A warm but rainy week means alternating between summer food and something comforting. So sweet corn, salsa, courgettes, tacos but also vegetable chilli, roast chicken and gratin. I’ve also been enjoying a couple of new cookbooks. The first is one I’ve bought: Food52 Genius Recipes. I’ve linked here before to the Genius Recipes column on the Food52 website, and this collection of recipes gives you something new to learn on almost every page, even for experienced cooks. By choosing the surprising and unusual recipes, the ones that seem to break the rules but still produce great results, they’ve produced a very different sort of essential recipe collection.

The other book is the Momofuku cookbook, borrowed from the library. I don’t often buy restaurant cookbooks. By their nature, the recipes tend to be complicated, multi-step affairs, that I’m unlikely to want to attempt at home. But I’ve been reading this mainly for David Chang’s great essays on learning to cook and setting up a restaurant. As I knew from reading his food magazine, Lucky Peach, David knows how to write engagingly about food. And he’s an honest and humble documenter of his food journey. I may even try out some of the recipes from here too.

Recipes:

• Gratin of courgettes and rice – Food52 Genius Recipes
• Plum torte – the same
• Bircher muesli – approximately from Felicity Cloake. I soaked in apple juice and water as we were out of milk.
• White bread from Brilliant Bread

Without a recipe:

• Pasta with sausage, cherry tomatoes and courgette
• Vegetable chili with black beans
• Fishfinger tacos with tomato, corn and avocado salsa
• Roast chicken with roast veg

Reading:

• I’m continuing to enjoy the Rocket and Squash residency in the Guardian’s Cook magazine. Last week was about getting ideas from cookbooks and this week covers storecupboard recipes.
• Green Kitchen Stories has a nice looking recipe for blueberry yoghurt cake, and an even better suggestion for serving it ‘shattered’. This seems like a great thing to remember next time you have a cake disaster!
• Tin and Thyme can’t have been the only blogger inspired to make a Black Forest cake by last week’s Great British Bake-off, but this looks like a good version.
• Eat the Seasons does what it says on the tin: presents what’s good this week, with a new thing each week.
• Sous Chef, the excellent online ingredients site, now stocks Christine Ferber jams from Alsace, famous for supplying Pierre Herme, amongst others. Some wonderful sounding flavours, including Maltaise Orange and Earl Grey and Alsace Strawberry, Fir Honey and Black Pepper.