, Judith Jones needs no introduction. She is the editor who shaped the writing of some of our favorite cookbook authors, including Julia Child and James Beard. She also co-authored three books with husband Evan Jones, including “The Book of Bread: Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!”

But when Evan died in 1996, she found herself in a void when it came to cooking. Food had, for a while, lost its flavor for her because there was no one to share a meal with day in and day out. “I was not sure that I would ever enjoy preparing a meal for myself and eating alone,” she writes. “I was wrong, and I soon realized that the pleasure that we shared together was something to honor. I found myself at the end of the day looking forward to cooking, making recipes that work for one, and then sitting down and savoring a good meal.”

So, Jones set out to create “The Pleasures of Cooking for One” (Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95). Her audience for this book extends beyond the recently widowed like herself. More than half the population of New York lives alone, Jones writes. The rest of the country is not entirely different. There are students, young professionals starting out and even some married folk who prepare meals regularly only for themselves. Then there are those of us, myself included, who enjoy living alone. We are all potentially part of Jones’ target circle.

But Jones doesn’t want all of us. She is only interested in the serious home cook. “It isn’t a cookbook for what Julia Child used to call ‘the flimsies’ – that is, people who aren’t genuinely interested in cooking and want fast and easy recipes and shortcuts at the expense of taste. This book is for those of who want to roll up your sleeves and enjoy, from day to day, one of the great satisfactions of life.”

So, be prepared, single foodies, to make a Small Meatloaf With a  French Accent, Fillet of Fish in Parchment, Osso Buco With Gremolata, or Steamed Mussels.  Dessert lovers will flip for the Individual Apple Tart, Pear Crisp or Summer Pudding.

If you don’t want to tackle a new dish every day, Jones offers a series of recipes where you cook a large cut of meat one day and either reheat the remainder or use  it in different ways until it’s gone. So, imagine stewing Boeuf Bourguignon for one, then incorporating the leftovers in a Beef and Kidney Pie or a meaty pasta sauce. It’s a technique that reminded me of Robert Farrar Capon’s “The Supper of the Lamb” from the 1960s, and it still works today.

The book is sprinkled liberally with cooking tips and hints on topics such as “Ways of Using Up Milk” or “Duxelles: A Way of Preserving Your Mushrooms.”

Here’s her advice on cleanup: “One of the complaints I hear about home cooking is that it’s so messy and time-consuming, particularly all that washing up. And just for one? Most recipes call for more bowls than you may have on your shelf. I find that if you line things up on a work surface close to your stove, you don’t need all those bowls. And in making recipes for breads, pastries and the like, wax paper comes in very handy. You can toss the dry ingredients together on a large piece of wax paper, then pick it up carefully, and funnel the dry ingredients into the bowl of your mixer while it is running.”

What I’m most grateful for in this book may come as a surprise. It’s Jones’ recipe for mayonnaise, which uses a food processor. I was once told not to use this method because the motor overheats the mixture and it never sets up. Yet her version works, and you don’t have a great deal left over, so there’s no waste involved.

No matter how many people you’re feeding – and Jones’ recipes can be easily doubled or tripled–“The Pleasures of Cooking for One” proves to be pure pleasure for mind and for palate.

For years, Clive Berkman kept empty wine bottles that reminded him of great celebrations in which he played a part. Now, the Houston chef has put those moments, along with the wines, menus, recipes and stories, in his book, “Creating Empty Bottle Moments” (Baxter Press, $30).

Berkman was at last week’s Ben E. Keith food show in the San Antonio Convention Center, signing books and talking food.  In his book, the restaurant manager/chef and catering consultant reminisces about meals he cooked throughout his career for celebrities, wine makers, sports figures, rock stars and theater greats.

If you like to see recipes in the context of a complete menu, this book offers interesting combinations to help you plan your own meal.  (Here and there some of the recipe ingredients are not exactly in the order of use, though, so it’s a good idea to read through them carefully first.) His recipe for a Potato Pancake is one that serves four and is suggested as a good side for grilled meats.

But what Berkman has done in this book is to share not only triumphs and failures in the kitchen, but the many ways he learned from people he encountered throughout his career. Along with memories he delivers cooking and hosting tips that are philosophical as often as they are technical.

For example, he says, “Waiting is a lost art in our culture. … In the restaurant business and in every other aspect of life, we often find more meaning in the process than in the conclusion. … The conclusion of the meal isn’t the goal. The focus is the entire process involving creativity and interaction.”

Good thoughts for anyone to consider, from a writer who obviously put much thought and heart into creating those “empty bottle” moments.