With the barbecue packed away and patio season done, now’s the time to hunker down and get cooking indoors. Here are a few new titles to kickstart your kitchen motivation.

Gather: A Dirty Apron Cookbook

Chef David Robertson’s follow-up to the best-selling Dirty Apron Cookbook coincides with the Beatty Street cooking school and deli’s 10^th anniversary. This hardcover focuses on simple cooking, with Robertson—a father of two whose dad was a Scottish butcher and his mom a devoted home cook—introducing members of his own family (his wife and two daughters) and his kitchen kin throughout its 80 recipes. These are fresh, unpretentious dishes for unfussy but delicious affairs: coconut-lemongrass braised beef short ribs, country rolls, and Brussels sprouts salad, for example.  Whether it’s a low-and-slow approach for poached smoked sablsifish with tarragon-butter crab or stay-on-your-game cioppino studded with mussels, clams, prawns squid, and ling cod, there are meals for every level of home chef—and menus meant to celebrate community.

Rocky Mountain Cooking: Recipes to Bring Canada’s Backcountry Home

Author Katie Mitzel is an experienced and enthusiastic backcountry lodge chef, having worked at places like Assiniboine Lodge (which, at 7,200 feet, is accessed by helicopter or a 27.5-kilometre hike or cross-country ski) and Mistaya Lodge in the Wild Cat Basin (at 6,700 feet). The photos of glorious mountainscapes in all seasons draw you in; flipping through this book makes you want to travel to all those remote, ruggedly beautiful places. Imagine yourself coming in from the outdoors to enjoy some of Mitzel’s dishes: baked French toast casserole with streusel, loaded baked potato soup, backcountry sourdough, mountain pork medallions with hinterland mushrooms, arancini with vodka marinara… Suddenly that 27.5-kilometre hike sounds totally worth it.

I Heart Kosher: Beautiful Recipes From my Kitchen

Kim Kushner is elevating kosher cooking to new heights, and whether you’re Jewish or not, this book will appeal with so many flavourful recipes, from green eggs and garbanzos to tartines to a gingery healing broth with mushrooms, carrots, leeks, and kale. Raised in Montreal and living in New York City (when she’s not travelling the globe teaching cooking classes), Kushner has helped propelled kosher cuisine into the modern mainstream. “Kosher food isn’t just bagels and lox or matzo ball soup,” writes the mother of four. “Kosher food can be fresh, seasonal, colorful, organic, and believe it or not, even healthy….Kosher has caught up with the times, and it’s time to enjoy it’s updated philosophy.” Marinated feta, smoked salmon carpaccio with jalapenos and lime sauce, lemony whole branzino… We heart Kushner’s style.

Click here for more Georgia Straight coverage of fall 2019 cookbook releases.