Whether or not you clean as you go, everyone needs to clean the kitchen at some point. From how to get rid of fish odors to how to repel house flies, from how to remove red wine stains to how to care for a wood table, here are our best tips to get you motivated and make the whole task easier. More

Our friend Deb Perelman, who runs the enormously adored cooking site Smitten Kitchen just published her first cookbook and I got to spend an afternoon in her kitchen making one of the recipes, an insanely decadent breakfast treat: think pretzel meets chocolate meets the most tender brioche dough you've ever laid teeth on. (Here's a peek into her kitchen!)

This is just one of over 100 recipes (and more than 300 photographs, all by Deb) 105-plus recipes. 300+ full-color photos. Smitten Kitchen fans will be pleased to know the book has almost all new material, with just a few old favorites from the site, re-tested and re-worked to perfection. More

Leaf through Ludo Lefebvre's new cookbook, LudoBites: Recipes And Stories From The Pop-Up Restaurants of Ludo Lefebvre, and you'll understand why the reservations for the entire run of the last incarnation of LudoBites, his pop-up restaurant in Los Angeles, sold out in under a minute: his delight in the sensual pleasure of food is evident in the description of every dish. (Remember his charming kitchen tour, too?) Ludo's palate is rooted in a love and respect for the cooking, food, flavors and food traditions of his native France. But what launches his food into the stratosphere is his deep-seated curiosity about the world, with each dish a question answered by a taste experience, one that also involves your eyes and your nose. More

A few years ago Australian Rohan Anderson did what many of us only dream of doing: he decided to live as much as possible on the food he grew, raised or hunted himself. He started a blog called Whole Larder Love to document his observations and adventures. Luckily for us, that blog has turned into a book by the same name, just released here in the USA. Read on for my review and a recipe from the book. More

I am a visual learner. Never is this more clear to me than when I thumb through a cookbook like Ripe by Cheryl Sternman Rule with its incredible food photographs by Paulette Phlipot.

The fruits and vegetables practically jump off of the pages in 3D, and my brain understands their curves, colors, and yes, ripeness in a way that description alone could not accomplish. It's enough to make a gal hungry. More

After many years waiting tables and working in restaurants my only brush with bitters was as the staff cure all for hangovers. After a late night we'd all belly up to bar for our daily drink of bitters and soda. It cured everything from a headache to indigestion. Then it was only Angostura but now with the cocktail craze comes the bitters boom, and yes a book dedicated solely to this aromatic flavoring agent. More

We have had such fun reviewing and sharing recipes from the avalanche of cookbooks published this year. These were some of our favorite recipes, including dishes from authors like Melissa Clark, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Jeni Britton Bauer of Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams – all of whom appeared on our readers' top five cookbooks of 2011 list, too! More

Home cooks have to be a careful when it comes to a cookbook written by a restaurant chef. There often can be a disconnect between what it takes to get restaurant food onto our home tables when we don't have exotic ingredients flown to our doors and a dozen employees to prep them, not to mention years of professional training and the extraordinarily high btu's of a huge, multi-burner professional stove. So when I picked up San Francisco chef Mitch Rosenthal's new cookbook Cooking My Way Back Home, I'll admit I was a little cautious. Was this going to be one of those books that frustrated me with hours of prep work, and too many ingredients and complicated techniques? Read on for what I discovered. More

Here is a lady after my own heart. And, I'm thinking, yours. Jennifer Reese set out confidently and ambitiously, with grand intentions of crafting her own cheese and making pasta with eggs from her own chickens. She wanted to answer once and for all the question, "Where is that sweet spot between making and buying?" What she found, among other things, is that raising chickens isn't all it's cracked up to be. More

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is un-possible to pass by one of Milk Bar's four New York locations or read one of Pastry Chef Christina Tosi's recipes online and not feel an immediate sugar craving. Just opening this cookbook gave me a sugar rush.

Within these pages, Tosi breaks down how she makes all her now-famous recipes. Crack pie is here. Compost cookies are here. Her cakes and tarts and magic-seeming garnishes: yup, all here. You're going to love this cookbook. More