Chews Wisely

Finding cookbooks by Texas authors at the Texas Book Festival can be a feast or famine situation. For example, Texas titles were in short supply in the cooking tent last year. However, visitors to the 2011 cooking tent and other fest venues will experience a veritable banquet of Texas cookbooks, plus plenty of tasty titles from around the country.

Texas chefs, caterers, food journalists, and bloggers will discuss their books with hungry readers.  They'll be joined by authors from around the country – Virginia Willis, Martha Hall Foose, and Hugh Acheson from the American South; Gesine Bullock-Prado from Vermont; cable TV's Beekman boys from New York; The Splendid Table's Lynne Rossetto Kasper from Minnesota; and national cooking luminaries Paula Deen and Alton Brown from the Food Network.

Festival organizers have put together a stellar lineup of cookbooks that have come out over the past year. In fact, some of the featured books have already been reviewed in these pages. (See "The Recipes Behind the Restaurants," May 20, and "A Knead to Read," May 27.)  Contributing writers Mick Vann, Claudia Alarcón, Kate Thornberry, Barbara Chisholm, Rachel Feit, Melanie Haupt, Monica Riese, and I have all chosen a tempting title to recommend to festivalgoers. Bon appétit!